For the nosy types who can’t help counting other people’s money, music festival season offers endless opportunities to completely squander your time. Every year, like you can set your watch to it, each new festival lineup triggers a wave of public speculation about what headliners might potentially earn for scoring such premium slots. This happens especially with Coachella, which featured Lady Gaga, Green Day, and Post Malone as its headlining acts this year.
For whatever it’s worth (probably not much), we’ve tried to shed some light on this topic, though without any firsthand confirmation. Read on for more details.
How much does a Coachella headliner make? The actual figures aren’t publicly released. However, some industry experts and artists have dropped hints over the years. On a recent episode of The Town with Matthew Belloni featuring Dave Brooks, Billboard‘s senior director of live music and touring, it was mentioned that Coachella headliners can pull in around $5 million per weekend, totaling $10 million for both.
This reported amount can vary, with past headliners like Beyoncé rumored to have pocketed significantly more than that baseline figure.
What if a Coachella headliner cancels? It varies, but Frank Ocean’s 2023 situation offers a good example. When Ocean bailed on his second weekend performance, Billboard reported he was likely earning about $4 million per weekend. After his cancellation, blink-182 (freshly reunited with Tom DeLonge) jumped in as replacements and reportedly got paid the same rate.
How many people go to Coachella? For the 2024 festival, roughly 80,000 tickets were reportedly sold for each weekend.
