Jessica Ruiz had dreamed of attending Coachella for years. So when the 26-year-old finally got her chance this spring, she found herself sitting on the grass overwhelmed.
“At one point I was sitting on the floor just looking around and cried out of pure happiness and contentedness,” Ruiz said. “I genuinely don’t think I can replicate that feeling.”
The trip was expensive. General admission tickets to Coachella cost more than $650 before accounting for flights, hotels or food. But Ruiz said she never seriously considered skipping it.
At a time of rising prices and a cooling labor market, many young Americans say they are financially challenged. A recent Harvard Youth Poll of Americans ages 18 to 29 found that roughly half of respondents said inflation was affecting them “a lot,” while just under half reported struggling to make ends meet.
Yet despite those anxieties, young consumers continue spending heavily on live entertainment and travel experiences. Coachella sold out within a week this year and reportedly drew a record 750,000 attendees across two weekends, even as ticket prices continued climbing.
Even as jet fuel prices and travel costs continue to rise, consumer spending on travel and live experiences has remained incredibly resilient. A recent Bank Of America travel and entertainment survey found that roughly half of respondents had traveled out of state or internationally for a concert, sporting event or festival within the past two years, including roughly two-thirds of Gen Z respondents.
But the festival industry has had to adapt to its audience’s financial reality. After a wave of festival cancellations in 2025 sparked concerns that the live music boom had peaked, festival organizers and music scholars now say the industry is not collapsing so much as changing. Younger attendees, they argue, are becoming more selective about where they spend their money while placing greater value on experiences they see as more meaningful.
‘What we are seeing among Millennials and Gen Z is not necessarily a decline in willingness to spend, but a far more selective and strategic approach to spending,” said Tiffany Naiman, director of music industry programs at the UCLA Herp Alpert School of Music.
Naiman said young people increasingly treat festivals less as casual entertainment purchases and more as “experience investments.” Rather than attending as many events as possible, they are becoming more intentional about which festivals they choose and prioritizing experiences that offer stronger senses of identity, atmosphere and community.
At Suwannee Hulaween, a four-day camping-centered music festival in Northern Florida that attracts roughly 22,000 attendees annually, organizers lowered ticket prices by nearly $100 this year despite rising production costs.
“We did our part to scale back the pricing to the three, four or five years ago range, and it paid dividends,” said Michael Berg, the festival’s co-founder and managing partner.
Berg said festivals increasingly have to justify themselves as worthwhile uses of peoples’ limited time and money.
“People are taking their valuable time, their hard-earned money, and using their vacation for the year to be with us,” Berg said. “This is people’s vacation.”
The strategy appears to be working. Berg said Suwannee Hulaween is currently tracking toward a sellout after experiencing its strongest blind presale since before the pandemic.
For festival organizers, attracting young people increasingly means selling more than just music. Around 90 to 95 percent of Hulaween attendees stay onsite across 800 acres of campgrounds. Berg said many Hulaweeners return year after year because of the recurring community and feeling of connectedness.
That sense of community has become increasingly central to why many young people continue prioritizing music festivals despite growing economic disillusionment.
Festivals have become increasingly important cultural spaces for younger Americans as more social interaction shifts online. In a time defined by digital communication and growing social isolation, many young people are seeking experiences that provide collective, cathartic escapism and real-world connection.
Festivals are also increasingly competing less on music lineups alone and more on identity, cultural significance, and vibes.
“Festivals provide temporary spaces where young people can perform community in real time,” said Naiman. “For Gen Z in particular, festivals offer something increasingly scarce in digital life: embodied collective experience.”
That sense of community was something Ian Alpers, a 38-year old who has experienced Coachella for 12 consecutive years, described when justifying spending thousands of dollars to attend. Alpers estimated that a typical trip for him and his wife costs around $5,000 once tickets, flights, lodging and food are included.
Alpers said music festivals offer something many young people increasingly struggle to find in the real world: community and belonging. After more than a decade of choosing Coachella, he said returning to the festival every year feels like coming back to a community of kind, like-minded people.
For Ruiz, the cost of committing to Coachella ultimately was easy to justify because of what the experience meant to her.
“As someone that dreamed of going for years, there was not a moment that went by where I wasn’t in constant amazement that I was actually there,” Ruiz said. “It’s a magical place with magical vibes.”
