Keep these six music trends top of mind so you can stay at the top of your game this year.

  1. Cashless payments, iBeacon, and mobile ticket purchases on the rise

In 2015, more festivals will invest in technology such as cashless payments and iBeacon for their events to track traffic patterns, improve operational efficiencies, and create a more accurate view of their audience for real-time or post-event marketing. Mobile isn’t just good for location-based notifications either; a recent study from Google shows a 50% increase in the use of smartphones for ticket purchases from 2012 and 2014.*

  1. EDM continues to expand, but keep an eye on hip hop

The fastest growing genre on Eventbrite is EDM, with new EDM event organisers growing by over 50% compared to a year ago. But keep an eye on hip hop, the genre with the second largest number of organisers on Eventbrite and growing fast.

  1. Music Festivals Network: the next Sky Sports

While the cost of live streaming is still prohibitive to most music festivals, there is a huge amount of interest on the fan side: 1 in 4 online posts about festivals come from people participating remotely. If this amount of interest is any indication, we may eventually see multi-channel broadcasts covering everything from performances to fashion to food at the biggest music festivals of the year.

  1. Ticketing is a growing slice of the revenue pie

Whether you’re an artist, label, manager, promoter–or all of the above–it’s becoming clear that as industry stakeholders duke it out over royalties in the media, the revenue from touring is critical to monetising music. Streaming, radio, downloads are all ways for future fans to discover music and ultimately decide what shows to go to next.

  1. The rise of the boutique music festival

Robert Richards, commercial director of Glastonbury Festival, recently said that boutique festivals with no headliners are thriving in the UK. Kevin Lyman, creator of Warped Tour, stated that we’re reaching the “Walmart-isation” of the music festival business – to survive, smaller festivals will have to take the approach of becoming “boutique,” just as small businesses had to adapt when Walmart came to town.

  1. Globalisation of music festivals

According to Parag Bhandari, Founder & CEO of UG Strategies, a globalisation of music festivals is happening. Global festival properties like Electric Daisy Carnival, Outlook & Dimensions, ULTRA, and Tomorrowland are exporting and importing their mega-brands to new markets, in hopes of taking their experiences and replicating them with new audiences around the world, and there is no shortage of demand for this.

What other trends have you been seeing? Let us know what we missed

*Google/Ipsos MediaCT, Ticketing Study, March 10–21, 2014.

*Eventbrite Music Festivals trend report 2014