coachella

YouTube is holding onto its exclusive livestream deal with Coachella.

The tech giant in San Bruno, Calif., has renewed its partnership with festival promoter Goldenvoice, keeping exclusive livestream rights to the three-day desert festival through 2030. The next edition, in April 2027, will mark 15 years of Coachella on YouTube.

“We’re excited to bring the energy of the desert to millions of music fans around the world,” Neal Mohan, YouTube’s chief executive officer, said at its Made On YouTube event in New York City on Wednesday morning.

This year’s Coachella, headlined by Sabrina Carpenter, Justin Bieber and Karol G, drew the most concurrent viewers in the history of Coachella on YouTube, according to the company. Bieber, who was discovered on YouTube, even included a nostalgic homage to the platform into his set.

Over the years, the livestream has become an essential part of the Coachella experience, especially for fans who can’t make it to the desert. What started as a single feed has evolved into live coverage of every stage across both weekends.

Beyond Coachella, YouTube doubled down on livestreaming during its presentation, unveiling a slew of new live and AI-powered tools. In August, more than 600 million logged-in viewers watched live content on the platform each day on average, according to YouTube. The new live features include a new co-hosting function in which two creators can appear on the same stream together, and a live auto-dubbing tool that automatically translates speech in real time. Several of the updates are slated to roll out in early 2027.

“Whether it’s a music festival or a creator’s livestream, fandom is no longer a spectator sport,” added Mohan. “Just look at the sheer scale of the live communities we’re seeing today.”

YouTube isn’t the only streamer leaning into live. Netflix has spent the last few years buliding out its own live business, which now includes NFL and MLB games.

Garth Brooks, Zach Top and Riley Green will headline 2027’s Stagecoach country music festival, organizers announced Monday, bringing together one of the genre’s veteran standard-bearers with two of Nashville’s ascendant stars.

The three-day event, scheduled for April 23-25 at Indio’s Empire Polo Club, will also feature Hardy, Brothers Osborne, Willie Nelson, Shaboozey, Stella Lefty, Charley Crockett, Stephen Wilson Jr., Turnpike Troubadours, Gretchen Wilson, Ernest, Hudson Westbrook and a reunited Florida Georgia Line.

Among the non-country acts on the bill for the annual show, which for years has been expanding its stylistic footprint, are Kelly Clarkson, Pitbull, David Lee Roth, Sean Paul, Flo Rida, Matchbox Twenty, the Fray and Journey, the last of which was scheduled to perform at this past April’s festival but whose set was called off after high winds temporarily shut down Stagecoach.

Brooks, who previously headlined Stagecoach in 2018, launched an arena tour last month, while Top and Green both just picked up nominations for November’s CMA Awards: Top for male vocalist of the year and album of the year (for his “Ain’t in It for My Health”) and Green for musical event of the year (for his and Carly Pearce’s duet “If I Don’t Leave I’m Gonna Stay”).

Other acts scheduled to perform at next year’s festival, which takes place on the same grounds as Coachella the weekend after that event, include Carín León, Cody Jinks, Melissa Etheridge, Dasha, Waylon Wyatt, Tedeschi Trucks Band and Laci Kaye Booth.

Passes for Stagecoach, which start at $549 and go up past $4,000 for various VIP packages, will go on sale Friday. Goldenvoice, the Los Angeles-based promoter that puts on Stagecoach and Coachella, announced last week that its inaugural Ocean Way festival, which was to be held on the beach in Santa Monica on Sept. 26 and 27, had been canceled due to erosion caused this month by Hurricane Marie.