The wind in your hair. The music pulsing through your veins. The funny feeling in your underwear.
Music festivals afford fans the chance to see many of their favorite bands in one place while also discovering new acts to love.
Festivals are also great places to meet new friends and, uh, new more-than-friends, too. In 2015, Tinder hookups in the Indio and Palm Springs area increased by 300-percent on the first weekend of Coachella.
Now a new app, Radiate, wants to be your social network for music festivals (or festival flings).
Developers say their app makes it easy to meet new people "before, during, and after a festival — like Tinder, but for meeting people around music festivals (and not just for dating)."
"We accomplish this through festival-specific forums, where users can ask questions, find rides, and create & join squads like 'People from NYC going to Coachella.,'" they wrote is a press release.
Radiate also has all the lineups, set-times, and maps for each festival it services.
In Florida, Radiate is available at well-known electronic music festivals like Ultra, Okeechobee, Sunset Music Festival, and EDC Orlando, but will be expanding into different genres with festivals like Wanee, which Radiate reps said will be added to the Radiate roster this Thursday (Wanee runs April 19-21 at The Spirit of Suwannee Music park in Live Oak, Florida).
SUNSET MUSIC FESTIVAL POLL
Fans, what do you think of the SMF 2018 lineup?
Other dating apps have been suggested when it comes to hooking up at music festivals (Hinge, Hppn anyone?), but Radiate says that it sets itself apart from others because of its "social aspect."
"You can use it to ask questions and get an unfiltered, human-to-human answer," founders said in 2015.
That's not to say there aren't any critics.
Some Reddit threads say the app is good for finding "stuff" or "talent" at festivals, but most people think Radiate is more or less a Tinder for fests, but with better intentions.
When asked about some of the criticisms of the app, reps were quick to point out the ability of the app to bring people together.
Radiate is a public platform, so people can use the service in any way they want, as long as it fits our terms of use and community guidelines. If content does not conform, it is removed. As far as law enforcement, we’ve never been contacted by any, nor seen any evidence of their presence on our platform.
You can’t please everyone, but we’d like to think we’ve please the majority of people who’ve used Radiate. You can find a few of my personal favorite stories of people meeting through radiate here and here. Also our app store reviews are pretty 🔥imo. Let me know if I can send over anything else to help!
When it comes to more expansion, there are no strict minimums for the number of attendees for an event, but reps say there should be enough attendees and excitement to sustain a community.
Radiate has been primarily focused on large electronic music festivals, but has plans to soon expand into both smaller electronic music festivals/shows as well as other genres like rock, country, rap and more.
"To accommodate these new events and communities on Radiate, we’ll be working to improve our content recommendation algorithms, and the design of our event exploration page," representatives told CL.
"We also have a new feature coming out soon that will let people create events around festivals. So if you’re looking for pregames, meetups, afterparties, or anything in between, you can host and find them on Radiate."
Have a look at a 2016 YouTube demo below.
