The Monster Energy Up & Up Festival has announced the first virtual college music festival of its caliber: the multi-day Welcome Back Virtual Festival will stream live on Monster Energy’s YouTube Channel with performances by electronic music favorites NGHTMRE, San Holo, Ghastly, Ekali, and more October 9th to October 11th, 2020. The Welcome Back Virtual Festival is a refreshing twist on the Up & Up Festival’s groundbreaking artist-on-demand competition for 2020.
In continuing their student-focused efforts, the Monster Energy Up & Up will be giving back to their community of young visionaries, leaders, and promoters — creating a student board to collaborate on all areas of this special event. The Welcome Back Virtual Festival will include its largest number of headlining artists, feature special celebrity guest appearances, social media personalities, showcase student-produced content, and more. Best of all, it’s all free — for the students, by the students.
“When the longer term reality set in of how the live restrictions would affect college campus life, it was important for us to identify a creative, compliant solution to give students a valuable and enjoyable experience — and continue the progression of the Monster Energy Up & Up Festival Series that our college ambassador network has worked so hard in helping us build,” shared Stephen Glazer, Monster Energy Up & Up Festival co-founder/producer.
This year, the world’s largest music festivals moved online, only to showcase the main acts. The Welcome Back Virtual Festival will co-stream its entire socially-distanced audience from over 20 school “stages” around the nation through Zoom conferences. Each stage will spotlight student performers and host celebrity appearances, contests, giveaways, and online meet & greets with performing artists.
The Welcome Back Virtual Festival is also the launchpad for the first annual $10K Talent Showdown — a variety talent competition featuring students who possess extraordinary talents, with $10,000 in prizing. DJ/Producer duo Two Friends will host and determine the winners along with students voting on their favorite videos with Yappa, the revolutionary audio/video commenting tool and official voting partner of the $10K Talent Showdown. All participants must register through 10ktalentshowdown.com.
“With little to no campus life activities happening currently, the Welcome Back Virtual Festival provides an exciting opportunity for students to interact, dance, and enjoy a weekend of incredible music and entertainment right in their own home! In curating this national-scale, live-streamed concert, the Monster Energy Up & Up Festival is opening the door for student ambassadors to gain unparalleled virtual event production experience and valuable networking opportunities in this forever-evolving music industry,” says Tomer Vagner, a recent graduate from the University of Oregon.
In line with the original Monster Energy Up & Up Festival tradition, the Welcome Back Virtual Festival will give student interns the opportunity to produce their own festivals. Interns will be equipped with state-of-the-art production kits and receive success coaching from the internal Up & Up team on mastering top music industry skills — from event staging to marketing to management and beyond.
Monster Energy Up & Up Festival continues to provide a place for students to cultivate career and self-growth through a positive, hands-on learning experience. Since 2016, tens of thousands of students compete every year to produce an Up & Up Festival on their campus with breakthrough EDM artists, like Alan Walker, TroyBoi, Slushii, Two Friends, Cash Cash, Elephante, and Gryffin.
To learn more about the Monster Energy Up & Up Welcome Back Festival Series, visit upandupfestival.com.