Indie music festivals and the corporate sponsorship question is something the community hasn't figured out how to talk about honestly.

Small festivals that grow beyond a certain scale face a structural problem: the production costs of a certain kind of festival experience — proper stage infrastructure, good sound systems, camping facilities — exceed what ticket sales at accessible prices can cover. At that point, the choices are: raise ticket prices, take sponsorship, reduce production quality, or stay small.

Most festivals that grow choose some combination of raising prices and taking sponsorship. The result is a festival that no longer serves the community it started in — the prices have priced out people who don't have disposable income, and the sponsorship has introduced commercial interests that conflict with the curatorial independence that made the festival valuable.

The festivals I trust most are the ones that have chosen to stay small and to be explicit about why staying small is a values decision, not just a capacity constraint.