The Future of Music Festivals in Helsinki: A Case Study on the Independent Organizers of the VISIO Festival

Abstract

The current thesis is a case study that focuses on a music festival, VISIO Festival, and its organizers, as well as their process of becoming a subculture in Helsinki’s underground landscape. An argumentative sequence develops the problem presented through a literature review with the objective of presenting concepts such as subculture, theory of representation, and online communities and how they relate to each other. This study investigates basic concepts of communication and culture, to be able to later understand music as a fundamental part of the descriptive sequence. It has been conducted using qualitative methods to understand the phenomenon. By using this methodological approach, the aim is to integrate the entrepreneurial journey of being an independent organizer of a music festival, and how music and culture play an important role in society. To find this out, this research uses semi-structured in-depth interviews, netnography and content analysis. There is a cultural gap between the mainstream and underground music festivals, but since the world is currently highly digitized, there is a trend towards a new economy created by new technologies. However, for the organizers investigated, traditional approaches are not the tools to reach their goals. Music festivals have been studied from an anthropological, sociological, and psychological point of view, and barely explored from the communication point of view, unlike rock and roll, which has had a variety of studies. What is exposed in this thesis is how to approach the foundation of values in times of crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, which is the main objective of this final degree project.