Putting Producers First: Fixing the Underground Music Ecosystem (Festival Edition)
- Kelly Projects
- Jan 5
- 4 min read
Updated: Jan 7
From Values to Infrastructure in Underground Electronic Music
In Part One of this series, I wrote about a structural imbalance within underground electronic music culture: the people who create the music: producers, who are often the least visible and least supported within the ecosystem they sustain.
If we genuinely believe that underground electronic music values originality, independence, and cultural integrity, then putting producers first cannot remain a symbolic gesture. It has to be embedded into the systems that shape bookings, programming, media, and money.
This second part focuses on tangible solutions and mechanisms that could realistically exist within today’s electronic music industry.
Booking Producers as Producers and Musicians, not just as DJs
One of the most immediate changes festivals can make is also one of the most impactful: booking producers for their original work, not only as DJs who happen to make music.
A Producer Showcase Stage would allow festivals to create a space that focuses on music creation rather than DJ curation. These stages can feature live sets, hybrid performances, or hardware-based shows that focus on original production. They don’t need to be large or headline-focused in order to make a musical impact. Just as we have ambient stages, we can also facilitate a live-stage.
From an organizer’s perspective, producer bookings are often more financially accessible than touring DJs, since their fees are lower, while offering significant cultural value. From a scene perspective, they create visibility for the people shaping the sound itself.
This simple programming shift would communicate that the festival supports and grows a producer scene, and that music is being made domestically.
Producer Booking Quotas and Intentional Programming
Festivals can commit to producer-focused booking practices across their lineups. This could mean reserving certain slots specifically for producers, prioritizing local producers in early programming, or ensuring that a defined portion of the lineup consists of artists whose primary practice is production or use live-instruments.
These measures don’t need to be loudly branded. Their power lies in consistency. Over time, they influence who gets exposure, who gets press coverage, and who is invited back.
Visibility can compound and generate at the roots.
These artists can even appear multiple times across a festival weekend, which include multiple performances, participation in discussions, or collaborative appearances in other DJ sets that have collaborated on a track. The producers or musicians can perform as guests on a certain track, giving the DJ set an added layer. When the DJ invites the producer / musician to play an instrument during the set, this can give more visibility and more texture to the set itself.
Listening Spaces for Music Beyond Peak-Time Culture
Not all electronic music is designed for peak-time dance floors, and not all producers want to perform within DJ-centric formats.
Listening stages, seated rooms, or headphone-based environments allow producers to present their work as music to be experienced. These spaces can host album playbacks, unreleased material, or contextual listening sessions that encourage active listening.
In a festival environment dominated by stimulation, these moments of focus deepen audience engagement and remind listeners why the music matters in the first place.
Empowering Listeners to Support Underground Producers
Listeners play a larger role in the electronic music ecosystem than they’re often given credit for.
We should create easy ways for audiences to discover producers, purchase music directly, and understand how underground scenes function help redistribute power.
Music education can be embedded subtly into festival experiences, editorial content, and digital platforms. When audiences value producers, industry priorities eventually follow.
Festival-Backed Producer Compilations
Curated compilation releases tied to festival lineups offer another way to support underground producers. A festival-backed Various Artists Compilation release becomes a document of a specific moment, sound, and community. When structured ethically, such as through platforms like Bandcamp, these compilations can direct revenue back to producers while expanding their reach beyond the dancefloor. Their value lies in intention, curation, and longevity in their audience's music education.
Crediting Producers in Festival Media and Documentation
Festivals generate enormous amounts of media content, yet music is often treated as a secondary element within it.
Including producer credits in aftermovies, festival guides, programs, and editorial coverage is a small but meaningful shift. It reinforces the idea that music is authored, rather than anonymous.
Over time, consistent crediting shapes audience perception and education. It teaches listeners to ask not just what track is this? but who made it?
What Putting Producers First Really Means
This conversation is about what underground electronic music culture chooses to celebrate.
Not only who played the biggest stage, who toured the most, but who created the music that shaped the sound that we celebrate.
Producers are not a footnote to underground culture, they are its authors. If the underground truly values originality and independence, then putting producers first must move beyond rhetoric and into structure. Otherwise, we risk preserving the aesthetic of the underground while eroding the labor that sustains it.
Support our VA: Producers First on our Bandcamp.
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