Like the year-end feature Spotify Wrapped (the 2022 iteration is on the way), Instafest is based on what you listen to on Spotify, so an account there is required to run the app. — Instafest.app
You may have noticed your friends – and random celebrities – sharing an eclectic array of what appears to be lineup announcements for music festivals.
No, Briannafest is not the latest and greatest fest to hit the East Coast.
That would be Instafest, an app that tries to tell you what your own personal festival bill might look like, based on your listening habits.
Los Angeles app developer Anshay Saboo, a computer science student at the University of Southern California, created Instafest, which works with people’s Spotify accounts.
Like the year-end feature Spotify Wrapped (the 2022 iteration is on the way), Instafest is based on what you listen to on Spotify, so an account there is required to run the app.
First, you go to Instafest.app, then you sign in with Spotify. From there, you’re presented with a few options for the design of your music festival announcement – “Malibu sunrise,” “LA Twilight” and “Mojave dusk”; think Coachella for that last one.
At this point, you can opt to conceal your Spotify username if you don’t want the end result to display the handle publicly when you share it.
You also get to choose if this festival will be based on your last four weeks of listening habits, last six months or “all-time” – your complete history on Spotify. Depending on how extensive your listening history is, you can get up to three days’ worth of festival offerings.
Everyone is fair game – artists living and passed on, bands together and long broken up.
Music celebrities like Questlove have been sharing their Instafest results on social media. Prince is among those artists who got top billing in his lineup. Also in the mix: Sade, Marvin Gaye, The Isley Brothers, Frank Zappa, Radiohead and Earth, Wind & Fire.
Thanks to this app, we now also know that Zach Goode, current lead singer of Smash Mouth (he assumed the role this year after former lead singer Steve Harwell retired), would in fact have his own band as one of the headliners in a Zachary Goode Fest.
In Goode’s festival, Smash Mouth shares top billing with none other than the Beatles. This is all the more appropriate for the fantasy bill, since the band broke up the day he was born and he’s apparently felt guilty about it ever since.
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