### Sian Rider 3 minutes read In the midst of festival season, we took the opportunity to delve into the significance of these immersive music experiences for children and families. As a research and marketing agency, specialising in kids and families, we harnessed the power of our first-party data to uncover invaluable insights into festival preferences across different age groups. Our research journey led us to discover compelling findings, including family appetite for these types of events, plus the artists and music genres that resonate most with festival-goers across the age groups. ### Findings Our research revealed that; - Pop music is the most popular genre amongst kids, but declines as they get older in favour of rock music for parents. - Billie Eilish was comfortably the most popular 2022 Glastonbury headliner amongst children. She remains top amongst teenagers despite losing ground to Kendrick Lamar – before being completely overtaken by Paul McCartney with parents. - Just 11% of Kids 6-13 chose the Beatles legend as their top headliner, which interestingly is still a percentage point more than wanted Kendrick Lamar amongst that audience. A festival is kind of like a party. _Girl 7, UK_ We then wanted to understand what festival season looks like for parents. Are parents & kids going together? Will they go in the future? This is what we learned… - 1 in 5 parents said they were attending a festival with their children this year – with parents split on which festival they were likely attend, with Camp Bestival, Wilderness and Glastonbury getting 28% of the vote each. - The main reason parents aren’t going is that they don’t really like festivals, followed closely by it being too expensive. - When asked how likely they are to be going to a festival with their child one day, a huge 69% said it’s highly unlikely, with another 6% saying it’s slightly unlikely (NET 75% – 3 in 4 not likely to go). It's like where all the celebrities go together and sing. _Girl 12, UK_ Given we saw two of this country’s biggest music festivals get a huge response both in real life and on Video On Demand in June 2022, we decided to see if Wireless started to overtake Glastonbury in terms of popularity – particularly with a younger audience. These were the results... - Glastonbury remains a firm favourite with our younger audience despite the increasing prominence of Wireless, with 60% of children 6-13 preferring it. 47% of kids this age watched performers there either in real life or on iPlayer. - Unsurprisingly, the split becomes more Glastonbury skewed as we move through the age ranges, with 64% of Teens preferring it, to 76% of Parents. Finally, given the increasing importance of gaming and the metaverse in the lives of children – as well as many musical artists already using digital worlds to host concerts, we thought it would be interesting to see what’s more appealing – digital, or the real thing? - Amazingly, 52% of kids 6-13 would rather go to a music concert in a video game than in real life. This drops dramatically when we get to Teens, with just 29% opting for a video game concert. - Somewhat surprisingly, 19% of parents said they’d rather a digital festival than a real life one.