A Coachella headlining set has long been one of the most coveted slots in the entire concert landscape, an affirmation of superstar power and a cosign of the most culturally relevant music in the world. But as it’s also become one of YouTube’s defining livestreams of the spring, the millions of more people watching at home have pulled the top billing into a globally scaled production on par with the likes of the Super Bowl.

Sabrina Carpenter and Karol G’s headlining sets in particular this year showcase a level of scale that goes well beyond what’s to be expected from a usual concert livestream, featuring grandiose productions with several set changes, dozens of backing dancers, and perhaps most notably to those watching from the screen, next level cinematography.

Ambitious Coachella sets aren’t new themselves — just look at Daft Punk’s iconic pyramid set back in 2006 or Beyoncé’s famed “Beychella” in 2018 — though with a more global audience in tow, what was once considered all-time excellence is starting to become the standard expectation.

“I think there’s now an equal if not greater attention given to how it’s going to translate on camera and how the cinematography is actually going to reflect the scale and detail of the production,” says Ian Simon, CEO of Strangeloop Studios, which helped with visuals and creative direction on Coachella headlining sets like Blackpink and Kendrick Lamar. “To have a live performance that translates well to livestream is probably becoming a non-negotiable at this point. If you have something that looks amazing at Coachella but is underwhelming on the live stream, you’re risking disappointing your fanbase that expects that at this point, especially after this year with the quality we saw.”

As JBeau Lewis, a partner agent at UTA whose clientele includes Karol G as well as 2023 headliner Bad Bunny says: “No one is taking for granted the magnitude of what this is.”

“Every artist and their team has to determine what the value is for themselves,” Lewis says. “The strategic, savvy artists and their teams see the big picture of how Coachella both in the live experience and the livestream fit into the greater landscape of what they’re trying to accomplish.”

Considering the massive global audience along with the thousands on site, Lewis says Karol G spent three times’ what Coachella paid her on her production costs alone, which included months of prep and three weeks of rehearsals in Las Vegas. Lewis did’t specify what Karol G was paid this year, but given that the typical Coachella headliner gets paid in the mid-seven figures (Justin Bieber set the record this year with an estimated $10 million payday), that suggests Karol could’ve paid into the eight figures.

When asked if the wider livestream audience played a significant role in that calculus, he called it “a fair assessment.”

“Karol is not seeing this as a one-off, ‘I did it and I’m going home now,’ type of show,” Lewis says. “She is someone who both deserves and seeks world domination as one of the biggest artists on the planet. The show’s part of a bigger plan. Giving her best in front of 100,000-plus people there and to the tens of millions on the livestream is going to benefit that long-term plan.” 

The focus was certainly warranted, as Karol G’s global Spotify streams jumped 15 percent the day after her show, Rolling Stone reported, while U.S. streams jumped over 35 percent.

Still, that’s not to say in-person viewers aren’t prioritized simply because of a popular livestream. There’s hundreds of thousands of people in attendance, but festivals are held at parks and fields, not arenas and stadiums built to accommodate a sight line for that many people, so most festival-goers won’t get much of a view of the most-attended sets regardless, making a good camera shot equally important for them too.

“There were people who ran in from doors opening, planted themselves at the barricade for Bieber and sat there for 11 hours not even going to the bathroom all day so they could get a good view,” Simon says. “If you’re not willing to make that kind of commitment, the chances of getting a good view even if you’ve got a VIP or artist pass are low, and you’ll have to look at the screen.”

Coachella has offered a livestream for well over a decade, though Simon attributes at least some of the growth in popularity to the Covid-19 pandemic, which morphed livestreams from afterthoughts into the only way fans could consume live content from their favorite artists. Those Covid-era livestream shows started haphazard and cheap, but as they became more common, the demand for higher-quality livestream shows went up. The tech didn’t go away, and livestreams themselves became a more habitual part of the live experience for those who can’t attend in person.

Simon adds that the pandemic-era streams gave way to several technological and skill upgrades that remain with livestreaming now, and coupled with the ever-growing demand for better shows, the floor has raised.

“With everything we’re doing with these cameras, you’re basically trying to produce a live concert film for the livestream audience,” he says. “The discrepancy between what a livestream looked like and what a well-produced concert film looked like after it was edited are starting to converge, where the expectations for the former are to look like the latter.”

Simon said Blackpink was his company’s first Coachella Main Stage act since the pandemic ended, adding that “the conversation about the live stream was something we were thinking about from the moment we stepped into rehearsals, versus previous main stage acts we’ve done in the past, where we were cognizant of it, but we weren’t necessarily looking at camera blocking as early in the process.”

As these highest-caliber shows continue to grow in ambition, and as Couchella keeps getting better, it’s hard to imagine the trend slows down next year.

“If you’re performing on stage in Indio, there are people watching in India,” Lewis says. “People are watching it everywhere. That has a direct impact on artists’ ability to gain fans, connect, stream, tour into all those places around the world that might’ve been harder to reach before.”