As music festivals big and small have become more enmeshed in the fabric of the concert business, the way they are booked has evolved. Increasingly, agencies have created dedicated roles or teams to liaise between them and talent buyers for mutually beneficial outcomes. These festival specialists can bring consolidated asks to festivals that encompass large swaths of rosters — and they can also act as advocates for said festivals with agency talent.
To kick off 2026, Ground Control Touring, one of music’s pre-eminent indie agencies, has created such a position to help it bolster its presence throughout the festival world. The agency’s new head of festivals, Keith Richards (no, not that one!), hopes to continue cementing its roster of more than 600 — led by esteemed indie-rockers including Waxahatchee, Japanese Breakfast, Bright Eyes, Kurt Vile, and Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo — on bills of all sizes.
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“The value of a festival agent has increased,” Richards says. “While these festival buyers have deep-seated, long-standing relationships with all of these RAs [responsible agents], it has proved useful to them to have a one-stop shop. The RAs will never not call those festivals to advocate for their artists. But it is nice for a lot of these festivals to have somebody that is coming from a place of, the only bias is for the agency and not for a specific roster [client].”
Richards has held various roles in the live sector since the early ’10s, but he found his calling in festivals about a decade ago, when he joined Paradigm (now Wasserman) and began leading its festival department. After losing his job there early in the pandemic, Richards landed at the livestreaming startup Mandolin (where, among other things, he facilitated a deal with Ground Control), then logged stints as a talent buyer at the Indianapolis-based Forty5 and in a festival-focused role at Reliant Talent Agency.
With Ground Control, Richards joins an agency on the rise, particularly in the festival space. Ground Control periodically leads its indie competition behind the big four agencies — Wasserman, CAA, WME and UTA — in terms of the number of artists it books on major bills; for this year’s Governors Ball, for instance, it ranks fifth in artist representation behind those four agencies, and its 5% isn’t far from the respective 7% figures posted by UTA and WME.
“This is a very festival-centric roster,” says Richards, who arrives at Ground Control alongside Joy Hubbard, its new festivals coordinator. “With a little bit more focused time and attention, you’re only going to see that grow exponentially with the ability of somebody to keep tabs with the festivals.”
Festival agents like Richards serve a dual role. They can bring talent buyers comprehensive lists of who on an agency’s roster is available to be booked for a given festival and may be a good fit. At the same time, they can make the case for festivals — especially smaller ones in secondary or tertiary markets — to agents and their clients who might otherwise dismiss such opportunities out of hand simply due to a lack of familiarity.
“A big part of this role is being a representative for the festival within the agency,” Richards says. “As much as my obvious alliance is with our agents and our artists, it also benefits the festival to feel like they have somebody internally that is advocating for the festival, that knows their festival, that is like, ‘Hey, I know that on paper, this slot doesn’t seem to make a ton of sense — but I’ve been there, and let me explain to you why this seems to be the best fit.’
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“A lot of agents with such massive rosters, it can turn transactional a lot of times, just because of how quick the pace of the industry is,” he continues, explaining that a festival specialist can “spend half an hour talking and not just pitching, but learning about the festival” with a buyer, and the serve as an information resource for peers at an agency.
In conversation, Richards has a voluminous knowledge of the festival market, and he sees his work as equally important whether he’s pitching major megafests like Coachella, Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza or smaller boutiques such as Ohio’s Nelsonville Music Festival, Massachusetts’ Green River Festival or Winnipeg Folk Festival. But regardless of size, he’s found that festival specialists can leverage their relationships to provide suggestions to talent buyers, who sometimes have strong booking preferences and may be reluctant to field unsolicited pitches. Especially given the sizes of the rosters he represents, Richards says he and buyers will periodically have “a shared sense of discovery” with an agency’s emergent clients.
If he does his job right, the promoter will leave a festival “feeling like they got a buy-low, sell-high [booking], which is harder with inflated prices post-pandemic,” while the artist will walk away pleased with their time slot, stage and compensation. “When you do hit it,” he says, “it’s a really cool experience.”
Ultimately, Richards sees festivals as essential to the music business — and the work of festival agents like himself as critical to the longevity of those festivals. “They’re essential to the lifeblood of artists’ careers and livelihoods,” he says, “so finding the way to continue to make sure that those things stick around, no matter how big or small, is an important responsibility.”
