How Kaitlyn McKnight Built Festiverse and Kept It Feeling Fan-Run
The Director of Community Management at Live Nation on building Festiverse, what makes festival fans a distinct community, and why the best fan spaces put faces to brands.
Kaitlyn McKnight didn’t set out to build a platform. In July 2022, she was hired to run a Discord server for two weeks during Lollapalooza. Discord had sponsored a stage, the sponsorship came with a lounge, and someone needed to build a community around it. Kaitlyn was that someone.
Then Lollapalooza ended…and nobody left.
Fans who had spent two weeks chatting online, then met each other in person at the festival, just kept talking about more than the festival. Kaitlyn noticed, kept the server going, and slowly started adding more festivals.
What was supposed to be a one-month activation is now Festiverse, Live Nation's official music festival fan engagement platform spanning more than 20 festivals, including Governor’s Ball, Bonnaroo, Austin City Limits, and Lollapalooza. It’s an app, an always-on community, and a content engine that keeps festival fans engaged year-round, from lineup speculation season all the way through the encore.
Below, Kaitlyn McKnight, Director of Community Management at Live Nation, talks about how festival fans connect, why the community kept going when it was never supposed to, and how she’s kept it feeling genuinely fan-run even as the platform has grown.
You’ve been building Festiverse since 2022. What were you noticing about how festival fans were connecting, or not connecting, that informed creating this project?
Long story short, the Festiverse Discord was created in July 2022 for Lollapalooza. Funnily enough, it started out as a sponsorship. Discord had sponsored a stage at Lolla that came with a lounge, and with the sponsorship they wanted to spin up a Discord server. I had been doing some social media consulting with C3, who runs Lollapalooza — they’re the actual team that puts on the events — and they were looking for someone that knew what Discord was.
It was literally only supposed to be a short sponsorship thing — run it for two weeks, get everyone really excited. The community in Discord had access to the lounge, so that was the really big perk of being part of it. We all chatted online for those two weeks together. I was able to get the booker of Lollapalooza, Huston, in for an ask me anything (AMA). It was really the first time a lot of community members had direct access to ask the booker of one of their favorite festivals behind-the-scenes questions.
That first two weeks was really exciting. Then actual Lollapalooza happened — we’re in the lounge, and now you’re meeting these people that you’ve been chatting with for the last two weeks. It just really cemented a lot of friendships. People who were going for their first time or literally their 14th time were bonded through this community in a new, really exciting way.
It was fully expected that Lollapalooza would happen and then things would naturally get quiet because the event was over. But everyone was just still chatting and so excited — they were like, what show are you going to next? I started noticing everyone just really wanted to talk to each other about the next concert or festival, or new music. That gave way to the idea of changing it from the Lolla Discord server and renaming it, and then adding all of our other festivals into this one community. We slowly started adding our bigger festivals, and now we’re at 20-something C3 Live Nation festivals — from smaller ones like High Water in Charleston all the way up to Bonnaroo, ACL, and Lolla.
It naturally became this thing because we listened to the community craving conversation with each other. It was supposed to be a one-month fun thing, and now we’re here almost four years later.
Festiverse is backed by Live Nation, but the community feels genuinely fan-run — like a group chat where people actually say what they think. How do you build and maintain that kind of trust when there’s a corporate structure behind it?
I’m just so biased toward Discord. You’re in this one big group chat. So many social media platforms are just a one-way chat, like “here’s information you need.” There’s no discourse back and forth. Here, I can relay information about what’s going on at the festival and then we can have a chat back and forth.
From day one I never wanted to talk as Lollapalooza. I was there to be a helper, and to answer questions about the Discord lounge or the festival and help the community. No one really wants to talk to a brand. They want to talk to a face. That’s why I bring in the bookers, marketing managers, people actually running these festivals, the people putting on the activations — they’re curious what fans think about brands or different things that happened on site. Just being that in-between, putting faces to your favorite festival or brand, makes all the difference.
Festival fandom feels pretty distinct from artist fandom. How do you think about what makes festival fans a specific kind of community?
It isn’t just the weekend of the festival. If you’re a big fan of your festival, it starts months before — when the lineup drops. But we have the super fans of all superfans in this community. They’re tracking tours even before the lineup drops, speculating who could be the headliners, figuring out who’s already off the table because their routing doesn’t make sense. There’s just so much speculation, and it does this beautiful crossover where someone who only goes to Lollapalooza starts thinking about other festivals too.
From the outside you think, oh, just a four-day weekend. No, there’s so much speculation and hype building all the way up until lineup drops, then the schedule, and it’s just this really extended time. With the AMAs, I try to bring in artists from the lineup to get people excited, learn about the artists, and really get them talking. Sometimes they become such a fan of that artist that they go buy a ticket to their tour after the festival. There’s really no downtime or off season. There’s a lot of things happening all the time.
A lot of people go to festivals solo or as first-timers. How does having a community like Festiverse change that experience before they ever step foot on the ground?
It can definitely be intimidating going to a new festival, especially solo. I think Reddit is an amazing place to ask those questions, but Discord can be even more powerful because you can get a question answered immediately and it can turn into a conversation.
Since we started having all these festivals in one place, I’ve realized there are people in the community who are more experts than me at certain festivals. So from day one I really entrusted them — hey, if you’ve been going, you’re an expert of your festival, I want you to speak up. There’s an “ask an expert” forum underneath each festival, and I really want our people to jump in and welcome the new people, because they all understand what it was like going for the first time.
So many people come in, ask their question, and are like, oh my gosh, y’all are so nice, this relieved so much nervousness and anxiety for me. And then, we have a meetup every day. I understand that can also be a lot, because walking up to a group of 50, 100, sometimes 200 people on site can also be nerve-wracking. So I make sure I’m greeting every single person, we have a free swag item each year, I’m introducing myself and asking what band they’re interested in and connecting them with someone else who wants to see the same thing. I try to lead by example, and our community members are often the first to answer questions. I really instill in everyone that you’ve gotta remember your first time — everyone’s nervous. I think they really do a good job at carrying the torch of what Festiverse is.
Have you noticed how different festivals attract noticeably different community energy, or does it blend together once fans are in the same space?
Every festival kind of has its own personality. They might align with the feeling of the festival — Shaky Knees is more rock, Bonnaroo is very camping and jam band and EDM. You can fit those personalities, but festival fans — they love the experience. Even though they’re excited for certain artists on the lineup, they talk about the weekend. They talk about going back and camping on the farm at Bonnaroo, or being in Grant Park and seeing the skyline, or what they’re going to eat. They long for the weekend and the feeling of escapism each year.
They’re also so open to any kind of artist. They want to be there when gates open. They’re interested in who was booked at the 1 p.m. slot and whether that person is going to blow up later. If you asked people years ago what kind of music they like, most would say R&B or pop or whatever. Festival fans are open to everything — they will listen to every new album that comes out every New Music Friday. They love discovery, they love all types of genres. That’s what you get at these all-genre festivals, like Bonnaroo or Lolla. They long for that experience on-site and are very open to new artists and side quests while they’re there.
You’ve talked about wanting fans to feel like they’re co-creating the space, not just joining another group. What does that actually look like in practice, and how do you protect that as the platform scales?
I give everyone the ability to bring ideas. We started very festival-focused, and then I just started noticing people wanted to chat about new albums coming out every Friday. There was one member, Campbell, who would make a list of every album or single coming out Thursday night. I posted in the chat and asked, hey, should we have our own New Music Friday channel? Do we want a more tour-focused channel? We have a channel where you can come up with ideas.
We never really had location-based channels, but I started seeing that people were going to shows all the time and wanted to find a friend to go with. Those were all community suggestions — let’s have an NYC chat, a Chicago chat, a California one. Some of the Gov Ball folks, who are a lot of New York locals, would just chat about events that weren’t even festivals or concerts. So those were all suggestions from the community.
I just give them the ability to see where conversations are going and say, all right, let’s make a whole dedicated space for that. They know they can always suggest things, and if they see something isn’t working, we talk about honest feedback. This is their home. This is where they’re spending hours of their days sometimes. I want everyone to be excited to come in and have their channels and their chats.
You can follow Festiverse on Instagram, TikTok, and Discord, or download the app here.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.