Country music fans have come to accept that the Stagecoach Festival in the California desert each late April will not be livestreamed in the same way that Coachella is from the same location in the preceding weeks. But that changes with the 2022 edition. The festival announced that it has hooked up with YouTube for three nights of live programming this weekend, including webcasts of the headlining sets by Thomas Rhett on Friday night, Carrie Underwood on Saturday and Luke Combs on Sunday.
Other key attractions set to have their shows go out via YouTube are Maren Morris, Brandi Carlile, Brothers Osborne, Cody Johnson, Margo Price, Yola, Midland, the Black Crowes and Lainey Wilson.
This marks the first time since Stagecoach began in 2007 that there has been a livestream involving all the headliners and most of the major acts. For several years in the 2010s, Yahoo had a deal to stream performances by a limited number of artists. In 2019, the last year the festival took place, there was no livestreaming at all.
The online action will go late into the night all three nights, as three late-night sets that are scheduled to begin circa 11 PT after the headliners are done will be part of the livestream. Breland is the after-hours artist on Friday night, followed by Orville Peck on Saturday and Diplo late Sunday.
The YouTube livestreams will have three hosts, all from the ranks of country music’s up-and-comers — Breland on Friday, Reyna Roberts on Saturday and Hailey Whitters Sunday.
YouTube Premium members are being promised a set of exclusive “pre-parties” with Underwood, Brothers Osborne, Johnson and Midland.
The festival’s YouTube viewing schedule has yet to be announced, although a good idea of when performers might appear online can be garnered from a list of the official live set times, which is up here. The streaming will begin at 3:30 p.m. PT on Stagecoach’s channel, which can be found here.
Stagecoach has far fewer stages than Coachella, so it makes sense that the YouTube livestreams will take place on one channel, versus the three that broadcast from Coachella the last two weekends. Having a single channel does mean, though, that not every name act on the bill this coming weekend will be livestreamed. There’s still an advantage to showing up in the flesh, as among the live acts not mentioned in the initial streaming announcement are Smokey Robinson, Jordan Davis, Lee Brice, Tanya Tucker, Ingrid Andress, the Marcus King Band, Ryan Hurd, Rhiannon Giddens and Mitchell Tenpenny.
