Image via Noise Pop Festival
Pranav Trewn finds peace in his vinyl record collection.
I was in the standby line for the planetarium show. I had already spent some time with the manta rays and explored the wildlife exhibits. This was the last bit of programming I had time for before needing to make my way to the center atrium. The illustrious DaM-FunK was about to touch down for his headlining slot, and I didn’t want to miss too much of his squelchy vinyl grooves. After a dizzying journey through Chile’s world-class telescopes all the way to the outer edges of the observable universe, I made it just in time to watch the Stones Throw legend light up the California Academy of Sciences.
This was the opening night of Noise Pop, San Francisco’s annual citywide celebration of its independent artists and venues. Taking place officially over a ten-day stretch (but informally spanning almost a full month of associated programming), the event brings out the best of the Bay Area’s homegrown DJs, singer-songwriters, shoegazers, soft rockers, and punk outfits and fits them onto bills with touring stars to perform in one-of-a-kind spaces. In spite of all else that has transformed in San Francisco, these venues remain as stunning as ever.
This year, that means seeing St. Vincent and Benjamin Gibbard do rare solo shows at the Episcopal Grace Cathedral, Oakland favorite Fantastic Negrito screen his visual accompaniment to his fifth album White Jesus Black Problems at the 4-Star Theater, American Football do an underplay at Great American Music Hall celebrating the anniversary of their debut album, Earl Sweatshirt performing two distinct sets on back-to-back nights, and local all-stars the Red Room Orchestra give a tribute to the recently passed David Lynch. That’s in addition to a slate of more traditional but no less exceptionally curated club shows, including Danny Brown, DIIV, Cymande, Glixen, and Soccer Mommy. All in all, there will be more than 160 artists performing for over 80 events across 25 or so of the city’s venues (you can never be sure of the exact figures because Noise Pop continues adding events to their roster up until the last possible day).
Noise Pop, now in its 32nd year, has always set itself apart from other festivals descending upon the Bay Area, both in its unwavering dedication to the Bay’s rich musical history and the way in which it sprawls out across the city. There is no expensive three-week build of outdoor stages that will immediately be taken down after three days, nor are the promoters coveting tens of thousands to gorge upon one fenced-off section of grass or concrete.
Noise Pop leverages San Francisco’s existing infrastructure – from legendary venues of note like the Fillmore and Great American Music Hall down to the museums, churches, and bars that rarely host this type of musical programming – and packs each out with an ensemble of artists that have a genuine connection to the city they are performing in.
“Somebody’s gotta be there to represent that local music scene,” Noise Pop CEO Michelle Swing explained. “It’s tough these days for artists, especially local artists who are just trying to get established and grow their career and get visibility in the scene. There aren’t a ton of opportunities given the changing landscape of the music business and the consolidation of concert promoters on a national and global scale.”
“The mission of this festival has always been to be able to support as many local artists as possible,” Swing reasoned. “We’ll sometimes have three or four openers come on before a headliner to showcase that talent, and that focus on local means we’re not paying the mega-headliner kinds of costs you would at a major music festival.” These savings accrue not just on the programming side, but with production costs as well.
“When you’re doing a traditional festival outdoors and you’re building a stage or multiple stages, the costs of doing that are far greater than for one like ours where we’re operating in venues,” Swing said. “Especially post pandemic, costs across the board from talent to labor to infrastructure, production, all of it has just skyrocketed. And so doing a festival in this format allows us to really control those costs because we don’t have all those side operations and production elements.”
Jordan Kurland, Noise Pop’s co-founder who also runs the artist management company Brilliant Corners, echoed the idea that Noise Pop is more inoculated from the economic pressures that have squeezed their larger peers. “We’re just running a different race,” he reasoned. “Our deal resembles any that an artist would get for a small club. But guarantees are going up for bands that can draw at large festivals, and then that’s driving up festival prices. And then the cost of labor, the cost of goods, and the cost of everything that’s going up – you gotta make that money somewhere, right?”
Kurland understands the dichotomy between models better than most, having put on the locally beloved two-day Treasure Island Music Festival for 11 years before it went dormant due to rising costs in 2018 (before the even greater shock post-COVID). While Noise Pop is facing fewer new challenges, they are always operating within the slim margins and risk environment that any local indie promoter does.
“I’m not going to lie and say Noise Pop is like this amazing business venture, because it’s really not,” Kurland qualified. “We just cover our expenses in order to keep doing this festival every year. I used to joke that it’s like the worst paid hobby of all time.”
Both Kurland and Swing approach the festival as more about creating value for their community than for the company. “We really see ourselves as being the champion of the local Bay Area music scene and making sure that we create opportunities for those artists to be promoted, to be heard, and have opportunities to play,” Swing said. “And I think that the community really appreciates that.”
Their programming reflects this focus on possibility over profit. “The type of shows that we do, it really is based on, can we book this?” Kurland explained. “St. Vincent needs X amount of dollars to play Grace Cathedral. This is what we need to charge for our tickets. Does it make sense?”
“Sure, why not?” is a good way to describe the philosophy,” Michelle laughed. “The guardrail that we try to have is the 10 day window starting on a Thursday through the beginning of March. But the thing is that we’re collaborating with so many different people. We have different organizations and music collectives and venues that come to us and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got this great thing that I think would be perfect for Noise Pop. What do you think about adding it to the festival?’ We’re like, ‘Yeah, that would be perfect for the festival. Let’s do it.’” This willingness to adapt their formatting is what led the festival to grow in its inaugural year as a one night, $5, five band affair at the Independent (back when it was called the Kennel Club) into the multi-genre, mixed medium behemoth it is now.
Artists appreciate the unique culture Noise Pop cultivates, which helps the promoters to secure novel programming other cities don’t get on a musician’s tour. “Folks get really excited to work with us because we give them opportunities to create their own kind of experience in Noise Pop,” Swing said. “And I think that the industry is definitely moving in a more artist focused, artist first structure where they are really the ones curating the experiences.”
Swing sees that development as one of the few positive outcomes coming out of the pandemic. Artists need to tour, especially in an environment in which there are few other ways to earn a living, and the industry is more open to letting them try new formats to bring folks out. It’s maybe the only element of the business getting more artist friendly.
“This idea that the only way for artists to make money is touring, that really is the case for a lot of artists,” Kurland said. “It’s not the case for the big pop artists like Beyonce, or if you have a side hustle scoring films or TV shows or making a lot of money licensing. But our roster of management clients, whether it’s Death Cab or Soccer Mommy or a younger band like Pool Kids, the money is coming from touring. The streaming economy just does not benefit independent rock bands.”
But touring has also rarely been harder for these artists. “If the cost of living is going up, a band is going to need to make a little bit more money. There are costs consumers aren’t going to think of that are squeezing the band and taking away from the bottom line,” Kurland suggested. “Bus rentals or van rentals cost more, it can be more money in gas, it can be higher prices if you go buy a sandwich at a gas station – just all these things accumulate.”
“Everything’s more expensive than it was pre-COVID, and it’s not getting cheaper,” Kurland sighed. San Francisco music fans have felt this impact across venues over the years, from a 2800 seat theater like the Fox up to summer spectacles hosting tens of thousands at Oracle Park. Looking at my own receipts for the former through the years, I paid $41.85 per ticket after fees for an average show in 2013. In 2019, that went up to $56.55. Dynamic pricing has made getting an average for 2025 less generalizable, but a non sold-out Tobe Nwigwe show next month is going for $66.75 at face.
Kurland qualified that while, “It’s unfortunate that that gets passed on, I don’t think it is gouging. It’s just how it is at the moment, and hopefully that changes. It’s an ecosystem, like any other ecosystem, and everyone’s just trying to make it work right now.”
The City of San Francisco has a role to play in the health of that ecosystem. Last year’s major investments in the live arts was intended to spur economic activity for arts and local businesses, and Noise Pop was a core partner in the publicly-funded programming. Jordan sees that public-private partnership as a powerful development for his industry, and the spirit of it is continuing right now for SF Music Week, happening concurrently with Noise Pop and brought on with grants from the City’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development.
“I’ve been advocating for a long time for the Bay Area music community to get more attention and more support from City Hall – I don’t feel like it’s really been there,” Kurland shared. “The city does a good job supporting the societal arts, you know the opera, SF jazz, the symphony, etc. But there isn’t really an infrastructure or recognition for people working on more at the grassroots level of the industry and music scene. Whether that’s bands or managers or promoters.” He sees SF Music Week as “a celebration of that music community and an opportunity for people to learn more about it.”
“We got hired to do this pretty late, on a very small budget, so we’re trying to bootstrap it and kind of create a really good test case for doing this again in the future. And hopefully City Hall wants to expand it,” he continued. “And I think we’re in a good place with that. So I’m really, really excited about the programming there and what we’ve been able to pull together in a short period of time.” That programming includes happy hours and mixers, private tours of cultural establishments, creative practice workshops, pop-up performances, and a full-day “summit” on Friday at the Swedish American Hall with a keynote by East Bay rapper-producer P-Lo.
This push by the city is amplifying the mission Noise Pop has long been leading without it. The festival is just one of Noise Pop Industries’ year-round offerings; they also put on the Mill Valley Music Festival and 20th Street Block Party and produce shows for over two dozen venues across the bay. Their impact on independent music culture for residents is vast, particularly given the relative scale of their team.
“We’re just a small club festival, and we have to run everything really close to the bone. We have to be really smart about the deals we make, and we have a really incredible, talented staff that works for less money than they should to make this festival happen,” Kurland explained. “And I think you find that this is the case for a lot of small independent festivals, here or anywhere. There’s just a few people who actually get paid to do this, and then we figure out how to make it work. It really is a labor of love, and having been involved in this for so long, I think it’s a very critical time for the arts in San Francisco that we keep doing it.”
Live music has played an instrumental role in creating, growing, and reviving San Francisco throughout its history. The question now is if San Francisco will hold up its end of the deal and continue to support live music?
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