World’s first vinyl-focused festival to launch next year
The world’s first festival designed purely for vinyl enthusiasts is set to launch next year.
From 29th September to 1st October 2023, the inaugural Haarlem Vinyl Festival (HVF) will take over the Dutch city for a series of arts, culture and music events and pop-ups.
Co-founded by Richard Zijlma, who spent 20 years as the director of Amsterdam Dance Event, the festival’s team has said it will “embrace all different genres of music” across its four-day run. Spanning electronic, pop, hip-hop and beyond, 100 artists will perform across the weekend to an anticipated audience of 15,000.
“We all know the iconic Frankfurt Buchmesse and the Cannes Film Festival,” said Zijlma. “In Haarlem we aim to create a leading vinyl festival that attracts visitors from all around the globe looking to immerse in vinyl culture. The city of Haarlem is the home base for a wide range of artists, venues and Record Industry, one of the world’s biggest vinyl pressing plants responsible for over 11 million records a year.”
As well as its extensive day and night music program, HVW will feature an art program, listening sessions, music talks, exclusive releases and a large record fair. Ticket info will be announced via the HVW website soon.
The announcement of the festival comes a month after it was revealed that US vinyl sales rose by 22% in the first half of 2022. Earlier in the month, the UK’s Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) announced that vinyl had overtaken PlayStation games at the UK’s second best-selling physical entertainment format.
Glasgow was recently revealed to be the vinyl-collecting capital of the UK, with 32% of the UK’s vinyl collectors living in the city.
