Missing Coachella? Tune into digital music festival Room Service this weekend

Room Service, a three-day music festival, will be streaming live on YouTube for free this weekend and collecting donations for the charities Sweet Relief and Feeding America.

Sophie Flay Image
Friday, April 24, 2020
Missing Coachella? Tune into digital music festival Room Service this weekend
Room Service, a three-day music festival, will be streaming live on YouTube for free this weekend and collecting donations for the charities Sweet Relief and Feeding America.

While festivals like Coachella and Stagecoach have been postponed due to the coronavirus, one local media group is bringing festival season straight to your home this weekend with a digital festival called Room Service.

Room Service is a three-day digital festival with recorded sets from more than 50 artists, including Chromeo, Alec Benjamin, and Chelsea Cutler.

Room Service is free but will be collecting donations for the charities Sweet Relief and Feeding America.

Blake Coppelson, founder of the media group Proximity, created a digital music festival earlier this month too which streamed free on YouTube called Digital Mirage.

The festival brought in more than one million unique attendees and raised $300,000 for a charity called Sweet Relief, a nonprofit for artists in need.

"They help allocate funds for musicians or anybody in the music industry who just needs financial assistance because of any disabilities or them actually being put out of work due to a pandemic, because this entire side of the industry that can't work is a result of closed down venues and no concerts so we're trying to help them out," Coppelson said.

After seeing the success of the first digital festival, others wanted to get involved.

"As soon as we saw how successful that one was, we just wanted to be a part and give back in whatever way we could. A lot of artists are struggling right now so it seemed like a really important initiative for us to be able to help out with," said Andrew Fedyk, who is a DJ in the group Loud Luxury.

Many artists rely on concerts and shows as consistent income.

"The problem is if you're an artist, the money that comes from people listening your music playing and streaming it, buying it, that'll take very long to collect sometimes two to three years. So most people day-to-day what you live off is the money that you get from playing shows. So not having that, it's really difficult," Fedyk said.

While there is no cost to watch, one can donate to the web stream and tune into the festival this weekend at roomservicefest.com.