How to find out which DJs played your track at a festival

One festival weekend can put your track in front of more people than a month of club nights. It is also harder to follow: dozens of stages, hundreds of DJs, thousands of phones, and footage that keeps appearing for weeks. Here is where festival plays show up, when to look, and what to search for.

It is worth the effort. A festival play by a DJ who fits your sound is one of the first things a label, a booker or a journalist will ask about, and the footage tends to travel further than a club clip.

Before the weekend: know who plays where

• Get the timetable from the festival’s app or website: which DJs on your send list play, on which day, on which stage, at what time.
• Note the stage hosts. Labels, promoters and radio stations that host a stage often post their own clips and recaps.
• Note the festival’s hashtags and its location tag.
• Start with your send list. The DJs you sent the track to are the most likely to play it. If the track is out, others may play it too.

If you want your track in festival sets, it has to reach DJs well before the season. Many DJs build festival sets around tracks that have already worked for them in clubs, so a promo sent the week before is often too late.

Where festival footage shows up

• Official streams and set recordings. Some festivals stream or record selected stages and publish full sets on their own channels or a partner’s, sometimes weeks later. A full set with a timestamp is the strongest evidence there is.
• The DJ’s own posts. Many DJs post a reel or a carousel a day or two after a festival set.
• Crowd clips. People tag the DJ, the festival or the location. Check the DJ’s Tagged tab, the festival’s location page and its hashtag.
• The festival’s own account. Short clips from each stage during the weekend, recap posts afterwards.
• Stage hosts. A label or promoter hosting a stage usually posts its own highlights from it.
• Aftermovies. They arrive weeks later. The music is often cut, but a few seconds of a set can still be your track.
• Radio shows. DJs often include a festival recording or highlights in their next show.
• Tracklist sites such as 1001Tracklists, for bigger sets. An unreleased track shows as “ID – ID”, and the comments may ask about it.

When to look

What to search

• The DJ’s name with the festival’s name and the year, on video and audio platforms.
• The festival’s hashtag, together with the stage name.
• The festival’s location page, scrolled back to the right days.
• The comments under clips from the DJs’ sets, for “ID?”.
• Tracklist pages for those DJs’ sets at the festival.

Festival sets are long. When a full recording appears, jump first to the moments where the tracklist shows an ID, or where the comments ask about one, before you listen from start to finish.

When a clip doesn’t say who was playing

Crowd clips often tag the festival but not the DJ. To work out who was on:

• Look at the stage in the clip: its design, the screens, a stage name on the LED wall. Match it to the festival map.
• Check when it was posted, or how long ago a story went up, against the timetable for that stage.
• Look for other clips of the same moment on the location page and the hashtag. One of them often names the DJ.
• Ask the person who posted it, politely. Fans usually know who they were dancing to.

Until you know who it was, an unnamed play is a lead, not support. Keep it in your notes, not on your support sheet.

Make sure it’s your track

Festival audio is hard to judge: a huge sound system, wind on the microphone, thousands of people singing. Listen with headphones for the most distinctive part of your track, compare it with your own file at the same point, and don’t trust a caption on its own. Check the clip really is from the festival, not a club gig the same week: the stage, the lighting and the date usually tell you. Our guide on knowing if a DJ played your track has the full checklist.

Save it, credit it, use it

• Save the link, the second (or the minute of a full set), the DJ, the festival, the stage, the day and who posted it.
• Share the original post. To reuse a fan’s clip, ask them and credit them; for the festival’s official footage, ask the festival.
• Add it to your support sheet. A festival play by a DJ who fits a label’s sound is one to lead a pitch with.

For the hours after a big festival play, see what to do when a big DJ plays your track. For the Instagram side of the search in more detail, see finding Instagram videos of DJs playing your music.