It’s unclear when real-life concerts and music festivals are coming back as the coronavirus pandemic rolls on, but artists have provided alternative forms of entertainment for their fans. This has mostly taken the form of livestreams, whether they’re performing music or doing other things like guiding meditations. Virtual festivals have even popped up, but it turns out even those aren’t immune to pandemic-prompted postponements.
Block By Blockwest, a virtual festival set to take place in Minecraft this past weekend (on Saturday, April 25), was pushed back because the servers crashed an hour into the event, due to greater-than-expected viewership. The featival — boasting a lineup including Massive Attack, Idles, Pussy Riot, Cherry Glazerr, and more — has been pushed back to May 16.
One of the event’s organizers, DJ Sutera, wrote:
“Hi everyone,
We are sorry to do this but due to the massive demand, our servers were unable to accommodate the influx of attendees at this time.
We don’t want to compromise the experience of your performance or the attendee’s experience anywhere in the festival grounds. Because of this, BXBW will be postponed until May 16th in order to provide the experience that we promised.
Sorry for the inconvenience and we thank you all so much for your continued support.
As you can imagine, this adjustment will take some time. We will contact everyone early next week about the next steps.”
The festival was put on for coronavirus relief, and they had a donations goal of $5,000. The good news is that even though the first try at the event was only live for an hour, that goal was quickly met.
