Why log a festival as one record instead of thirty separate gigs?

Two reasons. (1) It keeps your diary readable — thirty entries on the same date all from the same city is a lot of clutter. (2) It keeps your stats clean — your 'most-seen venue' shouldn't suddenly be Glastonbury just because you went one summer. Each act still counts as an individual artist appearance in your stats.

Can I share my festival lineup as a single card?

Yes — from the festival page, tap the share icon. Banded generates a card showing the festival name, your top picks, and which friends are also going. Particularly popular in the days before a big festival weekend.

What if I miss some of the acts I planned to see?

Easy — when you log the festival afterwards, only add the acts you actually caught. The 'planned to see' list and the 'actually saw' list are independent, so missed sets don't pollute your stats.

Does this work for one-day festivals too?

Yes. Single-day festivals (All Points East, Field Day, etc.) and multi-day festivals (Glastonbury, Primavera) use the same festival entity. The number of days is a property of the festival record.

How to plan a festival with friends on Banded

A festival isn’t really a “gig” — it’s twenty gigs in a weekend, plus the queues, plus the people you went with, plus the bit where you missed the band you most wanted to see because you were ordering food.

Banded handles festivals as a structured entity: one parent festival record, with multiple acts attached. Here’s how to use that for planning a festival with friends before you go, surviving it during, and remembering it properly after.

Before the festival: planning

Add it to your wishlist

Search for the festival in the Discover tab. Tap Wishlist. Two things happen:

The festival appears on your profile under “Upcoming”
Friends who follow you see it in their feed — they may also be going, which leads to step 2

Mark the acts you want to see

Open the festival page. The lineup is broken down by day and stage. Tap any act to mark them as a planned-to-see. These show on your festival “plan.”

This is where the planning starts paying off — friends going to the same festival can see each other’s plans, and clashes become obvious.

Compare with friends

On the festival page, tap Friends going. You’ll see:

Which of your followers are also attending
Which acts they’re planning to see
Where your plans overlap (great — you can watch together)
Where they clash (someone has to make a hard choice)

A surprising amount of festival planning happens in iMessage and WhatsApp groups. The point of this view is to make the data easier — not to replace those conversations.

During the festival: keeping notes

You don’t have to log each act in real time. Most people don’t — the festival is the wrong place for screen time. But there are two light-touch things worth doing:

Mark “going” on acts you actually catch as you go (one tap from the festival page). This becomes the basis of your post-festival log.
Take photos as you normally would. Your Photos library is the best memory aid when you write up the festival afterwards.

After the festival: logging it properly

The day after the festival ends, open Banded and go to the festival’s page. Tap Log festival. A pre-populated form appears with:

The festival name and dates
A list of every act you marked “going” during the festival, ticked by default
Empty slots for acts you saw but hadn’t pre-marked

Untick the acts you missed. Add any you forgot to mark at the time. Then save.

Banded creates a single festival record in your diary with each saw-acts entry as a child. In your stats:

Each artist counts once towards “artists seen this year”
The festival counts once towards your festival count, not 30 gigs

This is the right structure because it lets you do queries like “who have I seen the most” without Glastonbury dominating the answer.

After you’ve logged it, the festival page has a share button. The generated card shows:

Festival name
Year
Your top three acts (highest-rated)
Your @username

Most people share this in the immediate days after the festival, while the energy’s still up. A few people wait and post it weeks later, often with a longer caption.

A few practical tips

Day passes: if you only went to one day of a multi-day festival, you can still log it as a festival record — just leave the days you didn’t attend empty.
Sets that overran: if a set spilled into another day (Glastonbury Pyramid Stage at midnight, etc.), log it under whichever date you were actually there.
Surprise acts / unannounced sets: log them. Banded supports adding acts to a festival record that aren’t in the upstream lineup, by typing the artist name and selecting from MusicBrainz.
The “I was too drunk to remember everything” case: only log what you’re sure of. A festival record with five acts you definitely saw is more useful than one with ten that you might have hallucinated.

Why festivals matter for the diary

A lot of someone’s best live music memories are festival memories — not because the sets were better, but because the context was richer. Logging festivals well (rather than as a mess of thirty single gigs) preserves that context, which is the whole point of keeping a gig diary at all.

If you need help with any specific festival’s data on Banded, email [email protected] — we maintain the festival database manually for the big ones and welcome additions.