Megan Perez-Carpenter's Fight to Rewire How Festivals Book Their Lineups

Inside the often opaque world of festival curation, few conversations are as overdue as the one Megan Perez-Carpenter has been quietly forcing for years. As a key figure at The DoLab — the creative collective responsible for one of Coachella's most beloved stages and the standalone Lightning in a Bottle festival — Perez-Carpenter has turned equitable booking from an abstract talking point into an operational reality.

The Problem With How Lineups Get Built

Festival lineups have historically been shaped by a combination of agent relationships, algorithmic streaming data, and the personal tastes of a small group of decision-makers — most of whom share similar backgrounds. The result is a well-documented pattern: stages dominated by male artists, with women and non-binary performers concentrated in early afternoon slots or secondary stages.

Perez-Carpenter's approach challenges this at the structural level. Rather than treating diversity as a quota to satisfy after the "real" booking is done, she has worked to integrate equitable thinking into the earliest stages of lineup development — before offers go out, before slots are assigned, before the poster is designed.

The DoLab as a Testing Ground

The DoLab's stage at Coachella has long stood apart from the main festival's booking logic. Its curatorial independence has allowed Perez-Carpenter and her collaborators to experiment with lineups that reflect a broader cross-section of the electronic music world — championing artists who might never appear on the Sahara or Outdoor Theatre stages.

Lightning in a Bottle, the Northern California camping festival The DoLab produces independently, has served as an even more expansive canvas. With a programming philosophy that blends electronic music, wellness, and art, the event has become a proving ground for the kind of intentional curation Perez-Carpenter advocates.

What Equitable Booking Actually Looks Like in Practice

• Expanding the talent pipeline beyond standard agency rosters to include artists with smaller but engaged followings
• Evaluating booking decisions against demographic data before offers are finalized
• Paying attention to slot placement, not just presence on a lineup — a 2pm Thursday slot and a Saturday night headliner are not equivalent opportunities
• Building longer-term relationships with emerging artists rather than booking them once and moving on

Why This Matters Beyond the Poster

The downstream effects of who gets booked — and where — extend well beyond a single festival weekend. Festival appearances drive streaming numbers, agency leverage, booking fees, and media coverage. Artists who consistently get buried in small-stage afternoon slots rarely accumulate the momentum needed to break through. Conversely, a well-placed set at a high-profile event can redefine a career.

Perez-Carpenter's work acknowledges this ecosystem effect. Equitable booking, in her framework, is not charity — it is a correction for structural advantages that have historically benefited a narrow slice of the artist pool.

The Broader Industry Response

The conversation Perez-Carpenter is part of has gained traction across the festival industry, with organizations like Keychange and initiatives from individual promoters pushing for measurable gender balance commitments. But commitments and execution remain two different things, and the gap between a festival's stated values and its actual lineup is still wide at many events.

What distinguishes The DoLab's approach is that it operates at the implementation layer — not just the policy layer. The question is whether larger festivals, with more complex stakeholder structures and bigger financial stakes, are willing to follow.