Fyre Festival’s second act is showing all the signs of a nonstarter. Somehow, some way, somebody in entertainment still values the brand.
Fyre Festival — yes, that Fyre Festival — is going to be the face of a new streaming service on the other end of a frankly puzzling intellectual property deal.
Fyre Music Streaming, as it’s called, is the brainchild of Shawn Rech, who notably started another streaming platform called TruBlue alongside To Catch a Predator star Chris Hansen. Apparently not having his fill of controversy from the previous deal, Rech bought the two Fyre trademarks necessary to launch the new endeavor.
“Music networks are all just programming now and I have no interest in watching people slip on bananas,” Rech told Deadline. “It has nothing to do with music. I needed a big name that people would remember, even if it’s attached to infamy, so that’s why I bought these [trademarks] to start the streaming network.”
What, then, will Fyre Music Streaming entail? User-submitted content, mostly, with a video on-demand platform expected to cost around $3.99 as well as a free, ad-supported tier. Rech and company aim to focus on pop and hip-hop in the beginning, but they intend to expand into additional genres.
Fyre indeed remains a world-famous brand eight years after its disastrous 2017 debut stranded attendees on the Bahamian Exuma Islands with meager food and shelter. Festival cofounder Billy McFarland served four years in federal prison on wire fraud charges in connection with the incident, and the entire saga was immortalized in Netflix and Hulu documentaries.
McFarland still retains all ownership of the event brand itself, to be clear. He’s found himself back in the news on a near-daily basis after announcing Fyre Festival 2, only to change locations and then postpone altogether following pushback from Mexican authorities.
In spite of all this, is the Fyre brand still a valuable asset on some level? That remains to be seen — but based on how badly McFarland himself has failed to parlay the buzz into an enterprise with any semblance of legitimacy, we’re not holding our breath.
