LCD may have become (slightly) more streamed (not more popular or acclaimed in other respects) due to the advantage of being selected as festival headliners last year. Hey, if I see an act is headlining a festival, I'll start to think of them as popular, and I'll feel like I should know their music. If Solange had received that undeserved boost (a case can be made, that neither artist quite has the mass popularity for headliner status- but the case is much harder to make that LCD deserves that status) then she would have more streams.

See you're using circular reasoning. I said the reason LCD got selected as a festival headliner, ten years after their prime (when, even at that time, they were much less popular and somewhat less critically acclaimed than Solange now) is largely because of race and race-based prejudices against certain genres. You're then showing me streaming figures that postdate LCD's unearned headliner status, and trying to tell me that these figures represent greater popularity. Find a streaming figure from before LCD headlined those festivals. Find a number that shows how they had earned the popularity or acclaim to be headliners.

And to make it clear, these artists are not in a direct competition for some certain festival. I'm not saying Solange, last year before she released an album, should have headlined Coachella or all those other festivals LCD headlined. Absolutely not. I'm looking at the festival scene this year, where Solange, even after her album's commercial and critical success, is relegated to the second line of festivals like Wayhome (which isn't even as big as Coachella) and asking why LCD were granted headliner status at their festivals last year (and still this year) while Solange has not been considered a headliner.

I'm not talking about indie and rock-focused festivals btw. It makes total sense if LCD headlines such festivals, because they're one of the largest acts within alternative/indie/whatever rock. Nor am I angry if they headline an NYC festival, due to hometown advantage. I know they're disproportionately popular in their home city and they make songs about it, and that's cool. I would want to see a local act headlining a local festival too, even if it meant cutting corners by elevating an act that isn't really worthy of headliner status at a national or global level.

Solange has absolutely headlined R&B festivals too, and events in New Orleans where she lives. What I'm referring to is large, multi-genre, mostly commercially-focused pop music festivals in other cities than their hometowns. Events like Coachella or Wayhome. LCD regularly headline these events. Solange does not. That's the issue. Why is LCD considered big enough to headline Coachella, while Solange can't headline a festival near Toronto?

LCD is better than many artists who headline those events (so is Solange ofc) but Grimes is better than Adele, Coldplay and Muse, and it doesn't mean Grimes headlined Glastonbury. I'm a Grimes stan and I don't think Grimes is a Glastonbury or Coachella level headliner. She doesn't have quite the popularity to back it up, even if I hope she may one day get there. (Muse doesn't either, in America, but they- and rock in general- are much bigger in the UK.) I won't try to argue Grimes should have headlined Coachella. But when an act as small as LCD does, the question arises: why not? LCD was a disastrously tiny headliner.

A good rule of thumb is that if the average person has never heard of the musical act, they are not a headliner. Everyone who cares about any kind of music has heard of Solange. LCD is an act the average person had never heard of even in their musical heyday, let alone a decade past their prime. I'm not saying it's good that the average person doesn't know them, or that the reasons everyone has heard of Solange are entirely (or even mostly) related to her music, but you know it's true LCD are unknown to the gp. Let's be real, if anyone irl talks about All My Friends, they usually mean the Snakehips feat. Tinashe song. And All My Friends is the only song by LCD that even comes close to being a minor "hit," a status owed solely to critical acclaim (of which it received less than Solange songs anyway) because it never charted at all on the Hot 100 (unlike Solange, who has charted, although not high).

Headliners are supposed to be selected based on a combination of commercial popularity and reputation/fame and wide crossover appeal. It's a commercial decision, absolutely, and LCD was a botched choice of headliner- reducing the attendance at festivals they headlined, and meeting with poor reception from audiences- even though they are a better band than some who are regular headliners, they just lack wide appeal.