IT’S IN THE EAR OF THE BEHOLDER

(setting ourselves up for endless discussions)

Friday, we’ll announce the first 40-ish artists of the Left of the Dial 2026 lineup. Things usually don’t go as planned, so maybe it’ll be one artist more or one less, but either way, it’s going to be a lot of new music to digest.

We know most of you have absolutely no problem doing so, but for the less trained music fan, we wanted to make the process of familiarising yourself with the lineup a bit easier. It isn’t exactly earth-shattering, and it’s not like it’s never been done before, but we decided to add a ‘For Fans Of’ section to each artist page.

You know: if it’s a straightforward punk rock band, we’ll add ‘For Fans Of The Ramones’, and you immediately know whether or not to put them on your must-see list. In theory, when it comes to ‘For Fans Of’, you’d only use well-known artists, so the majority of people will get the reference.

That didn’t seem too hard, but it has already caused such fierce debates at the Left of the Dial office that we can safely say it’s a lot more complicated than we initially thought. It all depends on your frame of reference, really, because apparently one person’s Nirvana is another person’s Paramore.

Still, we gave it our best shot in the hopes of making the lineup easier to navigate, especially for the less devoted festivalgoer with limited musical knowledge.

So probably not you.

But thanks for reading anyway. You’re our favourite person in the world, because you always pay attention to what we say and you make us feel like we’re not wasting our time writing these posts.

Big love,
The music-classifiers of Left of the Dial

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION SUCKS

(or whatever it is that caused the flood of awful applications) 

It’s only February and we’ve already received more artist applications than we did in the whole of last year. Which is great. We love hearing new music, and we’re extremely happy that so many wonderful musicians are finding their way to our festival.

We’re equally surprised, however, that hundreds of artists have applied who clearly have absolutely no idea what kind of festival Left of the Dial is. Some of them don’t even seem to know when or where the festival takes place, as they tell us they’re looking for “some fun gigs in Germany, late May”.

The application form requires you to fill in the reason why you feel we should pick you to play Left of the Dial. Again: at least half of the answers we read are well thought-through, sometimes even heart-warmingly enthusiastic.

But then there are also so many obviously AI-generated motivations, full of meaningless phrases like: “we always deliver a high-energy, professional live show that aligns with your festival's values”.
Which is especially surprising when written by a loungey jazz trio who’ve submitted an off-key sax cover version of a Mariah Carey song.

We have no idea why we’re being flooded with these useless applications. The only reason we can think of is that Left of the Dial has become way too easy to find on Google. So our initial plan was to find a way to de-optimize search engine results, just to keep the number of submissions manageable. But since we have no idea how to do that, we decided to change the application form a tiny bit instead.

And that brings us to the reason why we’re posting this…

If you already applied to play Left of the Dial: don’t worry, this isn’t about you. The mere fact that you’re reading this post shows a deep interest in the festival, and we’re sure that will shine through in your application. We promise each and every submission will still get the proper attention it deserves, so please don’t re-apply. It will only lead to us taking even longer to get back to you.

For those still planning to apply: we’ve added a couple of questions to the form about your favourite artists, and the artists you’re similar to. The catch is though, they have to be artists from previous Left of the Dial lineups. If you put “The Beatles”, we know you haven’t taken the time to read the instructions. And if you don’t put in the effort, why would we put in the effort to thoroughly listen to your application?

It may sound a bit harsh, but it’s simple: if you want to be part of the Left of the Dial community, we feel you should at least demonstrate you know something about that community.

As usual, we have no idea whether this is a smart move or just the dumbest thing ever. Could be both, really. We’ll keep you posted.

Big love,
The experimenters of Left of the Dial

WHY THE WORLD ISN’T ALWAYS FAIR TO PEOPLE WITH A BROAD TASTE IN MUSIC

 It hardly qualifies as frequent, but we’ve been asked the same question 4 times in the past few weeks, so we figured we might as well explain this publicly:

Why does Left of the Dial always take place on the same weekend as Amsterdam Dance Event?

For those of you who don’t know, Amsterdam Dance Event (or ADE) is the world’s largest and probably most influential showcase festival for electronic music. And yes, obviously, it’s in Amsterdam. So right there you have a number of reasons why we never even considered that Left of the Dial taking place on the same weekend as ADE would be the slightest problem for anyone.

We picked the ADE weekend for a very simple and practical reason: some of the venues we use for Left of the Dial usually put on electronic music, but since everybody who’s into that kind of music is in Amsterdam that specific weekend, they normally wouldn’t be open, giving us the opportunity to turn them into Left of the Dial stages for the weekend.

If there were hundreds of venues suitable for live music in Rotterdam, we could have just as easily picked any other weekend. But there aren’t, so we have to stick to the same October weekend, at least for the foreseeable future.

In all honesty, we never thought this would be a problem for anyone and that says a lot about how narrow-minded we actually are.

What were we thinking? Of course there are loads of people out there who enjoy electronic music just as much as whatever you want to call the type of music Left of the Dial puts on.

To the two people who were particularly vocal about how stupid they feel we are for having Left of the Dial on the same weekend as ADE, we apologize. We’re sorry we’re making you choose between two events for some lame logistical reasons, and we’re even more sorry that we underestimated your broad taste in festivals.

And to all the Left of the Dial fans who had never heard of ADE: we sincerely hope this post didn’t put any ideas in your head… don’t go buying tickets for ADE now, please just stay with us!

Big love,

The date planners of Left of the Dial

A CHANGE IS GONNA COME

(whether we like it or not) 

Rotterdam is always changing. For some reason, we’re very fond of constructing new buildings. And we’re pretty good at it, if we may say so ourselves; our city has some amazing architecture.

At even the smallest signs of decay, Rotterdam will take action and start renovating. In many ways, that’s a great thing. Especially after the bombing in the Second World War, it proved to be quite a useful quality.

But sometimes that drive to create bigger and better buildings gets in the way of something that’s most important to us: music.

Sometime next year, there are plans to tear down half a block of buildings to make room for some fancy skyscrapers. This would include the venues Roodkapje, Perron and Salsability.

The good news is that Roodkapje has found a new spot. The bad news is that their new location is too far away from the Butt Plug Gnome to be part of Left of the Dial. We’re not sure if, or where Perron and Salsability will be relocated.

As it goes with these things, it’s uncertain when the demolition of the block will start. At the moment, it looks like there’s an 80% chance we won’t be able to use those venues again.

This means we have to find some new venues, just to be sure. It’s a bit of a pain, but we’ll figure something out. Left of the Dial might be a bit different, but we’ll do everything we can to make sure it still feels the same.

The real problem is, of course, that there’s yet again less room for music.

Apparently, all those city developers filling the city with new buildings don’t have favourite bands. Or maybe they sometimes do go to concerts, but they simply care far more about money. And office spaces or luxurious flats are usually more profitable than music venues.

Anyway, we didn’t mean to bring you down, but we felt it was as good a time as any to mentally prepare you for the possible loss of some of your favourite Left of the Dial venues.

But hey, there are still a few days left in 2025, and you should really try to make the most of them. We certainly will. And you never know, maybe 2026 will bring us a whole new generation of city developers who care as much about music as we do.

Or maybe, billionaires will finally do something useful with their money and support all grassroots venues worldwide. 

Yeah, we know, that’s very unlikely.

So dear friends, let’s stick together, because it will probably be up to us again to make the world a better place.

Big love, 
The Auld Lang Synes of Left of the Dial
  

COMPLAINING ABOUT META ONCE AGAIN

(time to subscribe to more newsletters)

Yesterday, we read about Meta removing dozens of accounts belonging to abortion access providers and queer groups. This unbelievable form of censorship makes us feel sick, but it also underlines another problem:

We have all become far too reliant on Meta as a communication tool.

Especially if you use Meta to reach fans or supporters of your work, your art, or your expertise: if, for whatever bogus reason, Meta decides to remove your account, those contacts are gone, and there’s no other way to reach them.

At first, here at Left of the Dial, we weren’t particularly worried about our account being removed. We thought only really controversial accounts would run that risk. You know, the ones that show graphic violence or spread vicious hatred.

But if they’re shutting down friendly queer groups, pretty much anyone could be next.

Last year, we explained that we’re not spending any money on Meta ads any more, and we still don’t. Now, we wish we could leave Meta altogether, but we’re not brave enough. We’ve still got tickets to sell, and we’re not sure how to reach potential festivalgoers otherwise.

We know lots of other festivals, artists, and music venues struggle with the same thing, so please…

Subscribe to more newsletters. 

Actually reading them would be even better, of course, but it’s a really good start just to sign up, so your possible new favourite artist, festival, or venue knows how to reach you in case Meta randomly removes accounts again.

It also means that we, The Senders of Newsletters, need to step up our game and make them more fun, more informative, and just more worth reading in general.

Anyway, that’s what we think.

If you want to check whether our newsletters really are fun and informative, please go to the Left of the Dial website. Somewhere at the bottom of the page you’ll find a button to subscribe. Or just DM us your email address and we’ll do it for you.

And if you already receive our newsletter, please consider signing up for others by artists or organisations you like. 

You can always unsubscribe, just don’t let Meta decide for you.

Big love,
The moral mailmen of Left of the Dial