Let the music play: Raleigh in early talks for new music festival after Dreamville
When the Dreamville festival ends after its its fifth and final year in Raleigh, local leaders hope the void it leaves will be temporary.
The city and Live Nation have begun talking about continuing to hold a music festival, possibly under the Dreamville moniker, at Dorothea Dix Park.
“I don’t think it’s leaving,” Mayor Janet Cowell told The News & Observer. “I think the current format with [founder] J. Cole being the headliner, this will be the last year for him. My sense is that it will continue, but it will be like ‘Dreamville brought to you by’ as opposed to the current format.”
Organizers have expressed a “strong desire to continue some similar type of festival,” said Assistant City Manager Evan Raleigh.
“We don’t have any details really beyond they’ve really expressed clear interest,” he said, adding conversations should ramp up after this year’s April 5-6 event.
Live Nation, the multinational entertainment company, did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
But the city of Raleigh would like to keep the music playing.
“Dix Park is a magical place to do this,” Cowell said. “We’ve shown that it can be super successful. And I think we will build on that in 2026.”
How Dreamville came to Raleigh
Former Mayor Nancy McFarlane met Cole at a party at the Contemporary Art Museum in downtown Raleigh.
“He was telling me about how he was originally from Fayetteville and he really wanted to come back to this area and move [his record label] Dreamville, all the studios here, and really make Raleigh the center of all of his Dreamville work,” she said. “I was telling him about the park, and we started talking about a festival and how great that would be.”
Her initial conversations with Cole helped get things rolling for bringing the Dreamville Music Festival to Dix Park, the then-recently purchased 308-acre property the city had bought from the state of North Carolina.
“I think the big sort of festival and field idea was always something that we kind of dreamed about, and Dreamville helped make it a reality,” she said.
Despite some initial hiccups, Dreamville proved that big events attracting tens of thousands of people, could be held at Dix.
Every year provided a new learning experience.
Concert goers waited hours in line for food and drinks. The next year there were more food trucks.
Another year, cell phone towers kept getting jammed and people couldn’t use their phones to call for rides home. The next year extra towers were brought in.
“Once we did Dreamville, we started to realize all the other pieces that get tied together and were connected to, and so that makes you better prepared every year,” McFarlane said.
McFarlane is on the Dix Park Leadership Committee, which provides guidance on implementing the park’s master plan, and she’s vice chair of the board of directors of the Dix Park Conservancy, the nonprofit that raises money for the park. She believes a music festival will remain at Dix.
“They really do want to keep a great thing going,” she said.
Cowell: ‘Just an incredible event’
Cowell called Dreamville’s success “proof of concept” for the park.
Elected as mayor last fall, she previously headed the Dix Park Conservancy. And she also lives in Boylan Heights, the neighborhood that bridges downtown to Dix Park.
“I live right there, so it comes to me,” she said. “I’ve had houseguests all weekend attending this thing. It’s just an incredible event to see a large field transformed into this massive stage.”
She recalls being in Brooklyn and seeing a man walking down the street in a Dreamville T-shirt.
“It did a lot for Raleigh, both economically and reputationally,” she said.
Last year’s music festival drew nearly 52,000 attendees each day and created $10.5 million in direct economic impact which includes money spent on hotels, food, transportation and shopping by visitors, said Loren Gold, vice president of the Greater Raleigh Convention and Visitors Bureau.
“J. Cole had a vision,” Gold said. “He wanted to get back to his home state of North Carolina and his new home of Raleigh. And I think ‘mission complete.’ Over the last five years, it’s been a globally recognized event, so much so that we literally had global attendance, right? All 50 states, multiple international countries, have been represented.”
With so much infrastructure available from lighting, rigging and staging Dreamville, he said it makes sense to expand the festival.
“Can we do a second weekend and really go 180 on the genre?” Gold said. “Maybe it becomes rock or Americana or another genre opposite of rap and hip-hop, and you bring in new audiences and different diversity from that. I am excited about where it can go.
Opening the door for something else
A report, commissioned by Dreamville, found the 2023 concert generated a total economic impact of $145.9 million. That included money spent by fans, businesses that put on the festival, and the household spending of people who gained income as a result of the festival.
Of last year’s ticket holders, 86% were visitors, with most of them staying in the Raleigh area overnight and filling local hotels.
“The biggest thing for us is just knowing you’re going to be full, with time to plan for it,” said Russ Jones, president of Loden Hospitality, which owns Longleaf, Guest House and other hotels.
“Last-second sellouts are great, but last-second sellouts can be difficult for staffing,” he explained. “And when you know you have an event like that, you can prepare accordingly and it’s not really a rush because you’re able to work with your team members.”
He’ll miss Dreamville, but believes Raleigh is well suited to attract another music festival.
“I’m not sad one way or the other, because I think Dreamville leaving will just open the door for something else,” he said. “We just don’t know what it will be. But it will be great because that setup is really working now.”
This story was originally published March 24, 2025 at 3:45 PM with the headline "Let the music play: Raleigh in early talks for new music festival after Dreamville."
CORRECTION: This article was corrected at 9 a.m. April 3, 2025, to correct Nancy McFarlane’s title. She is vice chair of the Board of Directors of the Dix Park Conservancy.
