Music Cruises Are the Future of Festival Culture
There’s nothing like rubbing shoulders with the lead singer of your favorite band at the buffet.
The elevator doors open to release a throng of rowdy ravers, their heads bouncing to the rhythm of a club track screeching with energy. At the center of it all stands Alex Ridha, a German DJ known to fans as Boys Noize, who blares the track from a moving cart outfitted with turntables, speakers, and glowing disco lights while he drips with sweat. The bass practically crunches from the maxed-out speakers.
“What up, Friendship?” Boys Noize yells over the beat. “We got Rico Nasty in the house, check this out.” Both performers encourage the crowd to get as lit as they possibly can.
Ridha pushes his DJ cart out of the elevator and through the hall—attracting wide-eyed stares from onlookers, some of whom fall in line behind the dancing horde, wondering just where this electro-themed conga line is headed. His final destination: the room of one lucky passenger aboard The Friendship 2024 cruise ship.
Roving ragers like this—the kind where you could end up rubbing shoulders with the lead singer of your favorite band in line at the soft-serve machine—can really only happen on a music festival cruise. And what started off as a few boat-based events at the turn of the millennium has now given way to a robust industry.
These days, for anything from less than $1,000 to more than $6,500, you can soak up the sun and sand at a private island while Julian Marley fills the air with reggae on the Welcome to JAMROCK Cruise or get your hair dyed with Paramore’s Hayley Williams in the ship’s salon on Parahoy! The Summer of ‘99 Cruise promises performances from Creed, 3 Doors Down, and a trip to the Bahamas this April, while the Rock The Bells Cruise promises to bring hip-hop heads together with Jadakiss, E-40, Talib Kweli, and more in November. And while there’s no official data on how big the industry’s gotten, the most successful production company in the game, Sixthman, started off hosting 13 music cruises in 2022 and is aiming to double that in 2025.
It all started with a '90s one-hit-wonder. In the early aughts, fans begged the management of Central Florida band Sister Hazel to organize a weekend hangout with the musicians, which led to an inaugural Labor Day cruise. Conveniently, the price of chartering a boat dropped significantly in the wake of September 11, 2001; the band was able to crowdfund $99 each from 1,000 fans each as a deposit and then teamed up with an Atlanta businessman to cover the remaining $750,000 overhead cost to charter an entire ship.
Now 25 sailings later, The Rock Boat hosted by Sister Hazel remains a flagship event of Sixthman’s busy annual schedule. What’s more, Norwegian Cruise Line officially acquired the company in 2012, which meant a stable supply of ships outfitted with the exact specs needed to pull off months of musical sailings. Sixthman is now also helmed by Jeff Cuellar, the former festival director of the massive Bonnaroo music festival in Tennessee. And these days, instead of planning a four-day fest for tens of thousands, he’s in charge of filling a four-month block’s worth of programming for a variety of niche but passionate audiences.
“We look at the calendars like a big Tetris puzzle,” says Tom Dougher, a senior corporate sales manager at Norwegian. “How can we take 90 or 100 days and fill them back to back?”
Tailoring each event to its unique crowd is a huge part of the formula, ranging from major efforts—like when Sixthman built pro-skateboarders a ramp and halfpipe on the pool deck as part of the latest Flogging Molly Salty Dog Cruise—to simpler accoutrement, like branded felt on casino tables or thematic cocktail and menu items. For Sixthman’s Jay and Silent Bob Cruise Askew, which sailed in February, the cult film's director Kevin Smith hosted a table reading with fans. The company makes sure performers understand that their cruise won’t be successful—or repeatable—if they just hide in their cabin between performances.
Beyond Sixthman, Norwegian also works with a handful of independent event producers, including Gary Richards, the man behind the aforementioned Friendship electronic music cruise festival. The former record label A&R, who also DJs as Destructo, excels at the specialization and interaction component. Everything from the music in the hallway overhead speakers to artist-hosted mini golf competitions are tailored to create a sense of total musical immersion. Richards used to run a company called HARD that hosted multi-day music festivals in Los Angeles—the kind of event you could sell more tickets to, although that wasn’t always a good thing.
“You're gonna have a bad element you just can't control,” he says of giant land-based festivals. “A music festival cruise is a workout to get there. You have to get a flight, maybe get a hotel. Busters aren't gonna put all that energy into something where they want to just go and create a problem.”
These days his goal is to make events that are fun for everyone, from a headliner like Skrillex to the guy taking out the trash. And since the initial Holy Ship! set sail in 2012, those who sail with Richards have self-appointed themselves the #ShipFam, creating a fandom beyond the boat that’s led to previous shippers meeting up at local concerts and staying at each other’s houses while traveling. It was an unintended byproduct of the endeavor, but one Richards promotes whole-heartedly. The frequent shippers have even come to call Richards “dad.”
It’s fun for the artists, too. Ridha, a.k.a. Boys Noize, has been a headliner on all four Friendship sailings, participating in Richards’ at-sea lineups as far back as the second Holy Ship In 2012. “For me, it's the best paid work ever,” he says, noting that on most of his trips, he makes sure to use the fitness facilities, book a massage, and race in the on-board go-karts. He even sneaks in a little work—collaborating with other artists who are also staying on the ship.
“Once artists realized that it's not about the concert and the money, that it's about the fans, about the community, I think that's where it all changes,” says Dougher from Norwegian Cruise Line. “What I've seen over the years, and what keeps me passionate about this, is watching those communities come back, because in many cases, it's the one time a year they get to see their friends that they made on the cruise two, three years ago. Once you get that common passion point, everyone just gels together. It's amazing to watch.”