Coachella 2023 was one for the history books. The beloved music festival in the desert had several high points, including Blackpink and Bad Bunny’s record-setting performances. However, the fallout from Frank Ocean’s seemingly disappointing return to the event is far from over.
Although the “Novacane” singer took the stage for the first weekend, he dropped out of his headlining performance set for the second weekend, which reportedly cost the organizers millions in profits. While Ocean admitted that his solo set was “chaotic” because it had been years since he graced the stage and the live stream was pulled at the last minute, those attending the festival took out their phones to record the performance on social media.
Despite not attending Coachella, according to Variety, Los Angeles-based filmmaker Brian Kinnes was hit with a cease-and-desist by AEG, a festival partner, over unauthorized footage from Ocean’s set. “I’m just combining what’s already publicly available,” Kinnes told the outlet.
Supposedly, Kinnes sourced around 450 Ocean videos posted online over 80 hours. Then Kinnes allegedly sent the best audio clips to a sound engineer to create the final audio file.
“Essentially, [AEG’s] claims are pretty frivolous and almost completely baseless,” said Kinnes as he states, “[I] did not plan on making a single penny” from the video.
AEG disagrees. Although the performance was supposed to be streamed live on YouTube for free, it was not. If it was, the exclusive rights to the footage from Coachella belong to AEG. AEG’s notice demanded that Kinnes “remove and destroy all audio and video content of musical performances from the Festival…failure to do would lead to further legal action.” Kinnes’ footage has since been removed.
However, this isn’t the first time Kinnes has pulled videos across social media of festival footage. In 2017, he created a video of Ocean’s 2014 FYF Fest performance, which was also removed from the internet. Kinnes defends his creations, citing legendary hip-hop group Beastie Boys’ fan-shot 2006 concert film Awesome; I F*ckin’ Shot That!