More specifically concerning electronic music more than 'real' music: why are people so obsessed with surprise guests and/or surprise acts. I know that some festivals/stages build some hype around it - DoLab at Coachella, art cars at EDC Vegas, and after hours RV sets at Electric Forest off the tip of my head.

But like, who cares for the usual festival? Generally the 'surprise' is just a colab producer coming on stage to be present as they debut their new colab ID and they don't really add anything to the set itself. Also, impromptu B2B's don't really happen. For example at Shambhala: In 2019 Anti Up was on the bill and played at Pagoda. My wife was working Artist Relations that year and her job was data entry to the spreadsheets for the app and it was made very clear that any and all info/links were specifically for Anti Up and NOT for Lorenzo/Lake individually. Fast forward to Shambhala 2022, both Chris Lake and Chris Lorenzo played the Pagoda Friday night with the later playing immediately after the former and they did not do a B2B because they were not billed as such and therefor were not getting paid to do a surprise Anti Up set.

The business side for the large majority of festivals do not allow the freedom/flexibility to allow such things and in the event of talent canceling, the odds of someone who wasn't already on the bill to step in is a fantasy. This about the only scenario where you might get an impromptu B2B from acts that are already there, but more often than not you end up with someone doing an additional set or even more likely, just have extended sets from those that were supposed to play before and after to fill up the blank slot.

K. Rant over. Continue on with your day.