By Kaitlyn Huamani, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — In 2015, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival was one of the hottest tickets in town, selling out in record time: 40 minutes. AC/DC brought the house down with an electric set. Madonna planted a kiss on Drake on stage. Kanye West made a surprise appearance during the Weeknd’s performance.

Ahead of Coachella’s start on Friday, tickets for the second weekend of the festival are still available (it took a month for the first weekend to sell out), and resale tickets are going for well below face value on StubHub and other secondary resellers in an unprecedented year of sluggish sales — the slowest in a decade.

So what happened?

After the festival expanded from one weekend to two in 2012, it sold out almost every year since then — from that sub-hour whir in 2015 to four-plus hours in 2022 in its post-COVID return. The following year marked the first time in 11 years that the event did not sell out both weekends. At full capacity, the fest drew up to 125,000 concertgoers a day.

Dave Brooks, Billboard’s senior director of live music and touring, said the dip in sales and fan interest is “a natural off-cycle” for Coachella.

“I don’t buy that the Coachella brand is permanently diminished at all,” Brooks said. “Obviously this was an off-year, [but] it’s hands-down one of the best experiences out there.”

Still, the Coachella craze from about a decade ago has notably faded. Rising prices, a less buzzy lineup than years past and stiff competition in the live music space are all likely to blame.

Although interest has decreased, Coachella ticket prices have not. Before fees, general admission tickets cost $499 to $549 and VIP tickets are going for $1,069 to $1,269.

With lodging, transportation, parking and food expenses each racking up hundreds of dollars, some might think the cost isn’t quite worth the experience.

But after a year when fans shelled out “insane amounts of money” for Taylor Swift and Beyoncé’s concerts, Stig Edgren, a live event producer and lecturer in music industry at UCLA, said the lineup is more likely to blame for this year’s slump.

The internet was divided after Goldenvoice, the festival’s founder and producer, announced the performers in January. Lana Del Rey, Tyler, the Creator and Doja Cat are headlining with special guest No Doubt, and Edgren said the demand for these artists “just isn’t there this year.”

Goldenvoice didn’t respond to The Times’ requests for comment.

Del Rey and Doja Cat both wrapped up tours at the end of 2023 and Tyler, the Creator performed at his Camp Flog Gnaw Festival in November, so fans may have recently seen the headliners at their respective shows and festival appearances.

This year’s artists also don’t have the same rabid fan bases as previous headliners, like last year’s international stars Bad Bunny and Blackpink, and Brooks said the lineup lacks the “commercially successful music stories” that past years have boasted.

Other notable headliners include Lady Gaga, Kendrick Lamar, Beyoncé, Harry Styles, Billie Eilish and Frank Ocean. The latter caused a stir last year with his divisive performance and subsequent cancellation of his Weekend 2 set, which outraged festival-goers and possibly deterred future attendance.

There are also tough competitors in the festival space with flashier lineups than Coachella. Stagecoach, the popular country music festival, will take over the same Indio polo grounds starting April 26 with headliners Miranda Lambert, Morgan Wallen and Eric Church. The Lovers & Friends festival will hit Las Vegas a week later, boasting a lengthy list of headliners, including Usher, Janet Jackson, Alicia Keys, Gwen Stefani, Snoop Dogg and the Backstreet Boys.

That same weekend is packed with festivals across the country. Headliners Post Malone, Stevie Nicks and Noah Kahan will lead the Lovin’ Life Music Fest in Charlotte, North Carolina. Weezer, Queens of the Stone Age and Foo Fighters will take the stage at the Shaky Knees Festival in Atlanta. Sting, Incubus and My Morning Jacket will perform closer to home in Redondo Beach at the BeachLife Festival. The Rolling Stones, Chris Stapleton, Hozier, Queen Latifah and more will close out the second weekend of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

The saturation in the concert and festival market that came with the spike in live performances after the pandemic may also be causing fan fatigue that could be hurting Coachella’s sales.

Bill Werde, the director of Syracuse University’s music business program and author of the industry newsletter “ Full Rate No Cap,” said the pandemic affected the promotion of festivals and concerts and fans’ purchasing habits. As the availability of Coachella tickets ahead of its opening weekend shows, fewer people are buying tickets well in advance of events, Werde said.

“People want to look at something like this and want to pronounce the death of Coachella and it’s just too soon,” Werde said. “This is one of the strangest times we’ve ever experienced in live music in the history of the business, which is to say, specifically, this rebound from a period of not having shows for a couple of years. Finding out what the new normal looks like is going to take a couple more years.”