Music 4 Cancer: Appreciation of an underground music festival and its philanthropic purpose among festival goers

Abstract

Music 4 Cancer (M4C) is an underground music festival that has taken place every September, in Sainte-Therese, Quebec, since 2010. One of its purposes is philanthropic: to raise funds for cancer research. This disease, responsible for 30% of deaths in Canada, is considered the deadliest and for which there is no effective treatment. M4C is one of five philanthropic festivals in Quebec, but the only one that combines music and cancer. This article presents the evaluation of the overall appreciation of the M4C festival, both of the underground music being played and its philanthropic purpose, as well as the motivations of the festival-goers for attending and returning (becoming loyal) to it. In order to better know and understand their appreciation, a double data collection was carried out. An online questionnaire collected quantitative data from 107 festival-goers in the fall of 2017, and a semi-structured interview was conducted with nine of them in the winter of 2018. Three strong points emerged from the results analysis. First, most of the festival-goers have a very high overall appreciation of M4C. Second, most of them have a very high appreciation of the underground music being played and its philanthropic purpose. Third, fundraising for cancer research is a big part of the motivation among most of the festival-goers for attending and returning (becoming loyal) to it.