Monster Energy Up & Up Festival Announces Sidepiece as Spring 2025 Headliner for Crowdfunded College Tour

Monster Energy Up & Up Festival, the largest and longest-running college music tour, has announced Sidepiece as the Spring 2025 headliner. As always, this tour has no pre-determined dates or route — the fans decide and they almost always sell out. More than 85 college student ambassador teams from across the U.S. will rally their schools through guerilla marketing and influencer campaigns to try becoming one of the stops on the Spring tour— and earn the chance to co-produce the ultimate college music experience.

“We’ve been on tour after tour since we started SIDEPIECE, and unfortunately never had enough time in our schedules to hit the colleges,” the duo said. “We’re changing that in 2025! We’ve partnered Monster Energy Up & Up Festival to headline some insane events around the country.”

Up & Up has been dubbed the Final Four of College Music Festivals. Each campus team, using their own Instagram handles, engages in a 48-hour campaign to sell the most pre-sale tickets for the festival. The top 5 schools with the most pre-sales in 48 hours will win a stop on tour. The winning colleges then collaborate with Up & Up producers to bring the festival to a nearby venue with their own DJ openers, content team, and parties revolving around the most hype event of the semester.  

Credit cards are only charged to the winning campus teams. This savvy ticketing model has led to many sold-out hard-ticket college tours in premium venues.

“Joining the Up & Up Festival as an ambassador was one of the best choices I made throughout my college career,” says Ellie Lima, senior at San Diego State University. “It is a community at its core - surrounded by people who are innovative, creative and driven. The Up & Up Festival showed me that as long as you’re determined to make a change, it can happen. I went from a new, 20-year-old transfer student, to spreading the word of a super cool EDM program across our massive campus to win fourth place in the Spring 2024 Disco Lines presale competition, just with a team of three.” 

The benefits of the Monster Energy Up & Up model are threefold: first, it ensures artists play only gigs where they are most desired; second, it provides invaluable industry experience to those hoping to pursue careers in music business and event management; and third, it guarantees an epic show for students without gouging them on ticket prices.

Since its inception in the Fall of 2016, the Monster Energy Up & Up Festival has redefined the college concert experience by breaking free from conventional programming boards and middle buyers. Through this approach, Up & Up empowers college students to curate events with top artists, imparting valuable lessons in sales and the rewards of earning an unforgettable experience.

Most recently, Cal Poly, CU Boulder, Miami- Ohio, San Jose State, University of Georgia, San Diego State, and the University of Oregon earned themselves the opportunity to host Up & Up’s Spring 2024 headliner, Disco Lines. Other previous winning campuses include University of Alabama, ASU (2x), Bryant, University of Dayton (3x), Lehigh, JMU, Florida State, Indiana University, LSU, Penn State (3x), Oklahoma State, Oregon St University, UC Davis (2x), University of Virginia (2x), UT Austin, Washington State University (5x), UNCW (3x), Virginia Tech (2x) and Wake Forest.

The Up & Up will offer more ways to win live events this summer and an exciting extension of collegiate programming: Club 100. This virtual event via Zoom attracts attendees from over 200 universities and features surprise performances by renowned music artists, thought-provoking industry guest speakers, valuable educational opportunities, and exciting giveaways.

The Up & Up Spring 2025 national competition kicks off on September Feb 24 at 4 p.m. EST, and the winning festivals will be held in April and June.

College students seeking music industry experience & internship credit can apply at upandupfestival.com/

ABOUT MONSTER ENERGY:

Based in Corona, California, Monster Energy is the leading marketer of energy drinks and alternative beverages. Refusing to acknowledge the traditional, Monster Energy supports the scene and sport. Whether motocross, off-road, NASCAR, MMA, BMX, surf, snowboard, ski, skateboard, or the hip hop lifestyle, Monster Energy is a brand that believes in authenticity and the core of what its sports, athletes and artists represent. More than a drink, it's the way of life lived by athletes, artists, believers and fans. See more about Monster Energy including all of its drinks at monsterenergy.com.

ABOUT THE MONSTER ENERGY UP & UP FESTIVAL:

Monster Energy Up & Up is the largest national college festival promoter in the US, powered by a community of campus ambassador teams across the country. Up & Up’s innovative guerrilla ticketing system is simple: students crowdsource demand on their campuses leading up to a 48-hour competition period; colleges with the most pre-sales earn the chance to work with our team to craft a music experience of-a-lifetime, while also gaining valuable industry experience. Past live headliners include Cash Cash (2016), Alan Walker (2017), GRYFFIN (2018), Two Friends (2018), Slushii (2019), Lost Kings (2019) Elephante (2019), Troyboi (2020), Loud Luxury (2021), San Holo (2022) Dom Dolla (2022) , Chris Lorenzo (Spring 2023) Dr. Fresch (Fall 2023) and Disco Lines (Spring 2024) Matroda (Fall 2024)

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ABOUT SIDEPIECE

While Dylan Ragland and Ricky Mears meant to start a side project, they weren’t totally expecting to create SIDEPIECE, the GRAMMY-nominated house duo that’s clocked more than 537 million global streams since its inception. The two producers – Ragland makes music as fan favorite Party Favor and Mears produces as dancefloor igniter NITTI – first linked via DM in 2019 to share track ideas. Sensing their musical chemistry, they jumped on Facetime. By the end of the call, they’d registered the @youasidepiece social handles and their own figurative side piece had been born. “It started out as a fun passion project because we both love and care about house music,” says Ragland, “but it’s grown so much bigger than we originally planned.” Indeed, success came fast for the pair. SIDEPIECE’s second single, the 2020 Diplo collaboration “On My Mind,” aggregated more than 222 million Spotify streams and earned the trio a 2021 GRAMMY nomination for Best Dance Recording. A flurry of hit singles have followed, with SIDEPIECE carving out a signature sound rooted in catchy vocals – “the most important element,” says Ragland – and the ever-intoxicating bump and grind house groove. Spanning tech house, bass house and beyond, tracks including “Acrobatic,” “Temptation,” “Sextacy” and their latest -- the dancefloor banger “A Milli (SIDEPIECE Remix),” their remix of the iconic Lil Wayne track -- are quintessentially SIDEPIECE: party-starting club records with a pop-lean and serious sex appeal. “Huge streaming numbers are cool,” says Mears, “but seeing people in the crowd singing along to the song, that makes it all feel real.”