Even when snaking through the deeper parts of the Naeba Ski Resort by myself, I never felt alone at this year’s Fuji Rock Festival. All I had to do was open Twitter, where everyone was talking about the goings-on — even if they were thousands of kilometers away.

The three-day musical event had long been a gathering that could only be experienced by trekking out to the mountains of Niigata Prefecture every summer. Since 2018, though, the festival has teamed up with YouTube to livestream select performances for free.

This partnership has helped invigorate one of the country’s biggest music festivals. While attendance at Fuji Rock fluctuated during the 2010s, the arrival of live video turned the event — or at least carefully curated parts of it — into something anyone with a Wi-Fi connection could enjoy. Before this year’s edition officially kicked off, the words “Fuji Rock” and the names of its performers were constant locks on Twitter’s trending tab. Anecdotally, people I knew who were staying indoors to beat the brutal summer heat opted to check out the likes of Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra, Japanese Breakfast via their laptops.