Life is Beautiful’s “Big Beautiful Block Party” Announces 2024 Line-Up

By Scott Roeben, on June 25 2024
4 min read 8 comments
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Yes, the whole thing is weird. It’s Life is Beautiful, but it’s not, and you’ve probably never heard of any of the acts, and it’s in the Arts District but it’s not because it’s at Plaza, but it’s not.

Life is Beautiful’s “A Big Beautiful Block Party” (which will henceforth be referred to as Life is Beautiful),” is a “two-day dance party” in a lot next to Plaza casino in downtown Las Vegas. The event happens Sep. 27-28, 2024.

We’re here to help.

While unconfirmed, we’re pretty sure LiB choose these colors just to annoy the crap out of you.

The Life is Beautiful festival has a long and glorious history, which we won’t be sharing here because that would take “effort” and you don’t really care all that much about history. If you did, you’d bore everyone at the bar with long dissertations about how ancient Mesopotamia forever changed date palm cultivation. We owe so much to the Sumerians, but you don’t care. Technically, they invented blogging, and written language, the foundation of blogging. Sumerians also invented the first typos. We have never made one of those, but we hear a lot of people do. It’s the same people who use “your” when they mean “you’re.” How dare you ignore such a culturally significant part of history? You’re impudence is duly noted. (Fun fact: Ten percent of people just failed that test, yet they are somehow allowed to vote, procreate and hold high level positions in the F1 organization.)

Please exploit the Sumerians further by continuing your journey toward something of actual value to you.

Here’s the line-up for Life is Beautiful’s 2024 block party. Gird your eyes, as this is one of those rare promotional graphics designed to make you look in another direction.

Warning: Trying to read this graphic can lead to insomnia, loss of libido, memory lapses, UTIs and irregular periods.

We are not a graphics designer, but we have eyes.

Here, we fixed the colors so they’re slightly more bearable.

If you’re still experiencing insomnia, loss of libido, memory lapses, UTIs and irregular periods, it’s menopause. Congrats!

Some things of interest.

Despite our undeniable youth, we have literally never heard of any of the people on this poster. Therefore, we can’t exactly vouch for the fact they are, indeed, people.

The line-up features: Justice, Peggy Gou, LCD Soundsystem, Jamie xx, Jungle, James Blake, Thundercat, Toro y Moi, Badbadnotgood, Neil Frances, LP Giobbi, Empress Of, John Talabot and Fifi.

We sincerely hope the site we cut-and-paste that from had a copy editor look it over for spelling errors because we certainly aren’t doing it.

It’s worth noting this “block party” isn’t intended to “replace” Life is Beautiful, so there’s no sense comparing it to the previous incarnation.

Rolling Stone owns the event now, and honestly, it feels a little slapped together. Winging it. Fumbling around in a cactus indoor cultivation facility with a blindfold on.

The event touts “No overlapping sets.” Most music festivals have multiple stages, so you have to pick one during any given time slot (while missing some acts due to the overlap). “No overlapping sets” translates into, “We don’t have all that many acts.” Or possibly, “Decisions are overrated.”

The poster says the event is happening in downtown’s Arts District, which is simply false. Plaza is more than a mile away from the Arts District as the crow flies. Crows fly rather than walking between Plaza and the Arts District because it’s a little sketchy. Somebody has to say it.

Still, Life is Beautiful is downtown (it nearly went to the Las Vegas Festival Grounds), which is a big deal. This year’s event direction gives organizers some time to get their feet wet and figure out what Life is Beautiful is going to be moving forward.

Life is Beautiful previously had a culinary component, an art component and even a comedy component. You know, things that didn’t generate revenue.

Life is Beautiful had a “manifesto,” but under new ownership, it feels oddly unrelated.


Big picture, Rolling Stone has done a pretty good job of setting expectations. Then again, that was mostly us in our Tweets of the last few months.

We told you all this was happening before it happened, as is our way.

If you dig this genre of music, you are likely to love Life is Beautiful this year. It’s good for downtown, although, most of these kids don’t drink or gamble. The rooms fill up, however.

The main message from Life is Beautiful is to not compare this event to previous festivals, compare it to itself.

This festival has been around since 2013, created by Tony Hsieh and his team, including festival co-founders Rehan Choudhry and Joey Vanas. It bled money for several years (the festival lost $10 million in its first three years of existence), then Hsieh grew weary of subsidizing the thing and the line-ups became more modest and the festival started breaking even and eventually even made money.

As mentioned, this is the first year Rolling Stone owns the festival one hundred percent. They owned a majority stake starting in 2022. Technically, it’s owned by Rolling Stone’s parent company, Penske Media, but let’s not get bogged down in details. We have a haircut appointment.

Tickets to Life is Beautiful go on sale June 27, 2024. Tickets start at $199.

Adele tickets start at around $400, so.

The previous version of Life is Beautiful couldn’t last forever, especially given it was held in a space that’s likely to be sold off by the Hsieh estate. Local businesses had mixed feeling about being inside or near the festival footprint. For some, business was great during the festival, for others, not so much.

We’re just happy Life is Beautiful confirmed all our scoop, and our fellow kids will have yet another opportunity to dress in skimpy outfits and pop Molly and make heart symbols out of their hands for the Instas or TikToks, whichever one hasn’t been banned yet.

Life really is beautiful, and it comes in all shapes and sizes.

The new incarnation of Life is Beautiful may not be for everyone, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s for who it’s for.

Whenever people gather to dance and laugh and express joy and hook up with complete strangers, there’s a momentary escape from all the WTF going on in the world. That’s why Las Vegas exists in the first place.