Hangout Music Festival 2014 Girls, Gulf Shores, Alabama, United States

Background
Hangout Music Festival was founded in November 2009 by A.J. Niland and Shaul Zislin. The duo had spent several years scouting locations for a festival location, until setting on the public beaches of Gulf Shores. Zislin is the proprietor of The Hangout, the festival's namesake restaurant located at the terminus of Alabama State Route 59 (opened in 2008), as well as several other businesses along the beach, such as Surf Style. The festival received approval from the Gulf Shores city council in December 2009, as well as a permit for acts to perform an hour later than would normally be allowed under city noise laws.
They put together the first incarnation of the festival in seven months, in hope that they would not get "beaten to the punch" of creating a unique festival experience on the beach. Shortly before the festival's opening, the Gulf Coast was hit by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which impacted its attendance and general public perception of the area. "It was an absolute nightmare for everyone. ... It was 90 miles directly south of our site. You couldn’t be any closer to the oil spill, being on land, than on our festival grounds," said Niland. The festival was attended by 13,000–15,000 people per day in 2010.
Despite this, the festival continued on for a second year, adding another stage and booking larger headlining acts. Attendance in 2011 had to be capped at 35,000 per day, an unprecedented number for the second year of a music festival in the region, due to safety concerns. The 2011 event was estimated to have generated approximately $30 million for the Gulf Shores area economy. Advance tickets for the 2012 event, which continues to be capped at 35,000 attendees per day, sold out within one hour. General admission tickets sold out on February 21, 2012, almost three months prior to the event.