The Mashtival music festival will bring more than 20 mashup artists together to play on the same virtual stages in Turntable.fm.
Image courtesy Darren Pillen and Mashtival

Music festivals usually happen in big open fields or at large stadiums. But during Mashtival, the entire gig — featuring three rooms of mashup music — will take place on social music site Turntable.fm.

More than 20 mashup artists in three different Turntable rooms will gather Wednesday night for the first Mashtival music fest. Each room’s five DJ spots will be occupied by two or three VIP DJs (headliners include 3LAU, Wick-it the Instigator and Kap Slap) and a couple of up-and-coming mashup artists.

“What we are hoping will happen is that fans/listeners/the audience will discover new music,” Mashtival organizer Nicolas Gutierrez said in an e-mail to Wired.com. “Whether it be another track from an artist they know or just discovering a new artist, the goal of Mashtival is what it has always been — to share and listen to great music.”

The virtual festival is a natural progression for Turntable.fm, one of a new wave of group-listening sites that are transforming the way internet users enjoy and discover music. Turntable.fm mimics the feel of a dance club, with users taking turns at DJ tables to spin their favorite tracks.

The idea for the Mashtival festival grew out of the community of mashup artists and fans that gather daily in the MashupFM room on Turntable. The event’s three rooms will be handled by MashupFM (the main stage is the main MashupFM room; the other two will be Mashupfm2 and Mashupfm VIP).

And, really, where better than Turntable to hold a music festival for a genre that is made almost entirely on computers? The MashupFM room itself grew out of a group of music heads (Gutierrez, DJ EEP/Andrew Peron and SoSimpull/Aaron Ho) who met in a room where mashups were being played. They then decided to form a place dedicated to the musical style. From there it became “the benchmark for rooms playing mashups,” said Gutierrez (aka Gutz), who also writes for music and fashion site the Kollection and pens a mashup column for music blog Earmilk.

“In a sense, our blogging connections wouldn’t be possible without Turntable, but at the same time this lineup for the MashupFM event wouldn’t be possible without having legitimized ourselves within the blogging world,” Gutierrez said when asked if his blogging connections helped him pull together the Mashtival lineup.

Mashtival starts Wednesday at 7 p.m. Eastern. The up-and-coming artists go on about an hour before the headliners start DJing. Each room is limited to 200 listeners, so get there early. Keep up with events leading up to the fest on Mashtival’s Facebook page.