How do festivals actually keep surprise performers a secret?
I've always wondered how festivals pull this off because you'll see a huge artist walk on stage out of nowhere but obviously a lot of people had to know beforehand. There are tour managers, stage managers, security, artist relations, transport, hospitality it feels like there are a hundred opportunities for someone to accidentally leak it.
I remember hearing about a festival where the production team even moved the surprise act to a separate radio channel but people were still able to figure out what was going on because they could scan frequencies.
So how is this usually handled is it just about keeping the circle really small or are there other tricks production teams use to keep routing stage times and arrivals under wraps until the last minute?