The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival begins its 10th year Friday secure in its reputation as the world's premier music festival.

The three-day event at the Empire Polo Club in Indio has been called America's best music festival by Rolling Stone and NME magazines, among others. It has won the Pollstar Award as Music Festival of the Year from readers of that concert industry publication four times in the past six years.

“Part of that is the fact that they've created an event that has worldwide recognition,” said Pollstar Editor-In-Chief Gary Bongiovanni. “There are managers of bands in England who think it's important to come over and play Coachella.

“As a value for fans, it's hard to beat the amount of entertainment you get for the cost.”

Moreover, Coachella has become a historic touchstone in the evolution of modern-day music festivals.

Coachella was announced after the failure of the 1998 Woodstock Festival in New York. The violence among the rap-rock and heavy metal fans inspired Rolling Stone reporter Austin Scaggs to say festivals had reached a low point.

Coachella lost about $1 million at its inaugural 1999 festival, but the audience was so well behaved and the media so exalting, Goldenvoice promoters Paul Tollett and Rick Van Santen carried on until the festival became profitable a few years later.

“Coachella and Bonnaroo (a Tennessee festival founded in 2002) collectively revived the whole concept of the outdoor festival, especially as a destination festival,” said Bongiovanni. “(Coachella) really pioneered the return of that. Coming off the heels of the last Woodstock, where the whole thing was in flames, it's a wonder why anybody would even want to attempt something like that.”

“It took someone's creative thought process and this was Paul Tollett's to put it together,” said Empire Polo Club owner Alex Haagen III. “Not many people would have thought it was possible.

“It's been amazing all these years we really haven't had any of the problems you hear about at concerts. The people are very nice — respectful of the property, respectful of the rules. It's very mellow.”

While festivals have struggled under less-than-desirable economic conditions this year, 20 major indie music festivals were staged in 2008, and 15 had sprouted since 2002.

That North American circuit of festivals gave Coachella a platform on which to launch new artists, in addition to reviving the touring careers of respected artists such as the Pixies, Daft Punk and Rage Against the Machine.

The Silversun Pickups, with Indio native Joe Lester on keyboards, made their major festival debut as an afternoon Coachella act in 2007 before starting a two-year world tour. They return Friday as the Outdoor Theatre headliner.

“Coachella was a rad opportunity and that opened up some (other opportunities),” said Lester. “Other festivals were like, ‘Oh, they were on that festival. Maybe we'll give them a shot.'”

Most significantly, Coachella has pioneered a trend of bringing diverse acts to mass audiences without using traditional mass media hype. The promotion of artists through radio, film, network television and cable TV has traditionally resulted in a homogenization of music to appeal to mass audiences.

Through niche marketing, Goldenvoice was able to build a large audience with bands that didn't have to compromise their art for the masses.

Goldenvoice eschewed traditional promotion and focused on the Internet, specialty magazines and newspapers with Web sites.

“A lot of that (first year) had nothing to do with Billboard charts and current radio,” Tollett said in 2007. “A couple of the bands were on radio, but the other 80 weren't and I knew those 80 were going to make the show really have a life to it in the future. There was a whole set of people, pre-iPod, who were listening to miscellaneous music and a lot of albums that were just selling 3,000 and 4,000 copies, There was a big scene if you aggregated that altogether.”

Bongiovanni said no festival had ever built a large audience through niche marketing “to the scale that they've done it at Coachella. They've really done a remarkable job.”

The audience has changed, too. The first year, Tollett said recently, festivalgoers only watched the artists that played the kind of music they liked.

“The first year, there were indie rockers over here, people who liked hip-hop, people who liked electronic or high end electronic. Now, just about everybody likes anything,” Tollett said.

“Ask anyone you know, ‘What kind of music do you like?' Fifteen years ago they would tell you punk rock or they would tell you alternative. They'd give you a word or two. Now, ‘I like all types.'”

The de-homogenization of audiences has led to a de-homogenization of bands.“There are bands now,” Tollett said, “with all types of music within that band.”Tollett always preferred to let fans discover their favorite music. But he's now moved so far from the old circus-type stunts of legendary promoters like Col. Tom Parker or Jerry Weintraub, he's almost shy.“More than anything, I wish I didn't have to say a band's name,” he said when asked about this year's highlights. “Any band I talk about, it just makes the other bands sad I'm not talking about them.”