Dance music festivals and clubs lose 78% of value
Prevented from opening by Covid-19 restrictions, nightclubs and dance music festivals lost more than three quarters of their value in 2020, according to new data from the International Music Summit (IMS).
Using data from Viberate and Reisdent Advisor, the IMS Business Report 2021, a copy of which can be requested by clicking here, calculated that €3.4 billion, or 78%, was wiped off the value of venues and festivals last year, as more than 200 electronic music festivals were forced to cancel.
Compounding the damage was a late, scaled-back 2020 season in Ibiza, while searches for flights for 2021 have yet to take off amid ongoing uncertainty, according to the report. IMS’s own flagship event, IMS Ibiza, was among the summer 2020 casualties.
“A huge rebound can be expected as the live industry finds safe routes to reopening”
However, “a huge rebound can be expected as the live industry finds safe routes to reopening”, it continues, while the demand for live dance music events events is bigger than ever: the value of festival tickets sold in March 2021 was more than the whole of 2020 combined, an increase of 4,000% year on year.
The decline in the value mirrors that of the live music industry more broadly, which analysts have put at 75% (Goldman Sachs) and 64% (PwC).
In total (including recorded music and DJ software/hardware), the global electronic music market declined 54%, to $3.4bn, the IMS Business Report estimates.
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IMS: Covid-19 set to cost electronic sector $4bn
After slight growth in 2019, the value of the global electronic music industry is estimated to fall by 56% this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the latest edition of the annual International Music Summit (IMS) business report has revealed.
The yearly report, which is usually presented at the IMS conference in Ibiza, this year cancelled due to the pandemic, states the value of the electronic is sector is set to fall from $7.3 billion to $3.3bn this year, with dance and electronic clubs and festivals set to lose 75% of their income, equivalent to $3.3bn.
By 20 April, around 350 electronic music festivals had been cancelled or postponed, the majority in Germany, with almost 9 million fans unable to attend. According to event discovery and ticketing platform Skiddle, around 4,000 electronic music events in total have been affected by Covid-19 so far.
In Ibiza alone, 2m club tickets were sold last year, with clubbers spending €260m and contributing €500m to the local economy. Bigger clubs and mid-sized venues (over 300-cap.) on the island are to remain shut this season.
DJ and artist income is predicted to fall by as much as 61%, from $1.1bn in 2019 to $400m in 2020. Earnings of the top-ten electronic artists had increased 4% year-on-year in 2019, with the Chainsmokers ($46m) and Marshmello (40m) coming in as the highest earners.
Despite a bleak outlook for 2020, the IMS report notes that the positive trends that led to growth in 2019 – the first since 2016 – “should help fuel a strong recovery in the coming years”.
“The value of the global electronic music industry is estimated to fall be 56% this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic”
The report also details the sector’s livestreaming success. It it predicted that streaming will grow by 18% in 2020, with continued growth expected to generate around $100m in additional revenue for the dance and electronic sector this year.
In May 2020, seven of the ten most watched music streamers on Twitch were electronic focused, totalling 6m viewer hours. EDM promoter Insomniac racked up 2.6m viewers hours by running virtual versions of their events, including the Electric Daisy Carnival rave-a-thon. The promoter is putting on digital editions of Secret Project, Peekaboo and Awakening festivals later this month.
The IMS report also shows that DJs who performed in the video game Fortnite, following the initial success of Marshmello, saw their Instagram followers grow by ten times during and after the event.
Dillon Francis, Steve Aoki and Deadmau5 played the launch of the game’s virtual hang-out Party Royale mode, adding a collective 55,000 to their Instagram followers in four days.
Overall, however, it is believed that livestreamed events, as well as other alternatives including drive-in shows and socially distanced club nights, are “unlikely to be commercially viable, with live streams serving predominantly to raise money for good causes and capacities art physical shows greatly reduced.
Some platforms have started to adapt to paid-for models, the report notes, with Soundcloud introudincing a ‘support link’ button for fan contributions; TikTok launching ‘donation stickers’ for good causes; and Festicket allowing the sale of merchandise. Brands including Coca-Cola, Amazon and Henieken have also sponsored DJ live streams.
The full report is available to download here.
This article forms part of IQ’s Covid-19 resource centre – a knowledge hub of essential guidance and updating resources for uncertain times.
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Fellowes, Drape, Measham on the case for drug testing
The Loop director Fiona Measham, Broadwick Live’s Jon Drape and Secret Garden Party promoter Freddie Fellowes joined AFEM CEO Mark Lawrence at IMS Ibiza last month to discuss drug testing at festivals and clubs.
‘The Case for Drug Testing at Events, presented by The Loop’, on day two of IMS, saw the two festival bosses – both of whom have led the way in implementing the Loop’s multi-agency safety testing (MAST) at their events – talk with Measham and Lawrence about their experience of front-of-house pill testing, and its effectiveness in reducing the harm associated with drug use, with Fellowes describing the growth of MAST as “the first meaningful change in harm-reduction policy that I’ve seen in our industry” in 20 years.
Calling for change, Measham, also professor of criminology at Durham University, said in order to avoid future drug fatalities at festivals, “we need to is actually encourage a more healthy relationship with drugs”.
Watch the panel in full, exclusively on IQ, above.
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Competition: Win 2 tickets to IMS College Malta
International Music Summit is offering IQ readers the chance to win two tickets to this weekend’s IMS College Malta.
IMS College, which aims to offer delegates a “crash course in electronic music”, returns to the Mediterranean island from Friday 7 to Sunday 9 July after a successful debut last year.
“As IMS approaches its first decade, it feels right for us to put even more focus on inspiring the new generation of producers, performers and industry protagonists,” explains IMS co-founder Ben Turner. “IMS College Malta year one was a revelation for us: a different approach to curating a summit, considering the audience was so open to absorbing all forms of education and instruction about this incredible culture of music. We thank our partners and the government of Malta for seeing the value in taking such an approach to educate whilst we entertain.”
Up for grabs are two tickets, worth €70 each, which grant access to both days – and all associated keynotes, panels, workshops and masterclasses– and all three nights of the summit, including night-time DJ sets by Sven Vath, Agoria, Richie Ahmed and Todd Terry.
More information on the summit is available at www.internationalmusicsummit.com/college.
To enter, email [email protected] before midnight on Wednesday 5 July with the subject line “IMS College Malta competition”.
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Millennials drive “healthy, successful” EDM mkt
Electronic music conference International Music Summit (IMS) today released the 2017 edition of its annual IMS Business Report, which reveals that dance music shows are overwhelming the live music events of choice for generation Y.
The report, researched and compiled, as in 2016, by Danceonomics’ Kevin Watson, finds that while live concerts with one headliner are the biggest draw for the US general population, club shows – and, to a lesser extent, intimate concerts – are especially popular among millennials, with that age group attending 36–39% more dance events with live DJs:
The report also spotlights the “huge growth” in electronic dance music (EDM) in Latin America; the acquisition or launch by fast-growing UK outfit Global of three dance music festivals (South West Four, Snowbombing Canada and Hideout); and the pioneering use of new technologies, including VR, live streaming and chatbots/AI, by several high-profile DJs and clubs.
As a whole, the value of the industry is up 3%, to US$7.4 billion, in what IMS calls an indicator of a “healthy and successful industry”.
But it’s not all good news: Gender diversity, says IMS, remains “a key issue” after analysis by Thump revealed that of 24 of the biggest EDM festivals in 2016, an average of just 17% of performers were female.
Better than some rock festivals, at least…
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EDM largest growth sector in US live market
Electronic dance music (EDM) concerts and festivals are the only live music events in the United States that showed a year-on-year (YoY) increase in attendance from 2014 to 2015.
That’s according to the 2016 edition of annual dance music industry study IMS Business Report, researched by Kevin Watson’s Danceonomics and published yesterday on the first day of the International Music Summit (IMS) in Ibiza.
Club events with no specific headlining DJ showed the biggest YoY change, up 3% on 2014, while club events with a headlining DJ were up 1% and smaller sessions and clubs and bars 2%. This is in contrast to non-dance music festivals and live concerts with a main headliner, both of which were static, and live concerts with multiple headliners, which declined 1%.
In Europe, meanwhile, at least one in seven people say they’ve attended an EDM event in the last three years – a number that rises to one in six in the UK and an incredible one in three in Spain.
The growth of EDM events is in contrast to non-dance music festivals and live concerts with a main headliner, both of which were static, and live concerts with multiple headliners, which declined 1%
The genre is also continuing to expand beyond its tradition western heartland, with new events in Panama (Day After Festival in January), the Philippines (ZoukOut Boracay in April), Vietnam (Vietnam Electronic Weekend in April) and Cuba (Manana earlier this month) already having taken place this year.
The industry as a whole is now worth US$7.1 billion – 60% more than in 2012–13 – although growth slowed significantly in 2015, to 3.5%, down from 12% the previous year.
Survey respondents rated a fair streaming revenue model for recorded dance music as the most important driver for future success of the sector, with a more comprehensive approach, involving key industry players and governments, to reducing harm from drugs in a close second.
Also critical were (in this order) appropriate government legislation and regulation for EDM venues, the sale of SFX assets (such as Beatport) to “organisations who understand the electronic music industry” and more transparency and lower inflation in DJ and artist fees. Less so, but still important, were the issues of the lack of women in the industry and securing support and understanding from the mainstream media (although, perhaps unsurprisingly, the dearth of females was the second most important issue among women).