Club nights are not raves. Raves are (usually) not posted on RA. The underground scene is doing just fine.
The article seems to be written for people who reads a newspaper with their breakfast, not for people who had yet to gone asleep while that person reads their paper.
Where do you think the people going to those raves in the early 90s ended up? As old guys who now have well paid corporate jobs in the city and read FT.
That guy could probably bore the crap out of today's youth with stories about how raves and music used to "authentic" and how everything today is crap.
Well, yes, it's just another kind of "underground scene", you know, the ones on private islands.
Plus, as I mentioned elsewhere. A non-trivial number of today's FT readers are the same people that were at those original raves in the early 90s.
Honestly my favourite news outlet these days, despite my being well to the left of their editorial staff. I read it mostly for their drum and bass coverage.
[^0] See https://www.ft.com/content/7796593c-08ac-485c-afe9-a45ac2c28... or https://www.ft.com/content/084bab07-c5cf-4b25-ba7d-769af6b42..., but there's loads.
Brilliant. I love this on 174 different levels.
https://www.ft.com/content/09f792fc-5548-11e4-89e8-00144feab...
I wouldn’t discredit FT writers as well, as I’m assuming they’re writing for a specific audience.
High volume purchasers in a category are more likely to purchase many things across the category.
I don't go to nightclubs ever, odds that I'm going to go to a rave are also pretty close to zero.
I have a friend who DJs, even removing the nights he performs, he goes to nightclubs infinitely more than I do. He also goes to raves more than I do.
To support that, it looks like music festival attendance is going up over the years. Music festivals are, I think, closer to raves than they are to night clubs, which, by the same logic, would suggest an increase in rave attendance.
Also worth mentioning that some of what was called a rave before is now a club. There is a difference between occupying a decommissioned soviet building after the fall of the Berlin Wall and a fancy club on high valued real estate, even though it used to be the same place.
This isn't global nor is it specific dance music but at least in the UK, festivals are struggling and have declined significantly since the beginning of covid - 204 festivals have disappeared since 2019: https://www.aiforg.com/blog-database/72-uk-festivals-cancell...
It seems like now, we are indeed seeing less festivals, but the remaining ones are becoming bigger and more expensive. So, maybe less festivals but higher budgets.
These are anecdotal evidence, but that's a lot of anecdotes.
In none of these case I saw a particular event motivating this, I guess it was just not profitable. Also worth noting that most night clubs that are still open tend to get terrible reviews on Google (less than 3/5 on average). It is kind of a meme to complain about nightclubs you go to, especially if you get denied entry, but still, not very encouraging.
But also more broadly, I've heard from multiple local venues that one big change is that EDM crowds don't drink as much. This means venues make A LOT less money, and that means fewer venues. If I had to guess, another factor is that younger crowds don't have the buying power older generations had, so if anything they would be MORE likely to go to an "illegal" rave with no cover and do some drugs instead of drinking.
Basically, to me, economic forces suggests that the rave crowd and club crowd are NOT correlated.
edit: and more anecdotal data for you, I use to go to a lot of clubs when I was young (and fewer raves), but now that I'm older me and my group tend to either throw our own parties at home with our own gear, or go to "listening bar" type venues that wouldn't typically be classified as a "club." We're all too old to drink high priced shitty beer and deal with lines and bouncers. I'd rather be able to have a top sound system, order an IPA or cocktail, and maybe even have a seat to lounge in!
In a similar vein, most people I know who love watching sports do not play the sport they enjoy watching. However, like the parent, I suspect that the numbers watching a sport strongly correlates with the numbers playing the sport. There need not be overlap between the watchers and the players for the correlation to stand. Something being in the zeitgeist lifts all related boats, it seems. Raves and clubs are different expressions of what is essentially the same fashion. It seems unlikely that only one expression would die off where the general fashion trend remains intact.
This is a very efficient way to communicate that you don’t have experience with raves and/or clubs.
Raves usually start about then.
They are not remotely the same thing.
For every raver I know, it means going out dancing to electronic music and usually taking some drugs other than alcohol. It doesnt matter if it starts at 1pm and ends at 1am, or whether it starts at 12am and ends at 5am. The time doesnt matter, legality doesn't matter, and location doesn't matter.
I've been "raving" since 2002 and for me it means dancing to electronic dance music and taking drugs, and it can be in a legit nightclub, or someones house, or a festival, or indeed an illegal warehouse rave. Everyone I have "raved" with, used the term interchangably.
If I told my friend, "I was raving at Tomorrowland last year", they would never say, "you can't say you were raving because that's not an illegal event."
Raving is not a scientific or mathematical term that has some precise definition. Don't try and make it that way, that's not what raving is about dude.
For me it means people dancing to electronic music and most likely taking drugs too. It can mean raving in a club or a festival or on the beach in Thailand or in a forest in the UK or in a warehouse in Brooklyn, if there's electronic dance music and drugs, then it's a rave.
Here is what Claude says: "A rave is a large dance party or festival typically featuring electronic dance music (EDM), characterized by: Extended duration - often running late into the night or through early morning hours Electronic music - featuring DJs playing various genres like house, techno, trance, and drum & bass Distinctive atmosphere - using elements like elaborate light shows, lasers, fog machines, and visual projections Communal experience - bringing together large groups of people dancing in a shared space"
It's sort of like the pressures that lead people to pirate versus streaming service.