I analyzed the lineups at the most popular nightclubs | Hacker News Reader

I analyzed the lineups at the most popular nightclubs

dev.karltryggvason.com

166 pointskalli87 comments

I'm just gonna say that some aspect of the data collection here seems flawed: among the SF clubs listed are DNA Lounge and Public Works – which are great clubs, don't get me wrong – but they are very much on the smaller side. And, Phonobar? That is a bar/restaurant, not a nightclub at all. Meanwhile, The Warfield and 1015 Folsom are left out – how does that make any sense?

It's based on popularity on Resident Advisor / RA (those are the clubs that had the most "followers" among their userbase)

This is a classic example of data sourcing bias.

RA is primarily used by independent promoters in the States, which tend to be much smaller and have smaller or less frequent events.

Large promoters who regularly throw events or have the budget for larger events would use their own promotion mechanisms and general population ad networks instead of listing on RA.

> Large promoters who regularly throw events or have the budget for larger events would use their own promotion mechanisms

No (at least in the US) - it’s because of exclusive contracts with the ticketing platforms.

Whereas you can list on RA and other platforms too, the biggest clubs and venues get lucrative deals with eg AXS to only list tickets on their platform.

That's ticketing. There's plenty of listings on RA that don't use RA's ticketing service.

Large promoters that use or have exclusivity deals with AXS or Ticketmaster/LiveNation or Dice still advertise/promote on platforms like Facebook/Instagram, EDM Train, Radiate, etc alongside the ticketing platform's promotion platforms.

RA is the biggest site for electronic subculture since forever, and it's an excellent resource to find out the cool stuff that happens in your city. I don't know why you consider it small, maybe it's a US thing? In Europe, RA is the best resource to find about parties and electronic music in general.

In case you didn’t know America’s music industry is run by cartels… I mean “unregulated monopolies”

What are you talking about ? RA is relevant for the UK at best, outside of that it seems a bit dead. In France everyone use Shotgun.

Which is the best SF nightclub? I got baited by online reviews to visit DNA and was disappointed.

It depends on the music and scene that interests you. Most SF nightclubs are event spaces that host independent promoters of recurring events, so the music and attendance can vary. You'll generally get best results if your friends will be there and you want to see the performing artist(s).

My favorites are Public Works, The Midway, and 1015 Folsom

Madarae is newish but pretty good too, depending on your tastes in music.

It was almost a decade ago I was living in sf but I remember 1015 Folsom’s audio quality was terrible and they had a lot of basic mainstream acts. Maybe it’s improved since then though. Overall SF’s local artists have a cool style and some of the warehouse events can be cool, but the club scene was not my cup of tea.

DNA is good - but it's a club for the actual artist and music to go - and less as a place to hang out on a random night

dunno about the rest of your post but phonobar is legit, it's tiny but it has a dance floor and regularly hosts top-tier talent

Agreed, when i lived in SF it was my favorite venue. Big clubs are overrated.

I love the idea behind it and the visualisation indeed looks awesome, but the RA data behind it is messy to say the least.

For example, 3/7 "nightclubs" it lists in Croatia are not nightclubs. I would also group Kalypso and Zrće Beach together as Kalypso is one out of 4 nightclubs located on Zrće Beach, but the beach itself is not a venue. Similarly, Barbarella's is kind of an afterparty destination for festivals organised at the Garden Resort. They only match 6%, but I wouldn't call them completely separate. This is the kind of "lore" that's impossible to catch from raw data.

I like the Essential Mix visualisation even more! It's such a shame most of the other ones appear dead due to API changes.

Author here, this is good to know.! I tried to spotcheck the regions and countries, but wasn't familiar with all of them so didn't want to make assumptions (and didn't make time to research them thoroughly). Not sure if/how I could try to correct that.

> This is the kind of "lore" that's impossible to catch from raw data.

Agreed this project definitely banged up against those sorts of walls a few times. Still think it's worth trying, hopefully the information offered one can find outweighs any distortions it introduces. Maybe something that should have been explicitly acknowledged in the piece.

> I like the Essential Mix visualisation even more! It's such a shame most of the other ones appear dead due to API changes.

Thanks, happy to hear that. I keep meaning to go back to the essential mix one, get new data and apply some of the stuff I've learned since!

Sounds like RA could have a lot of DJs promoting their small bar gigs and day parties.

When I was DJing locally in SF, that was exactly what we were doing.

In excitement over the cool-looking visualizations, we lose the sight of its usefulness. The entire article hardly has any text talking about how these visualization would be useful and to whom.

Even if this is an ask from a top-level managers hoping that it would help their decision-making, let me tell you that, this will be binned after everyone agrees that the visualizations are very cool. Decisions are driven by other factors.

> Even if this is an ask from a top-level managers

This was a pandemic project from someone who likely did it just because they thought it was cool/interesting.

Note to people considering publishing articles describing passion projects on their personal websites (especially if they may be considered exciting).

Stop!

It is vital that you first hire an independent product manager and perform market fit analysis. Ask yourself "Does my blog deliver high ROI and facilitate decision making by key stakeholders?". If not, it has no use and should not be published.

Don't confuse this list with actually very popular djs. Many clubs in this list host mostly resident and local djs (like Berghain as the club name/culture is the main reason people go there, not the lineup) instead of popular touring djs who have a big fan base of their own (and are more expensive to book).

people go to a club because the music is good, even at the shittiest of popular venues everything follows from there

I don't know you can state that universally. A lot of people go to a club because it's the "in" spot to be seen at (not that clubs are in any way unique in that regard)

Music is not the only aspect. Even more important is the vibe.

Setting / atmosphere / vibe also plays a role.

If a know a place that has angry bouncers or annoying rules, I rather go to a place that he less then ideal music.

One local club has a rule that you can't drink water from the bathroom tab, and they even turn off the cold water. I'm not going there, even when the music is fire.

I've never once when to a club because of the music they play, and I can't remember my friends ever suggesting we go to a different one because the music is better.

It's more about the atmosphere, who's there and the mood you're looking for that night.

They also have something like a 2 month ban on playing elsewhere after you DJ for them. And it doesn't seem like the pay is great to compensate. The upside is exposure, because their lineups are phenomenal and consistent, You don't really have to go there for the music, it's guaranteed to be good.

https://www.scribd.com/document/639992014/Untitled#:~:text=R...

The idea that people supposedly don't go to Berghain for the artists is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

OP didn't say that. They said a lot of people go to Berghain a) just because it's Berghain, arguably the most famous techno club in the world, and b) because you're pretty much guaranteed to have some good artists if you do go.

Their famously strict door policy also means that it's entirely possible to try to go there for a specific artist and get denied entry.

https://www.euronews.com/culture/2025/03/26/berghain-more-be...

OP said that was the main reason, but that's complete nonsense. Most people go there primarily for the music. The artists there are world-famous DJs who tour around the world in their particular niche of electronic music. The visitors are mostly enthusiasts who like this particular type of music and are well aware of the differences between the various artists. If you know what you're doing and why you're there, the chances of being rejected are actually relatively low.

Berghain doesn't cater to world-famous djs for various reasons. The visitors are usually enthusiasts (like many are in the berlin club scene) but from my experience the Berghain community and culture is much less about a lineup than in other techno communities.

People definitely go to BH for the artists. Of course plenty just go for clout too, but other than the cult that goes almost every weekend that is a pretty new thing.

You may be interested to learn they pay a flat fee for all bookings (not sure about residents). The booked artists are also forbidden to play anywhere else in Berlin for a period before and after (1-2 months, IIRC), and the fee is ridiculously low. Artists don’t even get many GL spots.

Am I missing something or is the author using dots for both breaking up large numbers and also for decimal points?

Yes, I assume it is because you use dots to seperate large numbers in most European languages and they forgot it's different in English.

usually its a combination of . , not exclusively . for both the thousands seperator and the radix point.

Well, they appear to have remembered it when typing the radix point, but forgot it when it came to the thousands separator.

This might have happened to me before as well...

Including San Francisco and not Chicago? Criminal.

This is pretty cool, interesting to think about what causes more or less resident DJs.

As a side note, on the RA events sometimes artists are listed in the description but not linked in the description so there could be some artists missing. In my experience it tends to vary on the nightclub.

Granted I'm not a DJ but a jazz musician. I think there's a slight premium for "out of town" acts compared to local acts of possibly equal quality. It could simply be due to scarcity. If a certain act is only in town for one night, then it's your only chance to see them, whereas you can put off seeing a local band for a while.

> I think there's a slight premium for "out of town" acts

In the EDM world, it can often be much more than a slight premium. Ever since streaming took over music sales, performance fees have become the key source of income for most artists.

That's a good point. In fact, I'm not a full time musician, but performing is my only source of musical income. I've never bothered with trying to make money from recordings.

I do know some indie artists who make a bit of extra money at performances selling CDs to people who still buy them. I think it takes advantage of the immediacy of the moment, and the fact that a lot of people are actually not savvy about finding stuff online.

This is really cool but in my experience, RA is typically used for less popular “underground” (in very large quotes) events, warehouse parties, etc. It might be different in Europe or other cities here in the states. The data for such events is interesting in its own right, but it’s probably not quite representative of the most popular clubs and/or artists.

Perhaps doing a similar thing with Ticketmaster/tixr/all the other ticket apps and combining them together could produce more representative data, of course you’d still have the problem of having to filter out actual clubs.

on an unrelated note, what in gods name is that color scheme on the visualizations? xD

Btw, SF night clubs actively refuse to let “tech nerds” in. I witnessed whole groups of people who attended the huggingface “Woodstock of AI” meetup circa 2023 and the local clubs would refuse to let anyone in who wore glasses or wore Patagonia.

Thanks John Hughes films!

That doesn't make sense. Huggingface is a 'popular' tech company. Maybe those 'nerds' just didn't have tickets

I'm talking about an event that drew ~5000 people, not the staff of HF themselves.

The "tickets" that these nerds didn't have is more accurately known as "game" or "rizz" by zoomers.

No one outside of tech knows what that is

>Btw, SF night clubs actively refuse to let “tech nerds” in.

I got escorted past the line at DNA lounge because I had a Firefox shirt on. (Only solid black shirt I had, outta respect to the goths rocked it with some black jeans.)

Are you aware that one of the best clubs in the bay is owned by a former "tech bro"?

>DNA Lounge is an all-ages nightclub, restaurant and cafe in the SoMa district of San Francisco owned by Jamie Zawinski, a former Netscape programmer and open-source software hacker.[3] The club features DJ dancing, live music, burlesque performances, and occasionally conferences, private parties, and film premieres.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_Lounge#History

In general, clubs don't want to let in folks who don't match the culture... for example, Berghain, at it's core, wants people coming in who want to dance, so if you show up in glasses and Patagonia you're not going to enjoy yourself.

Finally, be mindful of the energy you put out -- any group of people in business casual trying to get into the hottest nightclub in town might find their hopes dashed.

Frankly, based on your post I think maybe an air of entitlement and persecution might be your issue, not glasses or a sweater vest, because spoiler alert: if you don't mention your work, no one knows what you do for a living, and SF is probably wayyyy more welcoming to "uncool" people getting into clubs than someplace like NYC or LA, where if you're not a literal model or some kind of entertainment bigshot no clothing choice (or lack thereof) is getting you in.

> In general, clubs don't want to let in folks who don't match the culture... for example, Berghain, at it's core, wants people coming in who want to dance, so if you show up in glasses and Patagonia you're not going to enjoy yourself.

I can tell you, if I show up to an event without my glasses, I'm not going to enjoy myself either :P But, thanks to the internet, I can listen to dance music without having to go to a club https://www.di.fm/ (also I have the joy of having a local dance music station https://www.c895.org/ so I can listen to dance music with just an FM radio)

> In general, clubs don't want to let in folks who don't match the culture...

Which Officially Doesn't correlate with skin tone, nope nope nope...

Ah I miss De School. It always feels a bit uncanny seeing Tillatec wearing the hand me downs, even though they have their own thing going.

And the most interesting part is that despite falling short from its predecessor, Tilla Tec is the best currently working club in The Netherlands.

Looks like I'm in the minority here but I was not impressed by the visualizations or the color scheme or anything. Oh well...

This was a great read. I used to work at RA as a dev, I always look back and wish I did more with the data I had access too!

I think this analysis is cool, and the comments are too critical. The author put something out there, documented it, and I learned something by reading it. Thank you.

Maybe the title needs reframing to soften the reader’s expectations, and I definitely agree that RA as a data source has important limitations that should be mentioned.

Might have been nice to know where the clubs are? San Francisco? South Africa? Belgium? And what demographic the clubs serve, i.e are any of the clubs LGBTQ+, or are the all hetero? They don't generally play the same material.

If you click a club its region and country should be in its detail panel underneath their logo. The region and country filters should show you just the clubs in the given region/country.

Demographic analysis would have been interesting I agree, but I didn't know of a good data source for that and it's hard to parse from line up data (especially in places one isn't familiar with)

The biggest and best clubs in Berlin at least are pretty much all LGBTQ+. The best and most famous club in the world, Berghain, is famously gay.

I just came to the comments section to say "blablabla flawed blabla incorrect data blablabla representation failure blablabla... but I just saw others came first.

Yeah, humans.

The technical details of a visualisation built around the lineups and programming at the world's most popular nightclubs.

D3 is the only charting library that I've loved.

I love finding new music. Looks like now I can go find some far away clubs and listen to their djs while doing some coding.

You know those ressources?

https://music.ishkur.com/

https://www.music-map.com/

Awesome, thank you!

What's with using . for both decimal and thousands?

I kinda understand swapping witch is which, but why have no distinction.

I wonder if you’d get a higher percent of overlap if you only focused on Friday/Saturday bookings

For the San Francisco venues, some of my favorite artists come on random days, and as a 40-something with a kid I would only go out on nights other than Friday/Saturday if I REALLY liked the artist. From this perspective, it might make sense to weight weekday outliers higher

Was surprised to not see Space (the Ibiza club) and it turns it closed back in 2016.

I actually want to go to Haunted House more than I want to go to Aqua.

Data raw material is meh, as are the results (clubs are clustered by geography and music style? Shocker), but the post isn't about collection or survey methodology.

The hard work here is in the analysis and presentation, which are nice. That will still be valuable if applied to better-curated datasets. I don't blame the author for working with a mediocre dataset that happened to reflect his interests, he's not making big claims about what this means for the entertainment industry or the future of culture.

As an introvert, what are you even supposed to do at "clubs"?

Besides having your eardrums damaged

If clubs aren't your thing, then don't go. Easy peasy.

Talking to people is not actually possible at clubs because it's just too loud. So, it's oddly perfect for introverts in that sense. Nobody goes there to talk.

It's why I never liked clubs I prefer small bars where you can talk to people. I've been in Berlin for 16 years now and there are plenty of those bars around. Even now that I no longer drink alcohol, I still enjoy going there.

But I never saw the point of the club scene here. I don't actually mind some of the music and there are some nice Berghain playlists on Spotify that I listen to occasionally. I just never felt any need to actually go there. Just not my thing. My impression of talking to people that do go to these things is that it's a lot about just being seen there or being able to brag about having been there. And then there are of course a lot of people that just go nuts and do that for the whole weekend while taking lots of pills. Also not my thing. But live and let live as far as I'm concerned.

Berghain particularly doesn't just let everybody in. People queue for ages and can then get told off for looking wrong or whatever. Elon Musk famously got an access denied there once. Not cool enough. Which I find hilarious. But the prospect of being vetted like that is a definite turn off for me. I just don't like that kind of snobbishness.

> So, it's oddly perfect for introverts in that sense. Nobody goes there to talk.

For an introvert, the only place better than being in the crowd at a music venue is being on the stage. There are sooo many introverts in bands and especially DJs; some of the greatest musicians are introverts. Performing is a form of radical self-care, and introverts are actually really good at judging the vibe of a crowd.

> Nobody goes there to talk.

9am garden in the famous Homopatik party after two nights in ://about blank club in Berlin tends to disagree (back in 2013).

Edit: Elon Musk not getting into Berghain is still something me and my friends celebrate every year on that day when it happened. Hilarious.

> Elon Musk famously got an access denied there once.

Also wasted Richie Hawtin, IIRC. And of course, as I'm sure he asked, they knew who he was :D

When it comes to electronic music, there are basically two types of clubs.

One type is the mega club. These are see-and-be-seen places. Ibiza. Vegas. Miami. The DJs are very famous, but often because they have a few EDM "hits"--not because of their selection or mixing skills. These places have tables, bottle service, and beautiful people. The DJs here often do nothing: they may have a USB drive that they press "play" on and then pretend to mix.

Then there's another class of club: the "indie" electronic music club. These places have djs whose skill is more about selection, mixing, and crowd/vibe management. The djs here often have respected production careers but often not.

What you do at these clubs is simply dance. Usually by yourself, listening to music. The best of these clubs will not blow out your hearing because the sound system is exquisitely tuned.

As an introvert, the second class of club sounds like it would be perfect for you!

As an aside, if you've never experienced a truly world-class DJ (of the second type, not the first), it's an incredible experience. Even if you find electronic music "boring", these people are absolute masters at taking you on an emotional journey.

The best way to experience this is at one of the top festivals. The second best way is at a club. The third best way is at home, with great headphones, and soundcloud/youtube dj sets. NOT spotify.

> Even if you find electronic music "boring", these people are absolute masters at taking you on an emotional journey. The best way to experience this is at one of the top festivals. The second best way is at a club. The third best way is at home

Hell I LOVE The Midnight, Com Truise, Essenger, Empire of the Sun, Robert Parker, Gunship, FM-84, Молчат Дома (Molchat Doma) and other Slavsynth groups I can't even pronounce the names of..

but the best way to jam out to that is to go on an actual journey ^^ a long drive, an open road, no stops.. Being stationary even if dancing just doesn't fit in with the images those sounds give me (picture those synthwave/outrun posters with purple suns and ringed planets in the background sky)

I really wish there were some modern games and movies made around that vibe.

> The best way to experience this is at one of the top festivals. The second best way is at a club.

I would respectfully disagree and swap these, unless the festival is something like Freerotation. Festivals tend to bring out the more consumer friendly, hands-in-the-air side, and more often than not, force everyone to condense their sets, losing a lot of the "storytelling", risk-taking and deeper cuts.

What remains of techno has largely rotted in the last 5+ years due to the high-visibility, high octane arms race "business techno" festival energy, for example.

I was thinking something like Dekmantel in NL, Horst in Belgium, or Bahidorá in Mexico.

Socialize? Dance? Let loose?

As a wise man once said, "Free your mind and your ass will follow."

I'm also introverted and haven't been to clubs in over 10 years, so can't speak for today's crowd. Despite being an introvert, I pushed myself to socialize. Primary motivation was just being somewhere fun with friends or work colleagues where I can dance/listen to music I like, people watch, or the one thing most people don't readily admit to: meet potential partners for sex. What actually happened was a lot more of the first thing and A LOT less of the last thing though lol. You're around a bunch of drunk people, something funny is bound to happen and those hilarious moments really made it memorable.

Dance! Dance dance dance dance dance. When you lose yourself in the music and the motion, it's a type of spiritual experience.

The risk of hearing damage is easily mitigated by 1) wearing earplugs 2) going to better clubs which have properly tuned sound systems.

> As an introvert, what are you even supposed to do at "clubs"?

I know many introverts who like music. I also know many introverts who like dancing if they don't have to feel like the spotlight is on them. Many clubs offer a good chance to do either or both.

In addition, you may of course go as a group of friends. Then it's an activity to do together. You have some drinks and chat in a setting that's different from where you are every day.

> Besides having your eardrums damaged

Earplugs help a lot if one's ears are sensitive to loud music. Many clubs also have areas where the music is far less loud.

Dance, mostly. It's irrationally fun, but only if you can get in the right mood. (Drugs optional - I don't even drink alcohol.)

I will say if you are at a 6-day outdoor festival with camping it is a lot easier to get in that mood than being at a nightclub for what, 4-6 hours? Another comment referenced this too. I don't know if I should share my recommendations because they're better when they're not so well known. I found them by word of mouth from people I met at clubs.

Good clubs (RIP Wilde Renate) also have some kind of chill-out area where you can actually talk to people who are often also in the mood to talk to strangers just like you are. I presume it's an intentional accident that (at least at some) the indoor dancing area is always hot and the outdoor social area is always cold, which makes you want to alternate spaces like a Finnish sauna.

It's an open secret that most people who didn't come with a partner are, at least a little bit, hoping to meet one and have sex, but it happens much less often than mass media would have you think. That is in no way mandatory or the only reason to be there. It is simply one of many things that are permitted and has a small chance of happening whenever you socialize in general.

I should also mention there can be a big difference in vibes depending on the night - whether it's a random Friday or Saturday night, or a weeknight, or a particular party (see Resident Advisor and/or word of mouth).

This comment was rate-limited.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com