Author: Alexander Vladimirov
Festivals, and especially clubs, are in a tricky situation in recent years, and 2024 has arguably been the most challenging year after COVID and since the start of the war against Ukraine. Obvious reasons are inflation and less money in the pocket of festival goers/clubbers, less obvious ones include the lack of the usual generation takeover on the dancefloor due the COVID years, and lastly, there seems to be a transition in genres and trends where festivals and clubs need to adapt to.
No one likes endings. The end of a good book, a relationship, or a great night out—none of these are ever on anyone’s “looking forward” list. That’s why we have afterparties. We just tend to cling to things. And now, as we witness the current decline of the underground electronic club scene (or the independent club scene if you wish), none of us, its devoted members, like the feeling of it.
But here’s my question: Could this decline, this end of an era, actually be a good thing for the same club culture we’ve dedicated so many nights to? Bear with me.
The Decline of Underground Clubs Explained
For those of you who aren’t part of the electronic scene but are club-curious and wondering what kind of crisis I’m talking about, let me add some context to bring you up to speed.
The decline of the scene consists of two interconnected phenomena: a) fewer and fewer clubgoers, and b) more and more underground clubs closing.
Let’s start with a few examples from the city that media outlets love to call the club capital of the world (not that they’re wrong): Berlin.
Club Watergate, the iconic venue on the river Spree operating since 2002, officially threw its final party this past New Year’s Eve. The team behind the club cited several reasons for the closure: “…high rents, war, inflation, rising costs, or simply a change in the nightlife dynamics of the next club generation and a shift in the relevance of club culture in general…”
Club Commission jumped in with some hard data. The non-profit organisation representing the interests of Berlin clubs shared a research at the end of last year showing that 46% of clubs surveyed are considering closing within the next 12 months; nearly two-thirds (61%) report a significant decrease in profits; and more than half (52%) of clubs report a decline in visitor numbers compared to the previous year.
Now let’s shift our focus to a smaller club scene—the one I’m part of. It’s in Sofia, Bulgaria, an EU member country, famous among tourists (especially from the UK) for its affordable nightlife, day life, and alcohol-positive culture.
The local non-mainstream club scene was on the rise in the years leading up to 2020, with new club openings, more DJs getting reasonably paid, more international guest artists flying in every weekend, and—the thing that made it all possible—more people filling up the space between the DJ booth and the bar.
In 2019, two brand new clubs opened in the capital: the perfectly located, dimly lit club Micro in the city centre and Koncept, having one of the best sound systems in town. The reopening of the local underground mainstay Studio Elegantly Wasted was also a highlight. We should definitely mention another club, Tell Me, by then already an established pillar of Sofia’s nightlife. The then recently opened EXE, a more mainstream and commercially oriented club, was yet another proof of the growing interest in electronic music in Bulgaria.
And then COVID hit.
In the following couple of years, it felt like something cracked. It wasn’t just the economic challenges caused by the pandemic, but the dynamic of the clubgoers. These two years of unwanted pause marked the moment when one generation stopped clubbing—settling down, having kids, a mortgage, and accounts for every video streaming service available—while the next generation didn’t learn going out in the same way. The fallout came quickly.
“After the sudden impact of COVID, and because of the unpredictability of the period, we had to sell the business just a year and a half after opening,” shares Yosif Lazrak, one of the main people behind Koncept. After initially succeeding to get some limited funds through a crowdfunding campaign, the club as we knew it closed its doors in 2021.
Recently, other clubs followed suit, with Micro closing at the beginning of this year. That Divine, the leading local promoter crew (in my humble opinion), just announced plans to take a break in 2026. Even the mainstream, always-full EXE is now closing the venue and shifting their focus to large shows and festivals—formats that have proven to generate more profits globally.
In unofficial talks, club owners in Sofia share that visitor numbers have dropped by more than 50% compared to pre-pandemic times, and profit declines are similarly steep.
As we can see, across established and emerging scenes, in both capitals and smaller cities, there’s a noticeable increase in club closures worldwide. Just two more examples are One O One, a venue in Clermont-Ferrand, France, which has been a fixture for nearly 15 years and announced its closure in April, and Ankali in Prague, which has recently raised concerns about its imminent shut down. It seems no one is being spared.
But here comes the twist.
Enter the Mainstream
Let’s change location again, this time to Ibiza—one of the main points of modern commercial club life, with thousands of tourists flying in every weekend. A 2024 report by the International Music Summit, an annual conference held on the Balearic island, shows that Ibiza’s club ticketing revenue reached €141 million in 2023, up 14% from 2022, and 76% from 2019. The report also reveals that the global electronic music industry grew by 17% in 2023, reaching $11.8 billion.
So what’s going on? It’s like we’re talking about two different worlds—one flourishing, while the other is dying. And though people call it all part of the electronic club scene—from the glamour of Ibiza and the scale of large EDM festivals to the darkness of warehouses and sweaty basements—they are truly two separate things. To call all music made with synths, drum machines, and computers “electronic music” is like calling Doom Metal, Indie Rock, and Country all just “guitar music.”
Like most art forms, long before it was appropriated by mass culture and the commercial machine, electronic music started as niche, unpopular, and bizarre. Electronic music pioneers in the 60s and 70s were met with confusion and misunderstanding. Suzanne Ciani, for example, the American composer and sound designer known for her innovative work with the Buchla synthesizer, struggled to make people grasp what she was doing during her performances. As she shares years later in a 1997 interview about playing the complicated Buchla synth: “I would do concerts, and people would say, ‘Where is the sound coming from?’”
In 1994, just after the Second Summer of Love, when Acid House and Techno were spreading across the globe, from the clubs in the USA to the streets of Sofia, the UK Parliament made several changes to the law, mainly aimed at cracking down on unlicensed rave parties. They banned gatherings where people played music made up mostly of “repetitive beats”—yes, that phrase was part of the law.
And another example from the pioneers: when in 1974 Kraftwerk released their landmark track Autobahn, one music journalist described it as “spineless, emotionless sound with no variety, less taste … for God’s sake, keep the robots out of music.”
Well, as we all know now, not only the robots didn’t stay out of music but in a span of around 20 years, after Autobahn, they went straight to the top of the pop.
As the sound grew more popular, its venues followed the same path. This is perfectly illustrated by UFO, considered the first techno club in Berlin, with ceilings of just about 1.90 m and a 100-person capacity, later evolving into Tresor, the 2,000-person-capacity legend now renowned worldwide.
In the span of 40 years, club life transformed from a small-scale, not-always-legal experience to large-scale entertainment. Which leads us to the topic of festivals. More specifically, commercially-driven, supersized festivals—from stage and audience sizes to DJ fees.
While at the Amsterdam Dance Event last October, I noticed that the prevailing topic was the transformation of the electronic music industry—from the struggles of independent venues to the unrestrained glamour of the big festival. During a panel called “The Future of Clubs,” Duncan Stutterheim, the founder of the Dutch event company ID&T—owners of festivals such as the hardcore gabber and techno event Thunderdome—shared how the big festivals are challenging the scene by paying astronomical artist fees, with some of techno’s darlings of the day commanding more than €100,000. The thing is, Stutterheim continued, this is profitable for large festivals because of their scale. But not for the clubs, especially the small independent ones.
You remember EXE—the Sofia club that recently announced its closure? Well, now you understand why they would opt for a festival instead.
In addition to large festivals paying astronomical fees that clubs can’t compete with, they also have exclusivity rights for both location and timing. This means an artist can be locked out from playing in clubs for months or within certain geographic areas.
This is just one of many ways the mainstream is impacting the underground. The very scene that paved its way.
As the independent club scene drew in more people, it led to bigger venues, more events, higher fees, and more profits. It built an entire infrastructure to handle it all.
For about 35 years, clubs grew fuller and fuller, not just with people who can name every track from a DJ set without needing Shazam, but also with those who just wanted to have some casual fun. And suddenly, that fun was somewhere else.
The Case for Scaling Back
At the heart of this decline is the fact that the infrastructure built during years of growth can no longer be sustained. When people argue for keeping it at the scale of its peak days, they often highlight the cultural significance of the scene, while simultaneously using economic arguments like the number of jobs that would be lost. But economic aspects are different from cultural ones.
The question is: should we try to keep this infrastructure on life support through means like government subsidies, or is this an opportunity for the underground to return to its roots, becoming authentic, raw, and weird once again? A place to escape the very conformism it once rebelled against, a safe space for those who truly need it, even if their numbers are small, rather than catering to those simply looking for entertainment for the night. Because while scaling back might not be good for the night time economy, it could be the only way to preserve the culture.
Back at the end of the 70s, when Frankie Knuckles started the first house parties at The Warehouse, it was all driven by the need for expression through original music and the desire for community—not as a way to create an industry. Those needs are still present, so shouldn’t we focus on them?
In the BBC feature Nightclubs: Is The Party Over?, Scottish DJ Simone points out that “clubbing has become a luxury.” This is just one more argument for moving away from the club glamour towards smaller DIY venues, where the raw atmosphere and local artists translate into cheaper drinks and entry fees.
A step in this direction is the #SaveTheUnderground initiative by Tresor.West, the Dortmund-based sister club of Berlin‘s nightlife institution Tresor. This series of community events, which started in January, focuses on local DJs instead of big names, with secret line-ups and free entry. They emphasize: “Going out shouldn’t be a privilege, it should remain accessible.” The initiative has been deemed a success, attracting hundreds of young partygoers, and now the community events will continue regularly, with free entry until midnight and just €5 after that.
Tresor.West’s initiative is a perfect example that when you want to bring change, you need to act locally. So, if you want to keep the culture alive, don’t look at the VIP festival areas, champagne, and private jets of the electronic music mainstream. Instead, throw a party in a basement with a DIY sound system, organise a small rave in nature, and gather like-minded people for the love of the music and the sake of human connection.
In short, the club scene as we knew it in the past 15 years is going away. But that’s a chance for it to get back to being real. Because sometimes you just need to let things end so something new can emerge. Or even to find a renewed energy for what came before.
About the author:
Alexander Vladimirov is the founder and editor-in-chief of Fonoteka Elektrika, a Bulgarian media platform dedicated to electronic music and club culture. Over the years, he has interviewed and highlighted a wide range of local artists, from underground acts to internationally recognised Bulgarian names like Kink and Stefan Goldmann. Fonoteka Elektrika includes a website, a podcast, and an audio-visual series called Altitude Attitude. Beyond his work with Fonoteka Elektrika, Alexander has written for outlets such as the Bulgarian culture magazine “Виж!” (“See!”), and currently co-hosts the online video series “Sofia Tonight”.