Is the Hard Dance club-scene dying…?

For the average Dutchie or international traveller, weekends typically consist of either a 3-day festival or a one-day event on Saturday, followed by diving into a kebab and jumping into bed or rolling on at a friend’s house to continue the madness in true after-party style. During the summertime, Hard Dance’s weekend agenda is flooded with a surfeit of festivals running across the country and heck, even the crisp winter isn’t that miserable when you have something great to look forward to each weekend!

Here in The Netherlands, the festival scene is amongst the biggest in the world and one can easily fill their entire weekend with non-stop partying. Even when Defqon.1 is on, unlucky fans still have an abundance of choices if they still wanted to party – it might not be Hardstyle, but there’s always something on. Hold up – notice that I’m talking solely about festivals. Many travellers of Europe would already know that nightclubs are the centre-piece of the party scene and after visiting countries such as Denmark, Germany, Greece and Spain, it’s apparent that the nightlife is a lot more important than the ‘day-life.’ Even in Australia, before the absurd lock-out laws and alcohol restrictions came into place Sydney was a vibrant city that boasted an exciting clubbing scene.

Upon visiting The Netherlands for the first time three years ago, I expected to be welcomed into a 7-day partying week, however I was wrong. I expected to be witnessing Hard Dance artists’ performing in sweaty underground clubs on weeknights, but no, I was wrong – over here it’s all about the summer festivals and large-scale indoor events during the colder months…

If one thing’s for sure, it’s that the events market is growing exponentially and becoming more competitive. Everyone loves visiting iconic festivals such as Defqon.1, Intents, WiSH, Dominator, Decibel, The Qontinent, Dreamfields and Q-BASE; I can imagine that many years ago one’s summer would revolve around these events, however each year it seems that new concepts are popping up left, right and centre, flooding party-goers weekend agendas! As a festival lover there’s nothing more I love than partying during the day, however even I can realise that the club scene is slowing down.

In retrospect, I understand why party-goers would choose visiting a festival over clubbing; for the amount of A-list artists you can see for a fixed price compared to paying 10 or 20 euro to watch one (maybe two) headliners in a club, it certainly weighs up. Secondly, it makes a lot more sense to travel for one hour to go to an all-day festival compared to going to a club for a few hours. Another point I’d like to raise is the whole festival ‘vibe’ that’s simply matchless when you compare it to clubs. Personally there’s nothing I love more than relaxing in the sun with a glass of wine and dancing along to whoever’s playing on stage – it’s a lot more enticing than dancing in a club and avoiding the creepy dude who keeps trying to grind up on you.

During the winter months especially I’ve noticed a lot of new concepts popping up. A lot of the time they’re held in medium-sized venues, but rarely in night-clubs. It seems as though there’s simply no market for club nights and the thought of a club night rarely entices Hard Dance fans. The scene is so developed in The Netherlands and the demand for larger events is so high that there’s simply no point going back to basics – however, this puts immense pressure on event organisations focussing on small-scale parties. Constantly in competition with medium-sized events and large productions, the notion of ‘clubbing’ will rarely cross a Hard Dance fan’s mind.

The best example I can think of is Club Matrixx in Nijmegen; even when I lived in Australia I’d heard a lot of stories from this notorious club and its XXlerator concept. Closing the book on an exciting chapter, the baton was passed on and former Club Matrixx was renamed Club Monte Carlo. Furthermore, at the beginning of 2016, Club Monte Carlo was home to the new concept Fatality, which has also extended beyond clubbing boundaries after holding their first successful, sold-out outdoor festival. This wasn’t the end for XXlerator though, the concept went on to conquer new and exciting endeavours, which wouldn’t have been possible if they still ran a club. For XXlerator, the closing of Club Matrixx opened a lot of new doors as they were now able to extend capacity and hold kick-ass events such as XXlerator Raw, Roughstate, XX-Mas, Lunatixx and Carnaval.

For a lot of club concepts there’s a large risk of the club going bankrupt because of the ‘lack’ of appeal, or additionally opportunities to grow and extend themselves. Saying that, there’s still a small handful of Hard Dance club-nights who are seeing a remarkable amount of visitors flooding through their doors. The first club I think of is Epic Tilburg, who hold their Epic Hard concept on Friday nights. Judging by the frequency of their events, this seems to be one of the most successful club concepts as this organisation has brought the likes of Deetox, Regain, Mark With A K, Partyraiser, Digital Punk, and Radical Redemption (among others) into the club in 2016.

Furthermore, most Hard Dance fans would be familiar with the notorious Masif Saturdays in Sydney, Australia. Seeing as the frequency of mid to large-scale events in Australia is obviously less, Masif exists to allow Hardstyle fanatics to get their weekly fix. Despite the lock-out laws ravaging through Sydney’s nightlife and forcing several night-clubs to close their doors, Masif has stayed afloat and quite successful for that matter as international headliners flood through the doors at least once a month. Of course without the presence of indoor events or festivals every single weekend, Masif Saturdays is able to remain so successful, however for nightclubs in The Netherlands this really isn’t the case.

Seeing as clubs are continuously in competition with indoor events and festivals, it’s harder than one may anticipate to successfully execute a solid club night. In hindsight, is the death of clubs necessarily a bad thing? Like XXlerator, I guess it gives these small organisations the opportunity to expand themselves, however on the more unfortunate side of the medallion, some of these concepts shut their doors indefinitely.

Let’s now take it to our readers – tell us, do you prefer clubs or festivals and indoor events? Let us know in the comments below which one you prefer and why!