Electronic music culture still transforms lives - and the world

Do electronic music and club culture still have the power to change lives?

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Ah, the late 80s. A different time.You know the cliches…. Big hair. Shoulder pads and aerobics. BMXs and moonwalking. The Russian Empire was mired in a brutal, destructive conflict on its borders. The US President was gripped by scandal. There was a new movie out called 'Naked Gun'. (actually, maybe some of it wasn't that different).

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Most of all, a tsunami of electronic music and club culture was sweeping over Europe. Acid house and the various Summers Of Love transformed the destinies of many of the figures who've since been named IMS Legends. Future Defected founder Simon Dunmore started DJing and running coaches to raves at London Zoo. Early in the decade, Sven Våth was inspired to drive to Ibiza and sleep in his car just to get close to the mainspring. As Agent and head of ‘Team Disco’ at CAA’s Maria May (who dropped out of higher education to pursue a life in music) says: "the rave scene hit and everything changed".

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At this year's IMS Ibiza, both multi-hypenate label founder, designer, artist manager, DJ, author, and creator of the infamous instagram yellow-squares Elijah, and author Andy Crysell's keynotes referenced the idea that electronic music and club culture have the power to change lives. For many of us, your correspondent included, plunging into club culture at an impressionable age resulted in a massive life course correction. For - hopefully - all of us, being exposed to different types of people and perspectives on the dancefloor has fundamentally changed our understanding of ourselves and others. Just hearing a techno or drum'n'bass track on a proper sound system for the first time, or spending three days awake at a festival has changed the brain chemistry of far too many people I know (and that's leaving aside any actual brain changing chemicals).

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But acid house was a perfect storm. In the UK, for example, surprisingly generous unemployment benefits combined with a staggering decline in traditional industrial careers catalysed a generation of working class artists and entrepreneurs with a basic financial safety net - and time on their hands. Combined with an earth-shattering new sound and culture, the opportunities were (in retrospect at least) obvious.

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And it's that word, opportunity, that matters. The acid house generation's opportunities: to get an education in business, art, music etc etc, that they might never have had, for creativity, for self expression, for a different way of life, and, yes, to earn a living doing something they love, have shaped our world: from architecture and advertising to fashion, the music industry, technology and leisure (Andy's book, Selling The Night, lays this out in compelling detail).

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Nearly 40 years into this great experiment, do those opportunities really still exist? Where do those people - young and old - inspired by our culture to embrace life changing opportunities even start, in 2025? And how can we, as an industry, keep those opportunities available?

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With help from Andy Crysell and Elijah, we delved a little deeper.

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Ain't Nothin' Goin' on but the Rent

It's more expensive than ever to live in many cities. And, generally, cities are where club culture happens. "Every initiative that makes it easier to live also makes it easier to create," said Elijah in his IMS Ibiza keynote, and the reverse holds true. This is a structural, society-wide, global issue that even properly paid internship schemes, targeted scholarships, equitable remuneration for artists and creatives, and employer flexibility when it comes to working from home can't really solve on their own. But they're a start. Sometimes that's all people need.

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Technophilia

What Simon did would be a whatsapp group now. Paper flyers are now instagram posts. And organising a community around a shared passion, designing an aesthetic that reflects it, even building a business, are, in the digital age - when people who might be into what you're doing can be reached en masse, when there are trillions of terabytes of design software, video tutorials and 'how-to' guides accessible through a device in your pocket, when events like IMS Ibiza are living a repository for 40 years of institutional knowledge - in theory easier than ever. "The entry is zero," says Elijah about making music in 2025. "If you've got access to wifi and computer, that barrier is already gone."

As we're seeing with AI, technology is no magic bullet. But combining it with the fundamental principles that have fuelled this culture from the year dot - while avoiding technology's tendencies towards social isolation - might just be where the opportunities are.

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Resist 'Festivalisation'  

In Andy's book, he mentions 'festivalisation', the idea that club culture is moving away from smaller, community led venues towards bigger, flashier, one off events. On the one hand - bigger events, bigger teams, more pyro, more lasers: more opportunities, right? Well, not exactly. We're going to dig into the vital role of small venues in a future piece, but the festivalisation of club culture comes with bigger investment and bigger risk - and that means fewer opportunities for learning and making mistakes, for developing new talent, and for incubating the next generation. When millions are on the line, who's got the time? Every night we support small venues and collectives, and support bigger club brands that support them, we keep more pathways open.

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Don't quit your day job

"If you are interested in, like, broadly 'making stuff'," says Elijah, "how can you make that stuff without damaging your health or mental health or living in squalor? If you spend four days working somewhere and then you're able to spend half your free time working on your craft or working on the music, or whatever it's going to be, you can survive and you can live alright. Quick, you've won. Carry on." In 2025, having a day job alongside your endeavours in electronic music or creativity isn't a sign of failure or a lack of commitment. It's a platform. Maybe it's the key to survival. As Elijah points out, a successful career in this scene is "a 1% experience", not something typical.

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…because it's not always about a job

This writer would like to strive for a utopia where talent and creativity is remunerated as highly as - say - working in an investment bank (hell, let's do the nurses as well, while we're at it). But Elijah reminds us - echoes of Oscar Wilde - that it's ok to make something just for the sake of it. To throw that club night because you want to have a party, launch that YouTube channel to share your strange obsession, release that record because you wanted to; because this culture inspired it, not in the expectation of riches and glory or even a career: "When people say something is not sustainable," says Elijah, "I'm like, that's fine. Because not everything needs to be sustainable."

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Different Class

"We all hear these sort of stories of plucky working-class kids who started off in clubs and the next minute they're this huge success," says Andy of the acid house lore, "but this - now - is a much tougher world to operate in if you don't have a safety net of privilege." In his book, Andy quotes a finding from a UK Creative Industries Policy And Evidence Centre report (from 2020, but it's somewhat unlikely that lockdown has done much to improve it) that only 16% of people in full time creative roles are from a 'working' class background. That's less than in academia, law and finance. Add the intersectionality of ethnicity, gender etc. and the picture is even worse. Anyone in our industry who wants to create opportunities needs to be proactive if we're going to shift the needle.

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Look for the gaps

The acid house generation were expanding into a vacuum. There were more opportunities for - say - club promoters, because there were few club promoters. Everything they built made the scene bigger and created more opportunities: rave begets rave begets rave in a virtuous cycle. Electronic music is now a global industry worth 12.9 billion worldwide, as reported in the IMS Business Report 2025. There are established corporate career pathways and typical artist journeys and 'traditions' and ways of doing things. But maybe embracing today's life changing opportunities is about finding the gaps. The new vacuum. As Elijah points out, it's about being open minded to the range of opportunity rather than fixating on one thing. "If you want to get involved in this scene there are like a thousand possible directions. But I feel like we're usually exploring, like, two. So why don't we also try and explore that other 998?" His book, Close The App, Make The Ting, is an ideal creative catalyst.

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In 2025, it starts with building a community

"Community back in time probably kind of just meant 'the like-minded people that I go dancing with', says Andy, "we didn't put a lot more value to it than that." In Selling The Night, he learned how younger people like - for example - Jamz Supernova, consciously built a community of different skills and talents around her early days as a promoter and DJ. "Now it is about a support system." Andy observes. "About bringing together really smart, interesting people who can feed off each other. This is a tough world we're living in; you can expect less from those outside of your community. So you probably [need to] get more organized in terms of what you look for within it."

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The Message

"Dance music by its very nature is participatory," says Andy. "At its best, everyone feels genuinely involved, whether you're the DJ or the promoter or on the dance floor. That's what makes it stand out for me, why it's historically created opportunities. And why, if things are put in place in the right way, it can continue to do so."

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And - hopefully - there is something about the message, the philosophy of electronic music and club culture that remains inspiring, even four decades on: whether 'All Are Welcome', 'There Is Another Life Beyond The Weekday Grind', 'Open Your Mind', or simply 'Jack, Jack, Jack, your body'. For artists, DJs and anyone involved in the industry, communicating that philosophy, that authentic sense of joy and self expression, is what keeps those life changing possibilities visible and alive.

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Written by Duncan JA Dick - IMS contributor. Opinions expressed are the author’s own.

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