Who killed the rave? The night dance is going down all over the world

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New Year’s revelers welcome 2025 in a 35-hour event that will be the last time to grace the dance floor at the Watergate club, Berlin’s latest victim. club death – club death.

“The days when Berlin was full of clubbing visitors are over,” the venue’s management said in a parting statement. The Watergate owner blamed cost pressures, declining tourism, waning enthusiasm from Generation Z and the rise of music festivals for its closure.

The pressures that led to the destruction of Watergate are behind the way of changing the cities’ nightlife from Berlin to Barcelona and Melbourne to New York: despite the growing popularity of dance music, clubbers spend their nights earlier.

The number of club nights of more than 3 in the morning has fallen in 12 of 15 cities around the world between 2014 and 2024, according to a Financial Times analysis of events that appear in the list of Citizen Advisor.

“People can only go out for so many hours,” said Lutz Leichsenring, co-founder of international nightlife consultancy VibeLab. “There is a lot of competition between night and day events.”

Leichsenring said bar owners often closed their doors earlier to save costs, as revenue from drink sales tends to drop early in the morning.

It prevents more consent rules after Covid-19 has become a problem for teams and supporters in cities around the world. While cities have elected night mayors and adopted “24-hour city” policies in recent years, increased regulation of the night-time economy since the outbreak has resulted in strict night-time building policing, Leichsenring added.

The increasing prevalence of daytime events and festivals is another reason. Mike Vosters, whose company Matinee Social Club organizes evening parties in New York, said that although the 5-10pm events were originally intended for thousands of people, they no longer wanted to participate in the hours. small, they got “great interest” from. party people in their 20s.

According to Vosters, a shift away from the club’s “bottle service” culture and a new emphasis on health were two factors driving the fast-fading dance party craze.

Citizens Advice data showed a rise in daytime parties, with several major cities showing an increase in events ending at 10pm.

Melbourne claims to be the music capital of the world and 20 years ago it boasted a thriving nightclub scene. However, the sector is declining significantly in the city as consumer habits change and the cost of running events rises, especially after the pandemic.

A manager in the entertainment industry said that young people did not like to go out until six o’clock in the morning because they are health conscious and do not have more money than previous generations. This is reflected in the closure of Melbourne’s nightclubs – with more than 100 closures in recent years – and the few clubs that stay open all night.

In Dublin, campaigners are fighting to change restrictive licensing laws that require clubs to pay €410 a night to stay open between 12.30am and 2.30am.

Sunil Sharpe, DJ and co-founder of Give Us the Night, says the stalling of proposed legislation that would have extended closing times to 6am has left the industry in turmoil, with workers scared to invest in new places.

He estimates there are about 20 to 25 groups left in and around the city, which is home to 1.3 million people. “It is very expensive to open a place now. . . or even open your doors for one night,” he added.

But there are signs of hope for dance music. A study released by the International Music Conference, an annual conference held in Ibiza, found that the electronic music industry will grow by 17 percent in 2023, reaching an annual revenue of $11.8bn.

Across the 15 cities surveyed by the FT using Citizens Advice event data, areas listing more than five events have increased by 60 per cent by 2024 compared to the previous decade. More than 35,000 artists were booked to play in those cities as of 2014 – a 90 percent increase over the same period.

“People still yearn for a community. People still want to get out,” said Vosters. “That hasn’t slowed down and music is still the best way to do that.”