Who killed the rave? Late-night dancing falls into global decline

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The 35-hour-long event to welcome 2025 will end on New Year’s Eve to grace the dance floor at the evocative Watergate Club, an iconic Berlin venue that has become the latest victim. club death – Club death.

“The days when Berlin was flooded with club-loving visitors are over,” the venue management said in a farewell statement. Watergate’s co-owner blamed cost pressures, declining tourism, declining enthusiasm from Generation Z and the rise of music festivals for its closure.

The pressures behind the trend that led to the demise of Watergate are transforming nightlife capitals from Berlin to Barcelona and Melbourne to New York: despite the growing popularity of dance music, clubbers are ending their nights earlier.

Between 2014 and 2024, the proportion of club nights going on after 3pm in 12 of 15 global cities fell, according to a Financial Times analysis of events by listing website Resident Advisor.

“People can only go out for so many hours,” says Lutz Leichsenring, co-founder of international night-time consultancy VibeLab. “There’s a lot of competition between nighttime and daytime events.”

Leichsenring said venue owners are often closing their doors earlier to save costs, as revenue from drink sales drops in the early hours.

more limited Licensing Rules Post-Covid-19 has also become an issue for clubs and promoters in cities around the world. Although cities have appointed night mayors and adopted “24-hour city” policies in recent years, increased oversight of the nighttime economy since the pandemic has led to tighter policing of late-night establishments, Leichenring added.

Popularity of day events and festivals is another factor. Mike Vosters, whose company Matinee Social Club organizes early-evening parties in New York, said that while the 5-10 p.m. events were originally aimed at millennials who no longer wanted to party into the small hours, they got “a ton of interest” from partygoers in their 20s.

According to pollsters, a shift away from “bottle service” club culture and a new cross-generational emphasis on healthy living are the two main drivers behind the rise in enthusiasm for dance parties that end early.

Resident Advisor data reflects an increase in daytime parties, with several major cities showing increases in events ending at 10 p.m.

Melbourne claims to be the live music capital of the world and boasted a vibrant nightclub scene 20 years ago. Yet the sector has seen a sharp decline in the city as consumer habits change and the cost of running events rises, especially post-pandemic.

An entertainment industry executive says younger people are less inclined to rave until 6 a.m. because they are more health conscious and less extravagant about money than previous generations. This is reflected in Melbourne’s nightclub closures – more than 100 have closed in recent years – and fewer clubs staying open all night.

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

Sunil Sharp, a DJ and co-founder of Give Us the Night, said the suspension of a proposed law that would have extended closing hours to 6 p.m. has left the industry in limbo, with operators nervous about investing in new spaces.

He estimates there are about 20 to 25 clubs left in the city and its suburbs, home to 1.3 million people. “It’s prohibitively expensive to open a venue now. . . Or even open your doors for a separate night,” he added.

But there are signs of hope for dance music. A Study Published by the International Music Summit, an annual conference held in Ibiza, the electronic music industry is expected to grow by 17 percent in 2023, reaching $11.8 billion in annual revenue.

Across the 15 cities analyzed by the FT using Resident Advisor event data, venues listing more than five events are set to increase by 60 per cent in 2024 compared to a decade ago. More than 35,000 artists were booked to play in those cities since 2014—a 90 percent increase over the same period.

“People still crave community. People still want to go out,” voters said. “It’s not diminished and music is still the best way to do it.”