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I analyzed the lineups at the most popular nightclubs
- kalli 1y agoThe technical details of a visualisation built around the lineups and programming at the world's most popular nightclubs.
- PaulHoule 1y agoD3 is the only charting library that I've loved.
- alexandregcode 1y agoThis is pretty cool, interesting to think about what causes more or less resident DJs. As a side note, on the RA events sometimes artists are listed in the description but not linked in the description so there could be some artists missing. In my experience it tends to vary on the nightclub.
- analog31 1y agoGranted I'm not a DJ but a jazz musician. I think there's a slight premium for "out of town" acts compared to local acts of possibly equal quality. It could simply be due to scarcity. If a certain act is only in town for one night, then it's your only chance to see them, whereas you can put off seeing a local band for a while.
- radley 1y ago> I think there's a slight premium for "out of town" acts In the EDM world, it can often be much more than a slight premium. Ever since streaming took over music sales, performance fees have become the key source of income for most artists.
- analog31 1y agoThat's a good point. In fact, I'm not a full time musician, but performing is my only source of musical income. I've never bothered with trying to make money from recordings. I do know some indie artists who make a bit of extra money at performances selling CDs to people who still buy them. I think it takes advantage of the immediacy of the moment, and the fact that a lot of people are actually not savvy about finding stuff online.
- input_sh 1y agoI love the idea behind it and the visualisation indeed looks awesome, but the RA data behind it is messy to say the least. For example, 3/7 "nightclubs" it lists in Croatia are not nightclubs. I would also group Kalypso and Zrće Beach together as Kalypso is one out of 4 nightclubs located on Zrće Beach, but the beach itself is not a venue. Similarly, Barbarella's is kind of an afterparty destination for festivals organised at the Garden Resort. They only match 6%, but I wouldn't call them completely separate. This is the kind of "lore" that's impossible to catch from raw data. I like the Essential Mix visualisation even more! It's such a shame most of the other ones appear dead due to API changes.
- kalli 1y agoAuthor here, this is good to know.! I tried to spotcheck the regions and countries, but wasn't familiar with all of them so didn't want to make assumptions (and didn't make time to research them thoroughly). Not sure if/how I could try to correct that. > This is the kind of "lore" that's impossible to catch from raw data. Agreed this project definitely banged up against those sorts of walls a few times. Still think it's worth trying, hopefully the information offered one can find outweighs any distortions it introduces. Maybe something that should have been explicitly acknowledged in the piece. > I like the Essential Mix visualisation even more! It's such a shame most of the other ones appear dead due to API changes. Thanks, happy to hear that. I keep meaning to go back to the essential mix one, get new data and apply some of the stuff I've learned since!
- radley 1y agoSounds like RA could have a lot of DJs promoting their small bar gigs and day parties.
- presentation 1y agoWhen I was DJing locally in SF, that was exactly what we were doing.
- stevetron 1y agoMight have been nice to know where the clubs are? San Francisco? South Africa? Belgium? And what demographic the clubs serve, i.e are any of the clubs LGBTQ+, or are the all hetero? They don't generally play the same material.
- kalli 1y agoIf you click a club its region and country should be in its detail panel underneath their logo. The region and country filters should show you just the clubs in the given region/country. Demographic analysis would have been interesting I agree, but I didn't know of a good data source for that and it's hard to parse from line up data (especially in places one isn't familiar with)
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- pimeys 1y agoThe biggest and best clubs in Berlin at least are pretty much all LGBTQ+. The best and most famous club in the world, Berghain, is famously gay.
- siva7 1y agoDon't confuse this list with actually very popular djs. Many clubs in this list host mostly resident and local djs (like Berghain as the club name/culture is the main reason people go there, not the lineup) instead of popular touring djs who have a big fan base of their own (and are more expensive to book).
- wavefunction 1y agopeople go to a club because the music is good, even at the shittiest of popular venues everything follows from there
- afavour 1y agoI don't know you can state that universally. A lot of people go to a club because it's the "in" spot to be seen at (not that clubs are in any way unique in that regard)
- tirant 1y agoMusic is not the only aspect. Even more important is the vibe.
- Mashimo 1y agoSetting / atmosphere / vibe also plays a role. If a know a place that has angry bouncers or annoying rules, I rather go to a place that he less then ideal music. One local club has a rule that you can't drink water from the bathroom tab, and they even turn off the cold water. I'm not going there, even when the music is fire.
- malfist 1y agoI've never once when to a club because of the music they play, and I can't remember my friends ever suggesting we go to a different one because the music is better. It's more about the atmosphere, who's there and the mood you're looking for that night.
- Honga 1y agoThey also have something like a 2 month ban on playing elsewhere after you DJ for them. And it doesn't seem like the pay is great to compensate. The upside is exposure, because their lineups are phenomenal and consistent, You don't really have to go there for the music, it's guaranteed to be good. https://www.scribd.com/document/639992014/Untitled#:~:text=REQUIRED%20EXCLUSIVITY:%202%20months%20for,Please%20respect%20the%20limits. https://www.scribd.com/document/639992014/Untitled#:~:text=R...
- bongodongobob 1y agoI actually want to go to Haunted House more than I want to go to Aqua.
- jrrv 1y agoAm I missing something or is the author using dots for both breaking up large numbers and also for decimal points?
- FinnKuhn 1y agoYes, I assume it is because you use dots to seperate large numbers in most European languages and they forgot it's different in English.
- hansonkd 1y agousually its a combination of . , not exclusively . for both the thousands seperator and the radix point.
- FinnKuhn 1y agoWell, they appear to have remembered it when typing the radix point, but forgot it when it came to the thousands separator. This might have happened to me before as well...
- RobKohr 1y agoI love finding new music. Looks like now I can go find some far away clubs and listen to their djs while doing some coding.
- bog_hag 1y agoIncluding San Francisco and not Chicago? Criminal.
- ssalka 1y agoI'm just gonna say that some aspect of the data collection here seems flawed: among the SF clubs listed are DNA Lounge and Public Works – which are great clubs, don't get me wrong – but they are very much on the smaller side. And, Phonobar? That is a bar/restaurant, not a nightclub at all. Meanwhile, The Warfield and 1015 Folsom are left out – how does that make any sense?
- kalli 1y agoIt's based on popularity on Resident Advisor / RA (those are the clubs that had the most "followers" among their userbase)
- kenhwang 1y agoThis is a classic example of data sourcing bias. RA is primarily used by independent promoters in the States, which tend to be much smaller and have smaller or less frequent events. Large promoters who regularly throw events or have the budget for larger events would use their own promotion mechanisms and general population ad networks instead of listing on RA.
- lelandfe 1y ago> Large promoters who regularly throw events or have the budget for larger events would use their own promotion mechanisms No (at least in the US) - it’s because of exclusive contracts with the ticketing platforms. Whereas you can list on RA and other platforms too, the biggest clubs and venues get lucrative deals with eg AXS to only list tickets on their platform.
- kenhwang 1y agoThat's ticketing. There's plenty of listings on RA that don't use RA's ticketing service. Large promoters that use or have exclusivity deals with AXS or Ticketmaster/LiveNation or Dice still advertise/promote on platforms like Facebook/Instagram, EDM Train, Radiate, etc alongside the ticketing platform's promotion platforms.
- Razengan 1y agoAs an introvert, what are you even supposed to do at "clubs"? Besides having your eardrums damaged
- JohnFen 1y agoIf clubs aren't your thing, then don't go. Easy peasy.
- jillesvangurp 1y agoTalking to people is not actually possible at clubs because it's just too loud. So, it's oddly perfect for introverts in that sense. Nobody goes there to talk. It's why I never liked clubs I prefer small bars where you can talk to people. I've been in Berlin for 16 years now and there are plenty of those bars around. Even now that I no longer drink alcohol, I still enjoy going there. But I never saw the point of the club scene here. I don't actually mind some of the music and there are some nice Berghain playlists on Spotify that I listen to occasionally. I just never felt any need to actually go there. Just not my thing. My impression of talking to people that do go to these things is that it's a lot about just being seen there or being able to brag about having been there. And then there are of course a lot of people that just go nuts and do that for the whole weekend while taking lots of pills. Also not my thing. But live and let live as far as I'm concerned. Berghain particularly doesn't just let everybody in. People queue for ages and can then get told off for looking wrong or whatever. Elon Musk famously got an access denied there once. Not cool enough. Which I find hilarious. But the prospect of being vetted like that is a definite turn off for me. I just don't like that kind of snobbishness.
- exasperaited 1y ago> So, it's oddly perfect for introverts in that sense. Nobody goes there to talk. For an introvert, the only place better than being in the crowd at a music venue is being on the stage. There are sooo many introverts in bands and especially DJs; some of the greatest musicians are introverts. Performing is a form of radical self-care, and introverts are actually really good at judging the vibe of a crowd.
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- Der_Einzige 1y agoBtw, SF night clubs actively refuse to let “tech nerds” in. I witnessed whole groups of people who attended the huggingface “Woodstock of AI” meetup circa 2023 and the local clubs would refuse to let anyone in who wore glasses or wore Patagonia. Thanks John Hughes films!
- Elof 1y agoThat doesn't make sense. Huggingface is a 'popular' tech company. Maybe those 'nerds' just didn't have tickets
- Der_Einzige 1y agoI'm talking about an event that drew ~5000 people, not the staff of HF themselves. The "tickets" that these nerds didn't have is more accurately known as "game" or "rizz" by zoomers.
- bongodongobob 1y agoNo one outside of tech knows what that is
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- firefax 1y ago>Btw, SF night clubs actively refuse to let “tech nerds” in. I got escorted past the line at DNA lounge because I had a Firefox shirt on. (Only solid black shirt I had, outta respect to the goths rocked it with some black jeans.) Are you aware that one of the best clubs in the bay is owned by a former "tech bro"? >DNA Lounge is an all-ages nightclub, restaurant and cafe in the SoMa district of San Francisco owned by Jamie Zawinski, a former Netscape programmer and open-source software hacker.[3] The club features DJ dancing, live music, burlesque performances, and occasionally conferences, private parties, and film premieres. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_Lounge#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_Lounge#History In general, clubs don't want to let in folks who don't match the culture... for example, Berghain, at it's core, wants people coming in who want to dance, so if you show up in glasses and Patagonia you're not going to enjoy yourself. Finally, be mindful of the energy you put out -- any group of people in business casual trying to get into the hottest nightclub in town might find their hopes dashed. Frankly, based on your post I think maybe an air of entitlement and persecution might be your issue, not glasses or a sweater vest, because spoiler alert: if you don't mention your work, no one knows what you do for a living, and SF is probably wayyyy more welcoming to "uncool" people getting into clubs than someplace like NYC or LA, where if you're not a literal model or some kind of entertainment bigshot no clothing choice (or lack thereof) is getting you in.
- kouru225 1y agoI wonder if you’d get a higher percent of overlap if you only focused on Friday/Saturday bookings
- Elof 1y agoFor the San Francisco venues, some of my favorite artists come on random days, and as a 40-something with a kid I would only go out on nights other than Friday/Saturday if I REALLY liked the artist. From this perspective, it might make sense to weight weekday outliers higher
- flufluflufluffy 1y agoThis is really cool but in my experience, RA is typically used for less popular “underground” (in very large quotes) events, warehouse parties, etc. It might be different in Europe or other cities here in the states. The data for such events is interesting in its own right, but it’s probably not quite representative of the most popular clubs and/or artists. Perhaps doing a similar thing with Ticketmaster/tixr/all the other ticket apps and combining them together could produce more representative data, of course you’d still have the problem of having to filter out actual clubs. on an unrelated note, what in gods name is that color scheme on the visualizations? xD
- okokwhatever 1y agoI just came to the comments section to say "blablabla flawed blabla incorrect data blablabla representation failure blablabla... but I just saw others came first. Yeah, humans.
- slickytail 1y ago[dead]
- Honga 1y agoAh I miss De School. It always feels a bit uncanny seeing Tillatec wearing the hand me downs, even though they have their own thing going.
- vovavili 1y agoAnd the most interesting part is that despite falling short from its predecessor, Tilla Tec is the best currently working club in The Netherlands.
- buckle8017 1y agoWhat's with using . for both decimal and thousands? I kinda understand swapping witch is which, but why have no distinction.
- pier25 1y agoWas surprised to not see Space (the Ibiza club) and it turns it closed back in 2016.
- zkmon 1y agoIn excitement over the cool-looking visualizations, we lose the sight of its usefulness. The entire article hardly has any text talking about how these visualization would be useful and to whom. Even if this is an ask from a top-level managers hoping that it would help their decision-making, let me tell you that, this will be binned after everyone agrees that the visualizations are very cool. Decisions are driven by other factors.
- RandallBrown 1y ago> Even if this is an ask from a top-level managers This was a pandemic project from someone who likely did it just because they thought it was cool/interesting.
- tweetle_beetle 1y agoNote to people considering publishing articles describing passion projects on their personal websites (especially if they may be considered exciting). Stop! It is vital that you first hire an independent product manager and perform market fit analysis. Ask yourself "Does my blog deliver high ROI and facilitate decision making by key stakeholders?". If not, it has no use and should not be published.
- eyeundersand 1y agoLooks like I'm in the minority here but I was not impressed by the visualizations or the color scheme or anything. Oh well...
- anigbrowl 1y agoData raw material is meh, as are the results (clubs are clustered by geography and music style? Shocker), but the post isn't about collection or survey methodology. The hard work here is in the analysis and presentation, which are nice. That will still be valuable if applied to better-curated datasets. I don't blame the author for working with a mediocre dataset that happened to reflect his interests, he's not making big claims about what this means for the entertainment industry or the future of culture.
- oggadog 1y agoThis was a great read. I used to work at RA as a dev, I always look back and wish I did more with the data I had access too!
- p00dles 1y agoI think this analysis is cool, and the comments are too critical. The author put something out there, documented it, and I learned something by reading it. Thank you. Maybe the title needs reframing to soften the reader’s expectations, and I definitely agree that RA as a data source has important limitations that should be mentioned.