# Dance Industry Music Stories

> Eight years of electronic music industry trends (December 2017 to February 2026), extracted and structured from 401 issues of the IMS Industry Insider newsletter. The dataset contains 17,594 events across 10,039 entities — artists, companies, festivals, clubs, labels, products, and people — with linked headlines, publication sources, and quarterly time series. Built by Audience Strategies. Live at danceindustrymusicstories.org.

This is a data visualisation dashboard. Each section below presents a different analytical lens on the same underlying dataset: a structured archive of the electronic music industry's most widely read trade newsletter. Every headline links back to its original newsletter issue. The data reflects the editorial perspective of one publication — it is rich and longitudinal but not comprehensive.

The dataset covers artists (3,791 entities), companies (2,038), festivals (1,086), clubs (843), people (810), products (785), labels (662), and a small residual of geographic locations and unclassified entities (24).

## Visualisations

- [The Momentum Index](/momentum): Sparkline table ranking entities by visibility trajectory over time. Entities are grouped into three tiers — accelerating, steady, and decelerating — based on how their mention frequency has changed. Filter by entity type (artist, company, festival, club, label, product, person) and adjust the time window (six months, one year, two years) to see how momentum shifts at different scales. Each entity shows 32 quarterly data points from Q1 2018 to Q4 2025.
- [Open & Shut](/venues): Diverging horizontal bar chart showing venue openings versus closings by year, with city-level small multiples below. Green bars extend right for openings; red bars extend left for closings. A dashed line traces the net change. Click any bar to see the specific venue events with headlines and newsletter links. Key finding: nightlife closures peaked in 2024, not during COVID lockdowns.
- [Follow the Money](/deals): Stacked quarterly bar chart tracking business deals, funding rounds, and partnerships across the industry. A sidebar lists the most active repeat acquirers. Click any quarter to see deal details; click an acquirer name to highlight their activity over time. Shows the shift from venture funding toward catalogue acquisitions and strategic partnerships.
- [The Editorial Lens](/sources): Heatmap matrix crossing 15 publication sources against 15 event types. Reveals what each outlet covers and what it misses. Toggle between proportional mode (each publication's coverage distribution) and absolute mode (raw event counts showing publication scale). Click any cell for up to five sample headlines. Shows that DJ Mag, Mixmag, and Resident Advisor have markedly different editorial priorities.
- [The Pulse](/pulse): Calendar heatmap showing newsletter intensity week by week across eight years. Colour intensity reflects a weighted temperature score (business deals and legal events count triple; venue changes count double). Below the heatmap, the 50 hottest weeks are listed with their top headlines linking to original newsletter URLs.
- [Entity Search](/entity): Searchable index of all 10,039 entities. Filter by type, search by name. Each entity detail page shows a quarterly mention sparkline, a chronological event timeline with linked headlines, and a list of co-occurring entities. Entities include artists (Carl Cox, David Guetta, Richie Hawtin), companies (Spotify, Beatport, SoundCloud), festivals (Tomorrowland, ADE, Awakenings), clubs (Berghain, Printworks, Space Ibiza), labels (Ninja Tune, Warp, Crosstown Rebels), and industry figures.

## Entity Types

Eight categories of entities are tracked across the dataset:

- Artist (3,791 entities): DJs, producers, and performers mentioned in industry news
- Company (2,038 entities): Technology platforms, promoters, agencies, manufacturers, and service providers
- Festival (1,086 entities): Music festivals, conference events, and recurring gatherings
- Club (843 entities): Nightclubs, venues, and event spaces
- Person (810 entities): Industry executives, journalists, and public figures who are not performing artists
- Product (785 entities): Software, hardware, and services for music creation and distribution
- Label (662 entities): Record labels and music distributors
- Unknown (24 entities): Ambiguous geographic references and very obscure terms

## Event Types

Fifteen event categories, grouped by theme:

Editorial: feature, interview, release, chart_position — coverage of artists, music, and cultural moments.
Business: business_deal, partnership, funding, legal — mergers, acquisitions, investments, lawsuits, and regulatory actions.
Venue: venue_opening, venue_closing, venue_event — the lifecycle of nightlife spaces worldwide.
Community: festival_lineup, tour_announcement, award, death — the social fabric of electronic music.

## Key Topics and Themes

The dataset surfaces several long-running narratives in the electronic music industry:

- Venue closure crisis: Nightlife closures peaked in 2024 due to rising rents and post-COVID recovery failure, not during COVID lockdowns as commonly assumed. Cities most affected include London, Berlin, and Ibiza.
- Industry consolidation: A shift from venture-backed startups toward catalogue acquisitions and strategic mergers. Repeat acquirers include major labels and tech platforms.
- Editorial bias patterns: The Sources heatmap reveals that DJ Mag, Mixmag, and Resident Advisor have strikingly different coverage priorities. RA covers more venue closings and deaths; Billboard and RotD focus on business deals and partnerships.
- Festival expansion: Tomorrowland, Awakenings, and other major brands expanding into new territories, with festival lineups as one of the most frequently covered event types.
- Creator ownership: Ongoing coverage of artist revenue, platform economics, and ownership disputes — particularly around Spotify, Beatport, and SoundCloud.
- Geographic centres: Berlin, London, Ibiza, Amsterdam, Miami, and Dubai emerge as the most frequently referenced locations in industry news.

## Data Notes

- Single editorial lens: All data is extracted from the IMS Industry Insider newsletter. It reflects one publication's editorial choices, not the full industry. Coverage skews toward established Western markets and major commercial players.
- 2023 data gap: Only 991 events were extracted from 2023 newsletters, roughly half the normal annual volume. Time-series visualisations should be interpreted with this gap in mind.
- Location coverage: Only approximately 8% of events have location metadata. Geographic analysis is limited.
- Entity classification: 24 entities remain unclassified (type "unknown"), down from 3,036 after a bulk classification and deduplication exercise.

## Use Cases

- Music industry researchers studying long-term trends in electronic music business, culture, and nightlife
- Cultural economists analysing venue lifecycle patterns, festival economics, and industry consolidation
- Journalists investigating club closures, funding flows, or editorial coverage patterns
- AI tools and language models seeking structured, longitudinal data about the electronic music industry
- Anyone curious about which artists, companies, and festivals have risen or fallen in industry visibility over eight years

## Optional

- [Momentum data](/data/momentum.json): Entities with quarterly mention counts, momentum scores, and direction indicators
- [Venue data](/data/venues.json): Openings and closings by year and city with event details
- [Deals data](/data/deals.json): 1,800 deals grouped by quarter with repeat acquirer analysis
- [Sources data](/data/sources.json): Publication-by-event-type heatmap matrix with sample headlines
- [Pulse data](/data/pulse.json): Weekly temperature scores and top headlines across 400 newsletter weeks
- [Entity index](/data/entities-index.json): All 10,039 entities with mention counts, types, and date ranges