Virtual Club Culture? Transformation of Safe Spaces and Demographical Structure in Electronic Dance Music Events Through Virtual Reality Amidst Covid-19 Pandemic

Electronic dance music (EDM) events have gained widespread global popularity for over 40+ years. Throughout this period, they have been assigned various meanings from illicit dance parties to spiritual experiences, and its participants organically shaped the EDM culture. EDM’s industrialization over the past decades has resulted in a commercialized club culture, and an industry worth ~$7.2 billion by the beginning of 2020. However, most of the physical EDM events since then have been either canceled or postponed worldwide until further notice due to the pandemic. Consequently, the industry downsized by more than a half within a year, and virtual events have become the primary source of income in the Covid-19 era. Before the pandemic, the EDM industry used various control mechanisms that aim at profit maximization, which created EDM minorities that systematically discriminated from most of the events. As the industry mainly designed the system for physical events, virtuality created the possibility for EDM minorities to obtain safer spaces. Recent studies indicated that discriminated EDM communities continue their safe spaces virtually in the early pandemic period. Moreover, new technologies such as virtual reality (VR) have challenged the meaning of space and provided the possibility of anonymous events with enhanced interactivity, resulting in the formation new diverse communities. In other words, VR events can create joint safe spaces through anonymity, which may reduce discrimination against EDM minorities by allowing diverse communities to co-exist. Previous studies have mainly focused on pre-pandemic conditions considering EDM’s cultural dynamics. In contrast, today, pandemic-driven digitalization, and new technologies such as VR have altered the EDM experience and provide an opportunity for re-thinking today’s commercial club culture. Correspondingly, this study focuses on the recent changes to EDM events during the Covid-19 crisis and discusses the possible impacts of VR for the EDM scene and industry regarding diversity and equality issues through participant observation, virtual fieldwork, and interviews.