Mapping Brazil - Electronic Dance Music: Consolidation and Internationalisation (2010s onwards)

In October 2007, Brazil was selected to host the 2014 World Cup. The euphoria that accompanied the announcement confirmed the country’s natural vocation for festivities and large-scale events, like Carnival. The country’s economy had been stable since the Real plan had brought inflation under control in the mid-1990s. Two years later, in 2009, came another announcement: Rio would host the 2016 Olympics. The country was lifted by a wave of optimism and economic growth. That very year, Brazil was on the front cover of The Economist with a photo of Christ the Redeemer shooting into the skies like a rocket and the headline, “Brazil Takes Off”.

From then until the mid-2010s, Brazil has attracted a great many new international festivals, producers and DJs, while its own entertainment industry has seen increasing consolidation and professionalisation amongst industry players.

Electronic dance music has penetrated two of the biggest icons of Brazilian popular culture: the Salvador (Bahia) and Rio de Janeiro carnivals. Fatboy Slim (UK) first appeared at the Salvador carnival in 2008, since when it has played host to other top acts every year. Meanwhile, the 2009 Rio carnival – the most famous in the world – was chosen as the stage for the launch of the Rio Music Conference (2009 - present day), the first and biggest entertainment industry conference, bringing together leading EDM representatives from Brazil and Latin America.

In 2011, one of France’s top DJs, David Guetta, made an unprecedented tour around the country, taking in 13 cities, including Rio de Janeiro’s celebrated New Year’s Eve festivity on Copacabana beach, where he played to an audience of two million. Other foreign DJs, including Avicci (Sweden), Calvin Harris (UK), Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike (Greece & Belgium), Hardwell (Netherlands), Kaskade (USA) and Solomun (Bosnia), have followed suit, drawing in the crowds in different venues around Brazil.

Another big driver for EDM has been the growth of its consumption in the southern states of Brazil, especially Santa Catarina. Clubs like Green Valley and Warung Beach Club have joined DJ Mag’s prestigious ranking of the 100 best clubs in the world. According to the website of Green Valley, voted the best club in the world in 2013 and 2015, "(...) of the 30 top DJs in DJ Mag’s top 100 list, no fewer than 24 have been to Green Valley.” Santa Catarina also played host to the traditional British festival, Creamfields, which has become an annual fixture in Brazil since 2011. According to the Rio Music Conference yearbook, the south of Brazil (Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Paraná) not only harbours important clubs, festivals and training courses, but it accounts for 35% of the domestic market, while the southeast of Brazil (Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Belo Horizonte and Espírito Santo) accounts for 41% of the market.

In 2012 came the launch of Artificial Paradises by Marcos Prado, the first ever Brazilian feature film to use the outdoor EDM party scene as its backdrop. In the same year, the Netherlands’ leading dance music event producer, ID&T, opened an office in Brazil. Three years later, it held Tomorrowland Brasil in São Paulo. The 180,000 tickets sold out in three hours without the name of a single artist having been announced.

Burgeoning local scenes are also starting to grow outside Rio, São Paulo and the south of Brazil. The Rio Music Conference is the main link that joins them, fostering the professionalisation of the sector. It holds events in different parts of the country, and brings out an annual publication that reflects the state of the EDM scene in Brazil, including the main clubs, artists, festivals and economic indicators.

According to the Rio Music Conference yearbook, the biggest study of the genre in the country, the electronic music market was worth 4.4 billion reais (around 1.2 billion euros) in 2014, reaching an audience of 28.2 million people. Its revenues from ticket, food and drink sales reached 3.1 billion reais (around 900 million euros), while sponsorship accounted for a further 870 million reais (around 250 million euros) in revenues, and 380 million reais (around 110 million euros) was paid in fees to artists (see graphic).

Electronic dance music has really taken off in 2015, and the number of festivals in Brazil is higher than ever before. The most talked-about sets at the fourth Lollapalooza Brasil (São Paulo) were by Calvin Harris (UK), Skrillex (USA) and Steve Aoki (USA), attracting bigger audiences than big mainstream names like Pharrell Williams and Robert Plant. Tomorrowland Brasil, a critical and popular success, will be held again in 2016 and is set to stay in Brazil for at least the coming five years. Sonar (São Paulo), the Catalan festival of advanced music and art, will be back in the second half of 2015 since its successful debut in 2012 (and a cancelled edition in 2013).

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