Not going out: Why Millennials are no longer going to night clubs
Not going out: Why Millennials are no longer going to
night clubs
We no longer go down to club to find new music, we just
listen to curated playlists on Spotify
By IAN BURRELL Tuesday 11 August 2015
So long to Ritzy and farewell to Cinderella Rockafella –
the long tradition of the great British nightclub appears to be on the way out.
Even famous London dance-music clubs such as Turnmills,
Bagley’s and The End have succumbed to a process that has seen the UK's total
portfolio of nightclubs shrink by almost half from 3,144 in 2005 to 1,733 a decade
later.
The statistic from the Association of Licensed Multiple
Retailers (ALMR) is a signal not just of the effect of the smoking ban and the
imposition of student loans but of a fundamental shift in the way a new
generation chooses to spend its entertainment budget.
After a week listening to favourite playlists on Spotify,
when friends on Facebook and WhatsApp have looked out so many other attractive
weekend adventures that will make far better shots on Instagram, another Friday
night at Mystique just doesn’t do it. And, as for pulling, there’s always
Tinder.
“Millennials favour experiences over stuff and nightclubs
should benefit from that,” says Ramzi Yakob, senior strategist of the digital
agency TH_NK. “But Millennials also realise that their time is the scarcest
resource they have, so why would they spend their precious time revisiting the
same experience every weekend?”
According to nationwide research from the TaxPayers’
Alliance, British councils own hundreds of pubs, restaurants and hotels - and
even two nightclubs.
Marketing expert Mark Borkowski, says that the large
nightclub chains were faced with a challenge in creating a unique and
photogenic experience. “Social capital is bragging about your experiences and
putting them on Instagram or Facebook and the local nightclub is struggling to
cut it when there’s so much choice out there.”
A night out at a pop-up restaurant or a secret cinema
feels more adventurous than yet another club night, which will only drain
finances needed for that ambitious summer holiday trip. According to Yakob,
nightclubbing has become for many young people a “couple of times a year”
experience, hearing the best DJs on the best sound systems.
He points out that once costly high-end audio equipment
can be easily and inexpensively sourced online, meaning that the house party
represents a better value option, as indeed do the entertainment offerings from
Netflix, Amazon Instant Video or games companies.
Twice a year punters aren’t going to pay a nightclub’s
bills. But even for some dedicated music fans, the lure of a night of House
music could be reduced by their long hours of listening to playlists on a
premium streaming service during daily commutes. The UK is among Spotify’s
strongest markets. Felim McGrath, analyst at market research company
GlobalWebIndex, says: “In years gone by you would go to a nightclub at the
weekend to discover music played by a top DJ. Now you can do that online via a
curated playlist.”
Scantily clad performers and acrobats attracted huge
crowds to Manumission's Ibiza club nights Spotify, Pandora, Deezer and other
streaming services have ensured that today’s youth have easy access to a much
wider range of music than their parents and they have correspondingly broad
tastes which are hard to replicate for night clubs which have built their
reputations around a single genre.
There are potential consequences here for the music
industry in terms of building new scenes. Music public relations expert Alan
Edwards says: “There’s not a particularly obvious music undercurrent out there
right now and you have to ask would there have been a Roxy without punk music,
a Hacienda without the Manchester scene or a Gossips without the popularity of
reggae?”
Inner city railway arches that might once have made an
ideal club venue are now attracting other forms of property speculation. Tom
Kihl, co-editor of London cultural guide kentishtowner.co.uk and a former
deputy editor of DJ magazine, has reported the trend of clubs being forced out
of high-rent central locations and making clubbing a more occasional
experience. “You are pushing people towards big out-of-town venues and
festivals, which are more expensive so people can’t go every Friday night.”
Kihl argues that there is “no lack of enthusiasm for dancing to loud music” but
acknowledges that, in the world of Instagram, dark nightclubs with flashing
lights don’t make for the best backdrops. “These days, people want to take
pictures and they need something to take pictures of,” he said.
Millennials know that the special interest leisure
activities that they’ve researched online are more likely to lead to finding
suitable partners than drunken fumbles in a sticky-floored club. Or else there
are dating sites.
Ross Williams, founder of dating group Venntro, says that
the days of heading to a nightclub with the aim of meeting the partner of your
dreams are long gone. “You might go to a club to dance with friends but not to
meet new people,” he said. “I could be on the 6am train to Waterloo and my
phone gives me access to far more suitable partners than I could ever find in a
sweaty night club.”
Sophie Wilkinson, news editor of women’s lifestyle
website The Debrief, says that nightclub bouncers are often focused on
preventing drunken fights rather than harassment of female clubbers. “I think
websites such as Tinder provide a safer environment for women – it’s a bit
easier to filter out any baddies if you are behind a screen.”
She says that many of her readers would prefer the
gastronomic alternative of “street food” events to a night out in a club.
“There’s real common ground and it makes for a more friendly environment.”
Fabric nightclub, a long-standing fixture of the
capital's club scene, is facing closure But Dave Haslam, author of Life After
Dark; A History of British Nightclubs and Music Venues, which is published this
week, notes that while the mainstream nightclub industry represented by ALMR
might have its problems, there are plenty of “maverick underground” venues
still thriving.
Assessing the demise of the British night club, he
prefers a longer view. “History teaches that the demand for nights out never
goes away and hedonism is a very strong tradition in our country even though we
are known for being reserved,” he said. “The British also have a great
tradition for reinventing ways of going out at night and that’s why we are
still seen as a cool country.”
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