How EDM festival Storm is leading China’s live dance music charge

At least, that is the narrative that accompanied the debut of the Storm Festival in Shanghai. The two-day electronic dance music (EDM) festival featured dancers and stilt walkers in “extraterrestrial” costumes gyrating their way through crowds that the organiser put at 24,000. It included the likes of EDM stars Zedd, Axwell and Don Diablo, who performed from stages designed to look like spaceships. The era of heavily commercialised EDM festivals had arrived in China.

The Prodigy to headline Saturday night at Hong Kong’s Clockenflap festival

Four years on from “first contact” and the Arcturians are showing no signs of tiring. Storm Festival has expanded beyond Shanghai, with parent company A2Live currently on a run that has seen them put on five festivals since mid-August. Having ticked off Chengdu, Guangzhou (where an actual storm meant the cancellation of the festival’s second day), Nanjing, Beijing and Changsha, Storm will hold its flagship event in Shanghai this weekend.

It won’t stop there. Before the end of the year, Storm festivals will be held outside mainland China for the first time, with events planned for Taipei and Sydney.

“We have our sights set on expansion,” says Eric Reithler-Barros, managing director and chief commercial officer for A2Live. “As we grow, we begin to understand other markets and we’re putting more dots on the map. We have the assets, the stages and the staff already, so it’s a natural expansion for us.”

Storm’s growth – the organisers claim to have attracted 180,000 fans to their four China festivals last year – has not gone unnoticed by other EDM festival brands. One of the leading names internationally, Ultra, held their first China festival in Shanghai earlier this month.

“China is on the tip of everyone’s tongues and everyone wants entry into this market,” says Reithler-Barros.