While the city sleeps, the offer of nightclubs and music bars it becomes the motor of the nocturnal industry. A sector of business, employment and taxes that is not negligible but that seems to have entered an eclipse or irremediable crisis. The first blow and massive closure occurred in the years of austerity between 2008 and 2016 with young generations harshly punished with less purchasing power and maximum precariousness.
The second blow to the sector has been the covid with the closure of nightlife and a pandemic debt that is now combined with a higher energy and supply bill. The nightlife industry cannot go global. By definition, it is a local industry and much more dependent on the living conditions of young people than it may seem (and it is recognized).
To begin with, we are experiencing a profound demographic change. The actual generation Z who turned 18 between 2010 and 2019 is 40% smaller than generation X who reached 18 between 1990-1998. Are 2.5 million fewer young people. Almost nothing. Neoliberal excess and a dwindling welfare state are behind the demographic decline and, by rebound, the death of today’s nightclubs. This is what tax cuts have for the richest and letting income inequality skyrocket.
The call bottle or spontaneous self-consumption was the first warning for the sector. With the pandemic, working and studying at home has reinforced the home and the home as an alternative. With prices through the roof throwing house parties has been rediscovered where you can dance choosing the music you like. The dictatorship of reggaeton and commercial music to the taste of the disc-jockey priest is not for all audiences. It also generates rejection and boredom. Also, the disco has lost the monopoly of the market to flirt with other competing platforms in social networks but that are free and with a higher success rate.
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The audiences, the interactions and the uses of nightlife have diversified to the maximum. Going to the disco has become a luxury reserved for the end of the month or for special celebrations. Tourism and low-cost flights allow people to dance and have fun in other cities, but it is sporadic and nothing massive. The largest and most iconic ones will remain as prescribers, but with the selective rationing of their target audience. As in any Darwinian process of natural selection, the small and specialized ones that adapt and retain a parish of faithful will be able to resist.
In conclusion, the nightlife industry should be transformed knowing how to read the keys to changes in demand. But, in particular, it should be the first to support (and apply) the rise in the minimum wage and the new labor reform that improves the consumption capacity of young people. The full house that Coldplay has achieved during its time in Barcelona indicates that there is a desire to dance, optimism and good vibes and it is paid for. Businessmen of the night should pressure the CEOE to sign an income agreement and accept a fairer distribution of wealth and sacrifices. Or the dance will go elsewhere without remedy.