Mariana Sanchotene @ Dance Music 101

Mariana Sanchotene joined ID&T for a business development role in 2008 and was pivot to the international expansion of its events since then. Once ID&T was sold to SFX, Mariana took part in the M&A team and supported the international tours of other SFX events as Unite, Awakenings and Life in Color.

- Life: when was the moment you figured out that Dance Music was meant to you?

Moving from Brazil to Amsterdam was possibly what brought Dance Music to my life. But I did enter the industry from backstage. I was already working on business development for Stage Entertainment, when I’ve noticed that Id&t was also taking Sensation internationally, and I thought: hey, that is a nice company to work for. It was a matter of being at the right place at the right time.

- Laugh: when was the last time you had real fun?

During last year’s Mysteryland, once I was off duty, friends were there, we had a great time.

- Love: name the one thing you love more than anything – and why is that?

Family comes above all, but when you work in this industry, work comes second on a very tight race.

- Past: name a significant moment in your career in Dance Music – and why is that?

The turning point for me was the first Skol Sensation in Brazil in 2009. I had joined Id&t in July 2008, by October I had moved to São Paulo with the mission of closing a naming-rights partnership deal with AB Inbev, and selling out a 40,000 people event having 4 months to prepare and a venue that was far from suitable for the event. Worked with the amazing team of Playcorp, who was our partner on the event and had the most intense months of my life. AB Inbev team then (Sérgio Eleutério and Bianca Shen) was also incredible, they worked as if it was their own event, and to a certain extent it was. When doors opened and the show started, I had goosebumps. I think we did a little (Dance Music) history in Brazil that night.

 - Present: what do you think that is trending today in music, clubs and festivals?

Trending is that clubs are in financial trouble since artists fees went sky-rocket and Tinder became popular. The ones that might survive will need to do that out of creating experience based events, rather than booking DJ Mag Top 100 names. I think Elrow is a good example of this.

Music, I don’t know if we can call this a trend, but some names will join the celebrity rock/pop gang, be on

Billboard top 100, score millions of followers. There will be more diversity, the careers might be shorter, the names that are hot one summer, might be gone on the next and we will never hear from them again.

If you take the Netherlands or UK, as trend-setters, there will be key festivals over 40,000 people still holding on, but a lot of smaller, diverse, niche festivals will start to pop-up. Cheaper tickets, less famous/commercial line-up, less impressive production, just a more credible crowd that have already developed a taste in electronic music. This diversity is key to the industry and I can see it is already happening in other countries too, such as France and Germany.

- Future: where is industry heading in the years to come?

The industry will have to adapt to the increasing artists fees, just as Rock and Pop festivals had to. But there will be more talent to choose from. There will be more security issues unfortunately. It will hopefully become more professional and the number of casualties shall decrease. There wil be more technology available for crowd control, better suppliers overall. Governments will play a role as well, either embracing the movement, or playing against it, and hard. Brands will want to be more and more involved with the events, but on a more sophisticated way. There will hopefully be more concern about the sustainability issues of producing events. There shall be more care on the services towards the crowd, better toilets, cleaner tables, healthier / better food. More creativity on stages, decor, acts, activities. The competition will be stronger and not all events will remain, who knows how to adapt and see the upcoming trends, these will win.