Beatport's mid-year 2026 review confirms tech house on top, but the movement is elsewhere: afro house going mainstream, Brazilian funk and Latin electronic breaking through, and UK garage crossing to American floors.
Kieran Hebden dropped a surprise eight-track Four Tet album on July 3 under his Wingdings alias, with the record and every track title written in the Wingdings symbol font so no one can type or search them.
A wave of artists is stripping catalogue from Spotify in mid-2026 after founder Daniel Ek, through his firm Prima Materia, took the chairmanship of and put money into Helsing, a German defence company building AI-guided military drones.
Steinberg's SpectraLayers 13, out now, adds tools that isolate individual voices, pull short sounds out of ambient beds, and resynthesize the frequencies an unmix leaves behind.
MODULA 26, a new synthesizer and electronic-music expo, debuts at Dynamo Zürich on 17 and 18 July 2026, with Moog, Arturia, Waldorf and Teenage Engineering among the names behind its first edition.
Amnesty bins, sniffer dogs and zero-tolerance posters do not reduce drug harm on a dancefloor; the evidence from the Netherlands' state-funded testing system and Britain's The Loop points the other way, toward information and prevention.
Afro Nation Portugal, the world's biggest Afrobeats festival, built a dedicated electronic stage called Afrotronic for its 2026 edition, splitting Afro House, Afro Tech and gqom out from the Afrobeats main stage for the first time.
Defected Croatia will hold its tenth and final edition at The Garden Resort in Tisno from July 29 to August 3, 2026, ending a decade that turned the Adriatic site into a summer home for house music.
A US federal court has certified a nationwide class action accusing Live Nation and Ticketmaster of using monopoly power to inflate primary ticket fees at the country's 500 biggest venues since 2010, and fans have until July 6 to decide whether to stay in it.
Alexa, who runs Sunwaves' marketing, strategy and, since last year, its bookings, on taking the Romanian rominimal festival to Ibiza, choosing authenticity over hype, and keeping the dance floor the main character.
A weak yen and rising costs are quietly pushing Korea's and Japan's underground scenes to swap artists and share booking costs, building something that looks like one regional circuit, per Mixmag Asia.
Tresor founder Dimitri Hegemann is backing SUNN Festival, a plan to turn Goseong on the Korean DMZ into a cultural destination, launching on German Unity Day, October 3, 2026.
Sant Antoni de Portmany can fine you up to 750 euros for walking its streets in swimwear or shirtless, while every club on the island already runs its own dress code. Here is the fine, who it really targets, and exactly what to wear at Hï, Pacha, UNVRS, DC10, Ushuaïa, Amnesia and beyond.
DJ Tennis, the Life And Death co-founder, is back on his own label with 'Misbehave', a torrid, shuffling indie-dance cut featuring vocalist Campbell King, out in the imprint's 15th-anniversary year.
Afro house did not peak in 2026: Splice downloads jumped 778 percent, Beatport moved it from 23rd to 4th most-searched genre, Tomorrowland built its first dedicated Afro house stage, and the sound is fracturing into 3Step, afro-tech and afro-Latin hybrids.
Ibiza is escalating its crackdown on illegal villa raves: police broke up a 1,000-guest party near Sant Antoni, and the island's Consell wants fines of up to 300,000 euros and multi-year licence bans for the organisers.
US vinyl grew for a 19th straight year in 2025, selling 46.8 million records and out-earning the CD by more than three to one, its strongest run since 1983.
On 3 July 2026 a New York federal judge refused to let Sony Music expand its copyright suit against AI platform Udio, keeping the case at the 333 recordings already in it.
David Katz's new book Dub Revolution argues that dub, born in early-1970s Kingston, invented the remix and the version, the idea a recording is raw material to rebuild rather than a fixed object.
Harvey Blumler of Prospa is stepping back from performing because of an ongoing ear condition, and the honesty of it says a lot about a risk DJs rarely admit out loud.
A house-driven turn toward warmth, colour and kindness is reshaping Berlin nightlife just as Klubsterben guts the city, and the scene is split on whether that is evolution or surrender.
A Russian court jailed the owner and two staff of an Orenburg nightclub in the first prison sentences handed down under the 2023 ruling that branded the international LGBT movement an extremist organisation.
Beatport has launched Greenroom, a free hub that finally shows artists and labels their real Beatport numbers: DJ downloads, streams, followers, chart moves and features, all in one dashboard.
Lukas Wigflex has stepped down from Peep Festival and pulled out of all his bookings after his former wife published detailed abuse allegations.
