How to Survive a City That Turns Into a Festival

The first thing to understand about the Amsterdam Dance Event is that it is not a festival with a site. It is a week in which an entire city agrees to host electronic music, in three hundred venues that are otherwise bars, theatres, record shops, churches and warehouses. Nobody sees all of it. The people who enjoy it most are the ones who stop trying. Book the bed before the line-up. Amsterdam fills months ahead and prices roughly double across that week, while the programme is published late and keeps growing until the day before. A room booked in spring costs what a room costs. The same room booked in September costs what a festival ticket costs. The line-up will still be there when you get around to it. Then plan by neighbourhood rather than by name. The single most common mistake, and we have made it repeatedly, is building a night around two artists playing on opposite sides of the city. You spend the evening on a tram, arrive for the last twenty minutes of both, and remember neither. A night where three venues are within walking distance will give you more music and considerably better stories. The daytime programme is the part people skip and then regret skipping. The conference, the panels, the listening sessions, the in-store sessions in record shops: this is where the week justifies its existence, and where ADE separates itself from a long weekend of parties. If you work in music, the nights are the social layer and the days are the job. If you do not, the days are still the cheapest way to understand why the nights sound the way they do. Pace is the other thing nobody tells you. Five days is a marathon and the city does not slow down to accommodate you. Two big nights and three early ones will give you more music than five late ones, and you will actually remember them. Eat properly. Keep one evening with nothing booked, because the best thing you do all week will almost certainly be something you were told about at a bar. Finally, treat the 4am decision as a decision. The temptation is to keep going because the week is finite and the city is still open. The people who look happiest on Sunday are the ones who went home on Friday while they were still enjoying themselves.

Official site: https://www.amsterdam-dance-event.nl/