Fun Business Days returned to Valencia this April, now in its fifth edition and for the first time held at the city’s iconic City of Arts and Sciences. With over 3,000 professionals across two days, the conference brought together club owners, festival directors, artist managers, booking agents and media figures to discuss where the events industry is heading.
What came through consistently across the panels was the cyclic nature of the industry and its constant evolution. Audiences are changing in how they discover music, what genres they listen to, how they experience a festival, and what they expect from a night out. Artists and their teams are also changing in how they build their careers and connect with their audiences. Festival organisers and event promoters adapt quickly and support these new shifts.
Gen Z in particular is reshaping the conversation, approaching nightlife differently: drinking less, seeking out daytime experiences and wanting more from a festival than a lineup. The demand is for something more considered – multiple zones with different genres and varied experiences. Festival organisers are responding, and artists and managers are following the same shift, thinking more carefully about identity, longevity and what it means to build a career sustainably. People want to party, but in a more mindful way, and the industry is catching up with that.
From talking about the rise and fall of Ruta Bakalao to discussing 30 years of running Awakenings, here are some of the panels that stood out for me.
Awakenings: Three Decades Leading Techno
Founder Rocco Veenboer and CEO Tim Middelesch walked through 30 years of building one of techno’s most revered brand names.
The festival’s philosophy of scouting clubs for breaking artists and turning them into mainstays rather than booking established names was held up as the model that has kept Awakenings credible across three decades. Exclusivity of the venue, visual production, the maintenance of a festival’s identity, and the constant development of new zones within their events were all identified as strategic pillars. On the pressure of the business, he was characteristically direct: “You’re as good as your last festival, and there’s no second chance.”
Veenboer was candid about stepping back from day-to-day operations, not just out of fatigue (he jokingly mentioned how he sleeps better now) but mostly out of genuine conviction that younger generations understand better what is relevant right now, and that giving them real power is the right move. He also revealed a personal note: he has been spending several months a year in Valencia and is exploring smaller-scale events in the city.
Festival Ops: Running the Show Across Markets
Sziget CEO Tamás Kádár, Ultra Europe’s Alek El-Kazal and Parookaville co-founder Bernd Dicks gave an honest account of what it actually means to run major festivals across different European markets. The session landed on a recurring theme: the best festivals are utopian playgrounds for adults, but building that feeling requires hard operational discipline. Kádár’s observations on Gen Z were particularly striking – this generation drinks less, prefers daytime programming and wants clearly structured genre zones rather than the loose, serendipitous festival experience of previous decades. The implication for operators was clear: intuition is no longer enough; you need data, planning and a clear sense of your audience’s evolving expectations.
Artist Management: Beyond Music and Talent
Moderated by Steven Braines, this session brought together the managers behind Black Coffee, Artbat and the Black Eyed Peas. The message was clear: management is no longer a support role, it’s a strategic discipline. Resilience and self-belief were flagged as non-negotiable qualities for any artist serious about longevity. The panel also addressed the changing landscape of social content — with festival and big stages appearances now driving reach rather than resulting from it.
Made in Spain, Booked Worldwide
CRUSY and WADE represented a Spanish electronic music scene that has quietly become one of the world’s most fertile. The panel explored how artists from Spain have built genuine international careers without losing their identity. One thread ran through all their stories: the critical importance of having the right people close to you — management, booking, creative collaborators, especially in the early years. Booking agencies and artistic positioning were discussed as levers, but the emotional foundation of a tight inner circle who believe in you unconditionally, emerged as the real differentiator.
New Voices in New Media
The session featuring Wololo Sound’s Alberto Cortés, Mixmag Spain’s Patricia Pareja and Fiesta & Bullshit’s Teo Molina tackled how the sector communicates with its audience today. The consensus: traditional media structures have been replaced by digital-native formats in form of podcasts, YouTube channels, TikTok and Instagram, that now set the agenda rather than follow it. The panel also fielded questions from emerging artists on how to break through giving the importance of approaching media outlets in the “right moment” of their career.
Too Fast to Die: The Makina and Bakalao Revival
There’s a particular kind of full-circle moment that only music can produce, and this panel delivered one. Andrés Campo, Dany BPM, Sofía Cristo, Skudero and Buenri sat together to talk about a genre that once defined a generation’s nights, was written off as a cultural embarrassment, and has somehow come back. The session explored what the genre was, why it collapsed, and what its unlikely revival says about how nostalgia, identity and youth culture intersect.
That it happened in Valencia, the city where bakalao culture arguably burned brightest, gave the whole conversation an extra meaning. A fitting note to end on at a conference that is itself part of putting this city back on the map and confirm the cyclic nature of the electronic music industry.
