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As of January 1st, 2025, Tresor.West (Dortmund) decided to introduce a maximum cap on DJ fees, regardless of name, reputation, or digital reach. A sober announcement, published as a Community Post, but one heavy with meaning at a time when many German clubs are struggling to survive.
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According to the LiveMusikKommission, 81% of concert venues and clubs in Germany are facing structural financial difficulties. Inflation, rising rents, increasing production costs, the lingering effects of the pandemic: the crisis is no longer cyclical, it is systemic. Tresor.West does not claim to be immune. On the contrary, the club openly acknowledges the need to “take new paths” in order to keep existing.
The assessment made by the team is clear: while attendance is declining, DJ fees are skyrocketing. A dynamic largely fueled by the transformation of the electronic scene into an economy of visibility, where personality cults, algorithms, and digital metrics widen an ever-growing gap between headliners and emerging artists. In this context, even a demanding musical program is no longer always enough to fill a club, pushing some venues to follow trends rather than an artistic vision.
Tresor.West refuses this headlong rush. By capping fees, the club explicitly seeks to defuse this inflationary logic, to redistribute value differently, and to remind us that most DJs — including today’s most established names — started out in underground clubs, under conditions very different from those of the current star system.
This decision did not come out of nowhere. It is part of a broader reflection already initiated with the Community Nights which we had mentioned several times, launched in 2025 and renewed in 2026. Events with free or reduced entry, no announced line-up, focused on local DJs from the Ruhr and NRW, and designed as a breathing space outside hype-driven logic. An explicit attempt to put the community before the product, and the collective experience before the marketing promise.
Feedback from both the audience and artists has been overwhelmingly positive. Many praise a courageous move, seeing it as a rare signal in an industry often paralyzed by the fear of deviating from the dominant model. Some even see it as an example to follow, including at the festival scale — provided the effort is genuinely collective.
Because Tresor.West does not hide how challenging this approach is. Capping fees is not a moral stance, but a call for shared responsibility. The club explicitly thanks the artists — local and more established alike — who agreed to play under more modest conditions to support the venue. Without this mutual commitment, the model cannot hold.
How far can we accept market logic dictating the shape of culture and access to it? By refusing to align its programming with trends and bankable names, Tresor.West is taking a risk. But it is precisely this risk that restores meaning to the notion of the underground — not as a fixed aesthetic, but as a concrete practice of economic and cultural resistance.
Capping fees alone will not save clubs. But this gesture serves as a reminder of an all-too-often forgotten truth: a scene does not survive thanks to its headliners, but thanks to its venues, its audiences, and its communities. And without structural decisions — even unpopular ones — there will soon be no spaces left for these communities to exist.
#SaveTheUnderground