Storm causes another Storm upset, Sydney show postponed

For the second time in three months, storms have affected the staging of Chinese EDM festival Storm.

Plans to stage the first Storm festival in Sydney on December 9 at Parramatta Park have been called off due to the earlier cancellation of the festival in Shanghai in late September – due to severe storms.

Promoters posted on Facebook, “As many fans of Storm Festival are aware there were adverse weather conditions at Storm Music Festival Shanghai and this impacted our Australian production and operations.

“Our team has made the difficult decision to reschedule Storm Music Festival Australia so that we can deliver the true Storm experience for our fans.

“We apologise for the delay in communicating this to you. We’ve been working around the clock to make the original event date work, but it is just not possible.”

The only acts announced for the Sydney show were Mija, Ghastly, NGHTMRE, Kill Frenzy, and Ephwurd. The deadline to drop more on October 18 came and went.

Ticket holders for the Sydney show get an automatic VIP upgrade when the new date is fixed.

Alternatively, they can also get a refund.

The Shanghai show was cancelled by authorities due to severe meteorological warnings that a major storm would pass through the city during the time the festival was held.

Over 35,000 were expected to attend for the Chemical Brothers-headed bill near Shanghai Disneyland Resort while 22.5 million had watched the live stream in 2016.

Some fans had still arrived, only to find that openers, Swedish DJ duo Axwell and Ingrosso, had not arrived.

In May promoters A2LIVE that in 2017 Storm would expand from five Chinese cities in 2016 (to a total audience of 250,000) to nine as EDM took off in China, and extending for the first time to Taipei in Taiwan, and Sydney. The Taiwan date was later dropped.

The festival expansion was linked to the expansion of the promoters’ record label Storm Records which had struck a partnership with major European dance label, Spinnin’ Records, which is based in Amsterdam, to blend Eastern and Western styles.

Also launched were A2Live’s DianYinTai (streaming electronic music service), growth of A2LiVE’s artist management holdings (A2ARTIST and Strobe Light Talent), and its new DJ/production academy.

The Shanghai show was to coincide with A2Live’s fourth International Music Summit (IMS) Asia Pacific on September 21 and 22, and which drew 700 delegates, A2Live said.

Among topics discussed were streaming, the need to nurture the EDM underground as Asia-Pacific audiences were moving from its commercial style, and need to find and launch local EDM artists globally.

A Nielsen report found that in the region, Korea had the highest audience response (74), followed by China (64%), Taiwan (64%), Australia (49%) and Japan (25%).