Made Event Responds To ASOT600 NYC Criticisms, Adds Official After-Parties

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Leading up to the announcement for A State Of Trance 600 dates, the New York #trancefamily was one of the most vocal groups out there lobbying for the tour. After missing out on previous tour years, New York refused to be left out. So when it was announced that Armin Van Buuren would be bringing his ASOT600 show to the Big Apple to say people were excited would have been a gross understatement.  With more details to be announced still, anticipation grew and grew, but it did not last.

First, the announcement that ASOT600 would take place at the famous Madison Square Garden arena was met with confusion and dismay. While it was acknowledged that playing MSG was a hugely significant achievement for trance music as a whole, and Armin individually, the idea of being in a basketball arena with thousands of seats taking up potential dancefloor space became a big sticking point for many fans.  In defending the MSG choice, ASOT promoters Made Event said:

"Performing at MSG is a dream come true for Armin and we are excited to bring A State of Trance 600 to this legendary arena where other EDM musicians have performed and the fans had a blast. The truth is, an event of this magnitude needs a venue large enough to meet the demand. In fact, as we learned when tickets sold out so quickly, there isn’t ANY indoor venue in New York City that can hold enough people for everyone who wants to attend ASOT 600."

Okay, that's a reasonably fine reason to choose a place like MSG. Perhaps that really is the only locale in NYC that could even come close meeting ticket demands...it could have been argued that Manhattan's westside Jacob Javits Center could have been a location due to it's enormous and spacious design, but thats a convention center and probably wouldn't have fit the bill despite it's 85,000 person capacity.  So we'll give them that.

To add insult to injury, rumors of specific lineups and set lengths had people up in a huff, too, when it was announced that there would be five acts each with only an hour set time.  Now for dubstep and electro house, an hour set or so might be optimal as one can only take so much of the brash-in-your-face style. But for trance and techy styles, the idea that a DJ would be able to take the crowd on a quality musical journey in only an hour is rather blasphemous.  The style does not lend it's self to quick mixing and cuts, but rather incredibly deep blends, long breakdowns and gradual yet satisfying builds.  For a proper trance set, the first hour is usually only a warmup with things heating up and intensifying in the following hours.  Now add up what we've said already.  MSG, hour sets...it's not looking good right? Well, close your eyes...

So even after the initial disappointments and despite earnest efforts to prevent this issue exactly, ASOT600 sold out immediately and large volumes of tickets ended up on Stubhub.com at outrageous prices.  Made Event again responded to the scalping issue, clarifying their stance:

"Made Event is NOT associated with and is in no way benefiting from tickets being re-sold on StubHub. Because we know ticket scalping is a real problem, we tried our best to distribute tickets to the true fans by holding a presale that required a unique, personal code for purchase, and by limiting the number of tickets that can be purchased by each person. We’re very disappointed, like you are, that so many tickets still ended up on StubHub, but unfortunately we have no control over it."

Right.  Okay, that seems reasonable enough, but still unfortunate because at the end of the day not only were thousands of die-hard dance fans left out in the cold here, there seems to be no remedy for them.  That said, the fine people at Made Event have realized the gravity of this situation and they are in fact trying to meet the demand by creating some official after-parties:

"Finally, we know the demand for tickets was huge and we understand that not everyone was able to get tickets. So we’re working on a couple of amazing official afterparties. Details will be announced soon. Please stay tuned!"

Okay so maybe the clouds are clearing up a bit and there will be some light and redemption for New York #trancefamily, but all we can do right now is wait...

Information for this story was gathered from a variety of sources, primarily EDMNYC.com

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