Symbiotic Launches New Dance Music Festival Hypersonic

Australia has a new dance music festival brand, Hypersonic.

Spread over two cities on successive days this November, Hypersonic promises to be a “ground breaking multi genre festival,” reads a social post. And as its name suggests, it’s connected with the much-loved and now defunct Stereosonic.

The fresh electronic music fest will be staged Saturday, November 29th at Sydney Showground and Sunday, November 30th at Melbourne Showgrounds, with a talent lineup yet to be announced.

Although details remain scarce on what the show will look and sound like, the official Hypersonic website gives up its secrets at closer inspection.

Hypersonic is produced by Symbiotic, one of Australia’s leading specialist trance event companies, led by CEO Richie McNeill and fellow director Janette Bishara.

McNeill is a leading figure in Australia electronic music scene, both as the DJ Richie Rich and as an entrepreneur.

McNeill managed Mushroom’s leading dance distributor, founded Hardware, and co-founded Stereosonic, the dance music juggernaut which at its peak could shift more than a quarter million tickets.

Bishara, meanwhile, boasts experience producing such events as Armin Only, A State Of Trance, ABGT150, Above and Beyond Acoustic at the Sydney Opera House and more.

Stereosonic began life in Melbourne in 2007, as EDM was on fire, and expanded to a five-city jaunt, visiting Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. The fest expanded to a two-date format and, for its 2013 run, sold more than 280,000 tickets sold across its five shows.

That year, SFX announced it had bought Totem OneLove Group Pty Ltd for US$75 million, and two years down the track, Stereosonic had reverted to a single-day format. In April 2016, organisers said the event would take a “hiatus.” Stereosonic hasn’t been seen since.

Symbiotic has toured such acts as MaRLo, Vini Vici, Maddix, Billy Gillies, Paul van Dyk, Above & Beyond and more, and has presented Transmission Festival, Dreamstate USA, MaRLo Altitude and Festival X.

Dance music is big business in these parts. 

Almost one in four music festivals in Australia is an electronic music festival (23%), making it the top genre in festival-land, according to the Soundcheck report, published last year by Creative Australia.

On the recording side, the most recent IMS Business Report found that Australia is the third largest market in the world for electronic music, trailing only the United States and Germany. Locals stream, on average, more of the genre than any other nations, the publication’s authors explain.

And according to data from Spotify, based on the volume of the streamers following dance music, Australia ranks at No. 3.