Q-dance’s Dediqated subscription has recently undergone significant changes. Now the question is, will you renew your subscription? Or, if you’ve never been enrolled, will you finally take the plunge?
Q-dance, as an organisation, has been having considerable changes recently. The biggest one has been at the parent company level… however that topic deserves a deep dive in another article, and I’m not going to delve deep into that right now.
In line with all the recent changes, the Dediqated Membership will now essentially become a sort of “Defqon.1 Fan Club” membership. The previous monthly membership option is gone, and the annual plan has dropped by €15. With this change, Q-dance Network – the membership’s central hub – will go offline entirely, with all sets available being uploaded elsewhere.
Reflecting on the Network, I have to say it never fully reached its potential, as I’ve mentioned in the past. As a long-term subscriber, I often found its performance lackluster in its main goal of becoming a central database for live sets, and that was always my biggest concern with the subscription. Sure, while it had a vast collection from past events, it fell short on releasing event sets promptly after new events took place. Instead immediately releasing audio sets right after events, Q-dance often took months to release them, by which time interest had faded. Ironically, this led fans back to the same unofficial sites they’d always used – the same ones Q-dance is competing against. Counterproductive, to say the least…
The Network wasn’t just about live sets, though; it also housed excellent non-festival content. Things like the Legends series featured deep-dive interviews with iconic artists, while the Chefa series was an engaging mix of food and conversation, where Sefa interviewed key scene figures over a meal. However, there’s been no clarification on where this exclusive content will go – only that the livesets will be re-shared across other platforms. It’s disappointing to think that unique, high-quality series might fade away. As far as we know, only the content that is already available in many other places, and was shared in a way more timely manner by parties other than Q-dance, is the one being reuploaded…
The second major core benefit of this membership are the early access ticket sales. Regardless of “pay-to-win” criticisms, having first access to ticket sales remains, in my opinion, invaluable. This feature alone is easily worth the subscription by itself, and that was the sole reason I subscribed at launch. After strangely running the Dediqated sale after the main Travel & Stay sale for Defqon.1 for 2024, Q-dance has once again given priority to it’s subscribers (as they should) for next year’s Defqon.1, and seem to be commiting to prioritising selling tickets to paying members (once again, as they should, because they’re paying members…)
Other than that, the previously existing memberships perks related to Defqon.1 will obviously be kept, such as the raffles, early access to merch, Dediqated-only experiences on the festival site and discounts on activities. However, a few new things come into play, such as “online specials” (whatever that means), a Defqon.1 Magazine and “Dediqated panels”.
Collectors like me will certainly thoroughly enjoy the magazines, and find them an amazing added value. Some may even feel this alone justifies the subscription. However I believe it’s safe to assume this will bring little to no value to most of the atendees. It reamins to be seen what the panels or the online specials will be, and I’ll save my opinion for when they launch… But I’m not going to lie, I have a feeling they’ll be good added values.
According to Q-dance, the new direction for Dediqated reflects a post-COVID pivot. The platform originally emerged to keep the hardstyle scene connected when live events weren’t possible. This initiative undoubtedly helped sustain both the brand, and community morale, and provided some financial relief to the organization when income stalled. The Network became a life buoy to help everyone stay afloat during the strange times we’ve lived between 2020 and 2022, and I think it’s safe to say it did ok during that period, even with all it’s shortcomings. But it is still strange and surprising to see such an abrupt shift away from it, and no further effort to put out unique and exclusive content (which is relevant whether there’s a pandemic or not…).
In the end, you win some and lose some. And I’d probably be a hiprocrate if I didn’t admit that the new perks somewhat make up for the losses, given I’ll be subscribing to this new plan on day one. Until then, I’ll enjoy the great non-festival content of the Network for one last time!