Although Pacha’s popularity has soared along with the steep fan curve of electronic dance music, trouble has been a brewing when it comes to sustaining a suitable line up for the globally recognised brand based in Ibiza.

Ricardo Urgell is the 75-year-old Pacha patriarch who has held the reins of the family run club business and he has had to radically rethink the world famous brands approach. With a bigger EDM industry comes a higher fee for producers – “The D.J.’s wanted more money to play less,” said José Urgell, known as Piti, who is Mr. Urgell’s 65-year-old brother. “It was an abuse. We had to come up with a new plan because the old one was going to explode.” A good Example is Calvin Harris playing a few hours at a wedding for over 300k pounds!

With the likes of Tiësto, Luciano and Pete Tong who used the club as their breeding ground for popularity now being pushed to the side, the only surviving EDM headliner set to return to the original Ibiza club is David Guetta, largely to protect his brand he worked so hard on while living on the Spanish colonised island.

The growing threat of Las Vegas and the myriad of new clubs opening (including a Cirque Du Soleil one) can be read through Tiesto publicist in a major coup for the city this year. “I’ve played in Ibiza every summer for the last 10 summers, and I felt like it was time for a change,” Tiësto said through his publicist. “Las Vegas is an amazing place, and I’m incredibly excited about my residencies at Hakkasan and Wet Republic.”

With the loss of residency of one of the biggest names in dance music happening, the threat or opportunity can be seen my inbox waking up to with my first email reading “Pacha Ibiza all change this year – Solomun + 1 Hosts Every Sunday”. It is of our opinion that Pacha is going to take these steep dj fees and it’s 40th year in business as the opportunity to usher in the next generation. This is an exciting time for a forward thinking brand. Solomun was voted MixMag and DJ Mags number 1 dj for 2012. How do you view this change?