WA EDM Hub To Close

After 17 years online, pioneering Perth dance music website Teknoscape is closing down permanently at the end of May.

In a post today on Teknoscape's forums, founder Petar Ceklic announced the website's closure, citing operating costs and the shift of advertising dollars away from websites toward facebook as reasons for the closure.

Ceklic wrote in the post: “As the Teknoscape website is so large, it is expensive to host - and over the last couple years with Facebook becoming more ingrained with society promoters have stopped advertising on Teknoscape, hence the running costs have been coming out of my own pocket.

“A couple promoters have expressed interest in buying Teknoscape and taking it over, but this is my baby and I would rather finish what I started.”

Teknoscape was created in 1996 by Ceklic, who was only a teenager at the time. Over the following years, Teknoscape's forums accumulated a substantial following – the website's 'The Couch' general discussion forum contained 27,403 threads with 1,972,979 posts by the time of the closure's announcement.

Ceklic told theMusic today, “The scene in 1996 was nothing like it is now - a party with 500+ people was huge, there were no festivals. I think TS helped contribute to what the scene is today which feels good. Now it's really well established and mainstream and turned into big business.

“I'm sad to see it go, as the site is a part of me after 17 years. It had to happen, I'm just glad we can close it down with integrity.”

Since the announcement, Perth's EDM community has lamented the news.

Dance promoter Boomtick's general manager Kasey Hartung told themusic: “In my opinion, Teknoscape was part of the foundation of the Perth music scene (along with Jeremy Junk). It's a shame when the changes in the way we consume information  and the subsequent way we market events leads us down this path, but I for one, will be celebrating just how instrumental TS was, and how far it has come.”

Aarom Wilson, Marketing & Communications Officer at Western Australian Music Industry Association and former editor of Drum Media Perth (published by Street Press Australia - owners of theMusic) reflected, "Thanks must be given to Teknoscape for helping turn Perth's burgeoning dance music scenes into the thriving, globally competitive ones we have today.

“Almost two decades ago, in a time when hand-delivered flyers reigned supreme over social media and the rest of the music media didn't give two tosses about broke dance promoters, Teknoscape was instrumental in giving WA's growing electronic music scenes a push.”

“Besides, where the hell are we going to get our easy fix of forum dummy spit laughs from now?" 

Tributes to both Ceklic and Teknoscape also flowed into the site following news of the website's closure:

“Tis a sad day. Loved getting a leg up into gig photography when I didn't know what the fuck I was even doing, then going onto shoot Outlook festival and Sankey's Ibiza last year.  Thanks for your hard work P!” wrote user sistymatic.

“no shit, teknoscape has been a slightly odd part of my life for a long time, if it didn't shut down i'd probably still be on it in 50 years” commented user dogma.

“Shit ai. Although the glory days of TS are well gone I always thought that this forum would kick on in some form or another for years to come” wrote user vapour.