Asia Music Event Picks Hong Kong's Soho House for Its First Edition. Jakarta's DWP Booker Has a Seat at the Table.

Soho House Hong Kong's 27th-floor Drawing Room usually hosts members nursing negronis under jade-green textiles, looking out at Victoria Harbour through the kind of curtains that cost more than most people's rent. On November 26 and 27, it hosts something else: over 1,000 label heads, festival bookers, agents and DJs, there to argue about what Asia's electronic music industry actually needs from itself.

That's the pitch behind Asia Music Event (AME), a new two-day conference announced this month and confirmed for Hong Kong's private members' club this November. It's the kind of event the region has talked about needing for years without anyone quite building it: an Asia-anchored answer to Ibiza's IMS or Miami's Music Summit, where the people who run labels, book festivals and program clubs sit in the same room as the executives who decide what streaming, licensing and touring look like next.

What AME Actually Is

Strip away the conference-speak and it's straightforward: more than 30 sessions across panels, keynotes and networking blocks, spread over two days, with over 200 companies taking part. Warner Music, Beatport, Mexico's Zamna Festival and Portugal's Lisbon Dance Summit are confirmed as partners. Programme Director Marco Zhu frames it as a two-way exchange rather than a showcase for Western labels to discover Asian talent: "AME is about creating a genuine two-way bridge between Asia and the international music industry, helping the world better understand Asia's unique markets and culture, while creating new opportunities for people across the ecosystem to connect, collaborate and grow."

The numbers behind that ambition aren't small. The 2026 IMS Electronic Music Business Report puts the global electronic music industry at US$15.1 billion in 2025, still climbing. Hong Kong's Tourism Board is backing AME as part of a push to add music conferences to a calendar that already leans on finance and design events; General Manager Marilyn Tham calls the city "a super-connector" for the industry. Once the panels wrap on day two, AME closes with a two-floor takeover of Soho House itself.

The Jakarta Connection

For a Southeast Asian reader, the interesting name on the first speaker list isn't a European label boss. It's Ayudita Hariadi, Head of Booking at Ismaya, the promoter behind Jakarta's Djakarta Warehouse Project, which just locked in Axwell Λ Ingrosso and Dimitri Vegas for its December 2026 return. Hariadi is the person who decides who plays Southeast Asia's biggest mainstage, and she'll be in the room in Hong Kong deciding, alongside label and streaming executives, what "Asia's next wave" is supposed to mean industry-wide. That's a very different kind of visibility than a lineup announcement: it's Jakarta's booking desk getting a say in how the region gets pitched to the rest of the world.

She's joined on the announced speaker roster by Beatport CCO Alex Branson, Warner Music's VP of Brand and Partnership Becky Yeung, Clinton Lau (Head of Music at INS Land and President of The Magic of Tomorrowland), Magicroom co-founder Leo Arbez, Lisbon Dance Summit co-founder Jesper Skibsby, and Sonia Lau of Swire Resources' business development team.

Why It's Worth Watching From Here

Hong Kong's own scene has had a rough couple of years of club closures and promoters moving on, something we wrote about when Shanda left the city for Berlin after selling out her ABYSS parties for three years straight. A conference isn't a club, and 1,000 badge-wearing delegates in a members' club won't fix a nightlife scene on its own. But AME's organisers are explicit that this is meant to be the first of an annual event, with plans to expand into city-wide showcases and parties over the next three to five years. If it holds together, it gives promoters, labels and bookers from Bangkok to Manila a reason to fly to Hong Kong every November instead of only Miami or Ibiza, and a direct line to the people, like Hariadi, already deciding what gets booked back home.

If You Go

Dates: November 26-27, 2026. Venue: Soho House Hong Kong, Sheung Wan. Tickets: via plvr.io. The event is built for industry professionals, not a general-admission party, though the closing night at Soho House is the closest thing to a public payoff.