With a string of lively discussions behind us, the inthemix Debate Series is up to its fifth and final round (who knows, you might see it surface again in another guise). For this Friday’s feature, we’re looking at a hot-button topic often bandied around in club-going circles. All this is powered by Hyundai Veloster, and just like past weeks there are prizes for getting involved in the debate. A big thanks to you all for getting involved throughout January – it’s been fun!

Let’s start with a familiar scenario. You’ve corralled your friends together because that Saturday night has finally arrived. Hype has been steadily building over the past months for the international guest who’s top of the club bill. Podcasts and recorded club sets have been shared around. Tonight, though, that headliner just can’t connect with the dancefloor. The spark is missing. Just when you start thinking it’s your mood to blame, the local resident comes on and lifts the room. Lucky you stuck around, ‘cause half the room didn’t.

“In Australia, I feel like sometimes people turn up five minutes before the international act and leave almost before their last record finishes,” Melbourne stalwart Mike Callander observed in his inthemix Honour Roll feature last year.

It’s no surprise, really, that there’s reverence for internationals here. While the coveted acts of Europe and North America seem to agree we’re a nation always up for a party, we’re also a nation that takes 20-plus hours to get to. One long-haul down here a year – at best – seems to be the usual pattern. If we miss that visit, we can be waiting a while. You might remember we’ve explored this topic before in 2010, but 15 months on we’ve put the question to a new panel of experts: do we care too much about internationals at the expense of our own talent?

When you’re flying an act all the way to Australia, you’ve got to be sure people want to see them. That’s not always a simple equation for touring agents. Daniel Teuma runs Novel Tours & Events out of Melbourne, which in 2011 toured artists with significant clout in the Northern Hemisphere: Marcel Dettmann & Ben Klock, Motor City Drum Ensemble, Claude VonStroke and Octave One among them. This month Novel is bringing Space Dimension Controller and John Digweed to our clubs.

As Teuma tells inthemix, predicting the pulling power of these acts in Australia takes research. “It can be a difficult task to predict the kind of pull or interest in an electronic artist,” he says. “Social media and sites such as inthemix and RA who have user interaction play a very important role these days. Experience from touring similar acts provides an indication of the level of interest locally and interstate, although there are surprises – good and bad – occasionally. Often promoters get caught up in a hype for an artist, which is generally created by industry insiders like other promoters and DJs, and the ‘hype’ has not crossed over to the consumer. The artist is overvalued and then under-performs.”