SWEDEN

Stockholm nightclubs change music – to avoid non-white guests
Published September 1, 2025 at 9:27 PM
Foreign. Six nightclubs and restaurants in Stockholm have stopped playing hip-hop, RnB and afrobeat, reports P3 Nyheter. According to people in the industry, one reason is that they do not want to attract too many, as P3 puts it, "non-white visitors."

DJ and music journalist Hasan Ramic, with over 20 years of experience in the industry, believes that the phenomenon is not new.

– They want the rhythm, not the blues. You can open a hip-hop night and run it for six months. And then when it gets too much blues, you change the “rhythm” to something where you get more white faces, he tells P3 Nyheter.

Even the security guard "Adam" testifies that clubs control the composition of the audience.

– At the club where I work now, they sometimes pull the handbrake if there are too many people with different backgrounds in there. And that in itself is a big problem, he tells the channel.

But the picture is not shared by everyone. Restaurateur Faje Gani, who previously ran the restaurant Yuc at Stureplan, says he has never noticed such motives behind the music choice.

– We have great diversity in Sweden and also in those scenes at restaurants and clubs and everything. So it's not something I've experienced or seen, he says.