They bring you the best dance and electronic acts from around the world and get you dancing at some of summer's biggest music festivals. Future Entertainment are the guys behind the likes of Summadayze and Future Music Festival, and we recently had the chance to chat with one half of the Aussie success story, Director Jason Ayoubi.

Sportsgirl: You started up Future Entertainment with Mark James over a decade ago now, can you tell us how it all began?

Jason Ayoubi: Mark and I started Future Entertainment back in 1995 together so it’s almost 15 years now. We started doing nightclub gigs together, particularly the Mansion, and importing DJs. The demand was just so high that we had lines of 2000-3000 people waiting outside! So we thought “this is all a bit bizarre, we’ve got to get into some bigger places” which prompted us to get into some bigger events. We started off at the Exhibition Building in Carlton in 1997 - that was one of our first big gigs, and there were about 8,000 people there, and though it was a steep learning curve starting to do events, from there it blossomed into doing other events.

We went to the Docklands and had a quite a few years there, putting on events like Gatecrasher, Two Tribes, and Trade, which were getting crowds of up to 20,000 people. They were all-night type affairs, and the idea came across to do a New Years' Day event – everyone thought we were pretty mad, doing a daytime electronic music festival, to the point where our security guys wanted to be paid up front because they thought we were completely and utterly mad! And so Summadayze was formed, and all of a sudden, this is its 12th year and we’ve been sold out every year.

To an extent we were lucky – our passion in music was like being at the right place at the right time, as we’ve seen this global phenomenon with dance and electronic music culture blossom nation-wide and internationally.

Jason behind the scenes

SG: Music festivals have become as synonymous with summer as sunshine and sand. Did you ever expect that it would become such a massive success?

JA: We wanted to be involved in music and events, I don’t know if you ever envisage it getting as big as it turned out, but you know, we loved it, so we couldn’t imagine why anyone else wouldn’t too.

SG: With this level of success, have there been any surreal moments where you’ve had to pinch yourself?

JA: Oh definitely, I get hair-standing-up-on-the-back-of-my-neck moments quite often! Sometimes it’s a great performance, sometimes you get really caught up in running the event and worrying about the five million things you need to worry about on an event day. But there’s usually a moment at every single event where something happens - you look at the crowd of 35,000-40,000 people going off to one track or one song that they’ve all come to see, and I'm lucky enough to to stand up on the stage and look out amongst that – you do have to pinch yourself when that happens! It makes it worth it!

SG: What makes for a stand out festival or show?

JA: People might think it's just about putting up a great lineup together, but there are lots of different factors that go into putting a great festival together: it’s the venue, it’s the crowd of people you’re attracting, it’s the people’s attitude when they get there. I think that’s the biggest thing that’s changed over the years. In the early years everyone was there for the right reason, they were just there to enjoy the music and there has been a some aspects of that changing, and hopefully we can get back to the levels of everyone being there for music and fun rather than anything else.

SG: The audience really makes a show!

JA: 100% yes. People just have to be in it and having a good time, and so long as there's a great venue and great sound and there's great music being played, it's about that attitude.

SG: Future has brought some of the biggest acts in the world over to Oz, as well as promoting amazing local talent…. What have been your outright favourites?

JA: Well I'm a huge Chemical Brothers fan, so that was definitely one of the highlights!  I love the Prodigy as well, and we had one of the members of Leftfield over I think way back 2001, that was highlight. I think you have your own musical tastes and to have some of those guys play at your gig you think “this is really cool”.

But there have been just some standout performances from people I hadn’t expected or people I hadn’t really listend to very much before… all those sorts of surprising things. Getting to hang out with some of the artists as well, forming friendships, that’s pretty cool.

SG: Thousands of people would love to have your job. What do you like best about being Director of Future Entertainment?

JA: They’re crazy! (laughs). It's really quite an intense job, there's lots of stuff to do every day, you have to love it. I think that whatever anyone does, if you love something then you're prepared to put a lot more effort into it, and I definitely am grateful that I can do a job that I actually like! It's not all rock stars and dinners and flying around internationally and going to gigs, there’s a lot of work that goes into it, we’ve got around 35 full time staff working for us now.

SG: We’ve heard of acts requesting some unusual things in their riders, what have been the most outrageous or interesting requests?

JA: I can't tell you about them! There’s lots of bizarre stuff. if you just imagine the worst things anyone could ask for and then double it!

SG: We're really looking forward to this summer's festivals. Especially now that the Future Music lineup has been announced - some awesome acts on there!

JA: We're really stoked with the lineup, it's probably our biggest one yet, and we're exploring different genres as well, trying to make that festival the biggest and best it can be and push the boundaries. We were really stoked to have Franz Ferdinand play the festival, and we pushed the boundaries with N*E*R*D last year and the Basement Jaxx live show - but at the same time, we've got to stay true to its core electronic roots, and the DJ lineup that we've got on that show is just fantastic and we hope that everyone can come along and have a great time!

www.futureentertainment.com.au