DJ Hannah Laing hosting dance music festival in Dundee with 10,000 tickets sold in an hour
A Scottish DJ who is hosting a dance music festival in her home city next summer has said it is “absolutely wild” that 10,000 tickets were sold in just one hour.
Hannah Laing, 30, has made a name for herself in the electronic music scene with past performances at Creamfields, Terminal V, The Warehouse Project, TRNSMT and Parklife.
She has even appeared as a support act for Hollywood actor and DJ Idris Elba in Ibiza.
The DJ has now unveiled plans to hold her own festival in Dundee’s Camperdown Country Park on 5 July 2025.
Tickets for Doof In The Park went on sale last week, with 10,000 snapped up within 60 minutes.
Pic: Michael Hunter
Laing told Sky News: “It’s really overwhelming that we’ve managed to sell that many tickets without a line-up and just my name. That feels absolutely wild to me.”
The musician has played at Camperdown Park twice before – first in 2017 at Carnival Fifty Six and then last year for Radio 1’s Big Weekend.
Pic: Michael Hunter
Pic: Michael Hunter
Despite the ticket demand and calls to turn it into a weekend-long festival, Laing said the event will be capped at 15,000 and will only take place across one day.
She said: “Because it’s my first festival, I don’t want to go too big, too quick. I just want to put my all into this.
“Even though the demand is there, it would be stupid to go absolutely mental.”
If the event turns out to be a success, then Laing would consider expanding in future years.
Pic: Michael Hunter
Laing has been making music for 12 years, with the festival named after her own record label, Doof.
In 2023, her single Good Love with RoRo spent 26 weeks in the UK Singles Chart, peaking at number seven.
Another career highlight was selling out Dundee’s Caird Hall earlier this year on two dates.
It was those shows that have encouraged Laing to take her Dundee gigs outdoors.
Pic: Michael Hunter
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Unlike Glasgow and Edinburgh, there’s no large-scale dance events in the “City of Discovery”.
Spotting a gap in the market, Laing said it was “important” to hold the festival in Dundee and hopes it will inject some cash into the local economy.
She added: “It’s kind of always been on my radar to do something big. Obviously, I’m from Dundee, so it makes sense for me to do it there.”
Pic: Michael Hunter
Laing has teamed up with colleagues in the industry who have experience in organising larger music events.
She said: “I’m working with such a great team. Because the festival is my festival, it’s my brand. Ultimately, every decision comes back to me.
“So, there is a lot more pressure, but I want to be part of every single decision.
“I was a raver before all of this, so I want it to be as best as possible. It’s much, much more work, but you’ve got to put in the work to get something out of it.”
Laing is yet to unveil the line-up but is promising a bill with household names and up-and-coming artists.
And for those who have never seen Laing in action before, she said: “My sets are all about the high energy. It caters to all ages because my sound is very 90s-inspired.
“My mum and dad are 90s ravers, and that’s really why I’m into that.
“So I get quite a wide age range of people coming to my shows because I do play a lot of that old 90s music, and my own music is influenced by that.”
Video footage has shown the moment singer and actress Ariana Grande was accosted by a fan at a film premiere.
Ms Grande was in Singapore for the debut of Wicked: For Good when the incident unfolded on Thursday.
The video captured the moment the fan scaled the barricade and pushed past photographers towards Ms Grande.
Pic: tacotrvck_vb/X/via REUTERS
He then threw his arms around her, before co-star Cynthia Erivo intervened and security swoops in to stop him.
The man, now identified as Johnson Wen, 26, is reportedly a notorious red carpet crasher.
Wen, who has since been charged with being a public nuisance, goes by the nickname Pyjama Man, and gloated as he shared footage of the intrusion online.
“Dear Ariana Grande, Thank You for letting me Jump on the Yellow Carpet with You,” he wrote on Instagram.
Pic: tacotrvck_vb/X/via REUTERS
In video stories posted to the site beforehand, he was seen at the Universal Studios venue, revealing his intentions.
In one, he said: “I feel like I’m in a dream, that’s my best friend, Ariana Grande, and I’m gonna meet her. I’ve been dreaming about that.”
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The Australian has ambushed several performers on stage, according to reports, including Katy Perry and The Chainsmokers at concerts in Sydney, and The Weeknd in Melbourne.
It has been reported that Wen intends to plead guilty and that he could face a fine of more than £1,000.
Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo at the London premiere for Wicked: For Good
Ms Grande took a moment to gather herself in the aftermath of the intrusion, visibly shocked by the incident.
She didn’t address the incident on her own Instagram, but shared some photos with the caption “thank you, Singapore”, adding “we love you”.
The singer battled post-traumatic stress disorder after her 2017 concert in Manchester was bombed, leaving 22 people dead.
She told Vogue in 2018: “It’s hard to talk about because so many people have suffered such severe, tremendous loss. But, yeah, it’s a real thing.
“I know those families and my fans, and everyone there experienced a tremendous amount of it as well. Time is the biggest thing.
“I feel like I shouldn’t even be talking about my own experience – like I shouldn’t even say anything. I don’t think I’ll ever know how to talk about it and not cry.”
In the same interview she also addressed her own anxiety, saying she has “always” had it.
Ms Grande plays Galinda Upland in Wicked: For Good, the character who becomes Glinda the Good Witch. Ms Erivo plays Elphaba, the character who becomes the Wicked Witch of the West.
The film is released in UK cinemas on 21 November.
Entertainment
A third of daily music uploads are AI-generated and 97% of people can’t tell the difference, says report
Do you care if the music you’re listening to is artificially generated?
That question – once the realm of science fiction – is becoming increasingly urgent.
An AI-generated country track, Walk My Walk, is currently sitting at number one on the US Billboard chart of digital sales and a new report by streaming platform Deezer has revealed the sheer scale of AI production in the music industry.
Deezer’s AI-detection system found that around 50,000 fully AI-generated tracks are now uploaded every day, accounting for 34% of all daily uploads.
File pic: iStock
The true number is most likely higher, as Deezer’s AI-detection system does not catch every AI-generated track. Nor does this figure include partially AI-generated tracks.
In January 2025, Deezer’s system identified 10% of uploaded tracks as fully AI-generated.
Since then, the proportion of AI tracks – made using written prompts such as “country, 1990s style, male singer” – has more than tripled, leading the platform’s chief executive, Alexis Lanternier, to say that AI music is “flooding music streaming”.
‘Siphoning money from royalty pool’
What’s more, when Deezer surveyed 9,000 people in eight countries – the US, Canada, Brazil, UK, France, Netherlands, Germany and Japan – and asked them to detect whether three tracks were real or AI, 97% could not tell the difference.
That’s despite the fact that the motivation behind the surge of AI music is not in the least bit creative, according to Deezer. The company says that roughly 70% of fully AI-generated tracks are what it calls “fraudulent” – that is, designed purely to make money.
“The common denominator is the ambition to boost streams on specific tracks in order to siphon money from the royalty pool,” a Deezer spokesperson told Sky News.
“With AI-generated content, you can easily create massive amounts of tracks that can be used for this purpose.”
File pic: Reuters
The tracks themselves are not actually fraudulent, Deezer says, but the behaviour around them is. Someone will upload an AI track then use an automated system – a bot – to listen to a song over and over again to make royalties from it.
Even though the total number of streams for each individual track is very low – Deezer estimates that together they account for 0.5% of all streams – the work needed to make an AI track is so tiny that the rewards justify the effort.
Are fully-AI tracks being removed?
Deezer is investing in AI-detection software and has filed two patents for systems that spot AI music. But it is not taking down the tracks it marks as fully-AI.
Instead it removes them from algorithmic recommendations and editorial playlists, a measure designed to stop the tracks getting streams and therefore generating royalties, and marks the tracks as “AI-generated content”.
“If people want to listen to an AI-generated track however, they can and we are not stopping them from doing so – we just want to make sure they are making a conscious decision,” the Deezer spokesperson says.
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Deezer’s survey found that more than half (52%) of respondents felt uncomfortable with not being able to tell the difference between AI and human-made music.
“The survey results clearly show that people care about music and want to know if they’re listening to AI or human-made tracks or not,” said the company’s boss Alexis Lanternier.
“There’s also no doubt that there are concerns about how AI-generated music will affect the livelihood of artists.”
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Musicians protests AI copyright plans
Earlier this year, more than 1,000 musicians – including Annie Lennox, Damon Albarn and Kate Bush – released a silent album to protest plans by the UK government to let artificial intelligence companies use copyright-protected work without permission.
A recent study commissioned by the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers suggested that generative AI music could be worth £146bn a year in 2028 and account for around 60% of music libraries’ revenues.
By this metric, the authors concluded, 25% of creators’ revenues are at risk by 2028, a sum of £3.5bn.
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