Pulling a DJ from a lineup turned out to be the easy part. In February, within 48 hours of allegations surfacing against several hard techno artists, promoters across four continents, from Verknipt to GLITCH Festival, HIVE Festival, XXL, REBELS Mexico, Pitch Music & Arts, See You Festival and Face2Face, had quietly stripped the accused names off their posters. Steer Management, the booking agency at the centre of the allegations, suspended work with several of its own roster artists; others walked before they had to be pushed.

That speed was the reaction. What hasn't happened, according to a six-month assessment published by Techno Airlines on 21 August, is any accompanying process. No promoter, agency or body has published what a removal is supposed to trigger next: who reviews it, on what timeline, and what an artist would need to show to be booked again. Techno Airlines found no evidence that any of the DJs named in February have played a festival since.

Why did the removals happen so much faster than any review?

Because dropping a name from a poster is a unilateral, reversible-in-theory decision one promoter can make alone, with a lawyer on speed dial and a show to protect. Reviewing an allegation, and deciding what would justify reversing that decision, requires evidence-gathering, due process for the accused, and some shared definition of what "cleared" or "reinstated" even means. None of that exists at the genre level. As Techno Airlines put it in its assessment: a booking can be cleared in two days, while complaints and investigations move in months or years, and hard techno, a genre almost entirely dependent on touring income, has built nothing for the space in between.

Nobody has published a threshold for what a removal means, when it is reviewed, or what a return would require. Until somebody does, every promoter improvises the same decision alone.

Has anyone actually built a process since February?

Not really. The Association For Electronic Music, the trade body most likely to set a genre-wide standard, has mostly pointed back to what already existed before the Steer files broke: a confidential reporting line operated through Health Assured, and a referral relationship with CIISA (the Creative Industries Independent Standards Authority) for mediation and formal investigation. Both predate February. AFEM has also said publicly that "change cannot rest on victims speaking out" and that it is "a shared responsibility", which is the right sentiment and, six months on, still not a written standard any promoter, agent or artist can point to when the next allegation lands.

The result is that every venue and festival is left running its own private calculus: pull the name fast to protect the brand and the audience, then work out reinstatement, if it ever comes up, with no shared reference point and no public accountability for how that decision gets made.

What we think

The speed of the February removals was never really in question, brand risk moves promoters fast in any industry. The absence of any structure six months later is the actual story, and it's a genre-wide failure of institutions that had time to build one and chose restatement over reform.