From Closing Act to Opening Statement
Three years ago, drone shows at music festivals were novelty — a sweet surprise at the end of the event. Today, it has become the main selling point. 'There's a drone show from iDRONE' is no longer additional information on the festival poster — it's the headline.
Djakarta Warehouse Project 2024 sets a precedent: 300 drones fly while a DJ set is in progress, in sync with the BPM of electronic music. At that moment, the drone show stopped being an interlude and became an inseparable part of the music festival experience.
Why Audio-Visual Synchronization is Important
Watching a drone show with background music is one thing. Watching a drone show that MOVES with the music is a completely different experience neurologically. When the viewer sees the drone formation change precisely on the beat drop, the brain instinctively responds with deeper intensity.
Our team developed a timecode synchronization pipeline that allows drone choreography to be locked to a BPM track. Each transition formation occurs at the exact beat chosen by the music director. For DWP 2024, we worked directly with the setlist to select the most impactful moments in the set to decorate with drones.
From DWP to Pestapora to Brave Bintan
After DWP 2024, we received a brief from the Pestapora Festival — Indonesia's biggest indie festival which is usually synonymous with blue skies and organic atmosphere. Challenge: how can drone shows, which have always been synonymous with 'hi-tech', fit with the indie-organic aesthetic of Partaipora?
The answer: creative personalization. For Pestapora, we designed a more organic and fluid formation — no hi-tech silhouettes like Geely, but more changing geometric patterns like a music visualiser. The results were overwhelmingly received — even audiences skeptical of 'tech showmanship' were amazed.
Brave Bintan: New Frontier
February 2025, Brave Bintan brings a drone show to the Riau archipelago — a region that has never seen a show of this scale before. 150 drones over Bintan Island became a historical moment for the local community and further expanded Indonesia's drone show map from Sabang to (near) Merauke.
This is a trend that we believe will continue to grow: not only Jakarta and Bali, but all cities and destinations in Indonesia are ready to become stages for drone shows. The infrastructure and audience are there. Just the vision.
For Event Organizers
If you are planning a music festival or outdoor event, consider drone shows not as an additional item in the budget, but as an investment in differentiation. Amid ever-increasing competition between festivals, extraordinary visual spectacles are what keep audiences coming back next year — and tell everyone about it.
