El Tony Sends Producers to Ibiza

Most producer opportunities sound good until the fine print shows up.

This one is direct enough to pay attention to. El Tony Mate is bringing back its Producer Academy in Ibiza for a second edition, with Beatport supporting the project and eight emerging electronic music producers from Europe getting a full week on the island from October 1 to October 7, 2026.

The entry window closes August 23, and the challenge is simple: create a remix or original track using exclusive sample and stem packs from this year’s coaches, SKALA and Kid Simius. Entries will be reviewed by SKALA, Kid Simius, the El Tony Mate team, and Beatport, with eight winners selected for the Academy.

That is the part that makes this feel a little different from the usual “submit your demo” opportunity. The artist is not throwing a finished track into a void and hoping someone likes it. Everyone starts from the same source material, which gives the judges a cleaner way to hear taste, arrangement, mixing choices, sound design, and how each producer turns the pack into something personal.

Full details of how to enter this year HERE – closing date 23rd August

What the winners actually get

The Academy is a week-long music production course in Ibiza, and El Tony Mate is covering the major friction points that usually keep these kinds of opportunities out of reach.

Flights are included. Villa accommodation is included. Food is included. The actual music side includes intensive coaching with SKALA and Kid Simius across production, mixing, sound design, and arrangement.

That alone would be enough to make this relevant, but the Ibiza context gives it another layer. Winners also get exposure to the island’s scene, including clubs, studios, artists, activities, networking, and the kind of off-calendar moments that can be hard to plan from the outside.

The press notes also mention potential follow-up support, including label opportunities and access to the Beatport network. That part should be read carefully, because “potential” is doing real work there. It is not a guaranteed record deal. It is a chance to enter a more serious room with better proximity, better feedback, and people who can open doors if the music connects.

For producers trying to turn isolated studio work into a real career path, that is often the missing piece. I wrote about a related skill gap in my article on how chord progressions can speed up production, because finishing better records usually starts with better decisions earlier in the process. A week like this puts those decisions under pressure in a good way.

SKALA and Kid Simius make the coaching feel specific

The two coaches give the Academy a clear musical range.

SKALA is a Berlin-based DJ, producer, vocalist, and Amaeo label head whose music draws from organic percussion, glitchy details, synthesized leads, heavy bass lines, and airy melodies. Her tracks have reached the Beatport Top 50 charts in Melodic Techno and Electronica, and her touring background includes Off Sonar, Klein Phoenix in Istanbul, Electric Brixton in London, plus dates across India, Central America, Europe, and the Middle East.

Kid Simius brings a different flavor. The Spanish artist, live act, and Jirafa Records label head is tied to Italo, Balearic house, and disco, with 36 million-plus streams across his top 10 Spotify tracks, releases on labels including Watergate, a platinum-certified track, and recent festival history across Sonar, Tomorrowland, Fusion, Blitz, and more than 30 festivals last year.

That pairing matters. SKALA can speak to the melodic, textural, club-forward side of production, while Kid Simius brings a performance-minded, groove-led, Balearic and disco-adjacent angle. For an Academy built around remixing or writing from shared source material, that gives applicants several directions to push: darker, brighter, more percussive, more song-led, more club-focused, more live-feeling.

Why the sample-pack challenge is smart

The sample and stem-pack format is probably the smartest part of the Academy.

A normal demo submission can be hard to judge because every producer arrives with different goals, different mixes, different collaborators, different resources, and different levels of polish. A shared pack changes the test. It lets the judges hear how each producer edits, transforms, arranges, and finishes from the same starting point.

That is a better measure of taste than a simple upload form.

It also forces producers to show their decision-making. Do they lean on the obvious hook? Do they bury the best part of the pack? Do they flip the source material into something unexpected? Do they know when to stop adding layers? Do they make the track work as music, or do they only prove they can process audio?

That last question is where a lot of producers get stuck. Access to sounds is rarely the issue anymore. The hard part is turning those sounds into a record with identity. That is why I keep coming back to production education pieces like my article on the best subscriptions for new producers. The source material helps, but the real growth comes from feedback, repetition, and learning how to finish.

El Tony is treating brand support like cultural placement

El Tony Mate is a Swiss natural energy drink brand built around freshly brewed Argentinian mate tea, and the company has been tying itself to electronic music through the El Tony Culture Collective.

That detail could easily read like lifestyle branding if the Academy were vague. Here, the support is more concrete. Eight producers get travel, housing, food, coaching, access, and a week in Ibiza built around music.

That is the kind of brand involvement that electronic music can actually use. No producer needs another logo slapped onto a vague contest. Producers need time, rooms, feedback, people, and a reason to finish something under deadline.

El Tony also runs Selected Sessions, a pop-up series built around larger names, smaller crowds, and unusual venues. That gives the Academy a wider cultural context: the brand is not only attaching itself to electronic music after the fact. It is building small platforms inside the scene and using the Academy as one of them.

There is a music-business angle here too. In our earlier spotlight on Kwettr’s online marketing platform for music, the larger theme was how artists and teams can create stronger connections around campaigns. El Tony’s Academy is a different format, but the underlying idea is similar: support gets more valuable when it creates actual contact between people.

Who should enter

This is for emerging electronic music producers based anywhere in Europe who can take SKALA and Kid Simius source material and make something that feels finished, intentional, and personal before August 23.

That could mean a melodic techno-leaning track, a Balearic house cut, a disco-influenced idea, a club tool, or something more hybrid. The source material will shape part of the direction, but the winners will likely be the producers who show a clear ear and a finished point of view.

The Academy runs October 1 to October 7 in Ibiza. Eight winners will receive coaching, travel support, villa accommodation, food, scene access, networking, and potential follow-up opportunities tied to labels and Beatport.

For producers who have been waiting for a reason to finish something sharp, this is the deadline to put on the calendar. August 23 is close enough that the track needs to start now.

By Will Vance
Will Vance is a professional music producer who has been involved in the industry for the better part of a decade and has been the managing editor at Magnetic Magazine since mid-2022. In that time period, he has published thousands of articles on music production, industry think pieces and educational articles about the music industry. Over the last decade as a professional music producer, Will Vance has also ran multiple successful and highly respected record labels in the industry, including Where The Heart Is Records as well as having launched a new label with a focus on community through Magnetic Magazine. When not running these labels or producing his own music, Vance is likely writing for other top industry sites like Waves or the Hyperbits Masterclass or working on his upcoming book on mindfulness in music production. On the rare chance he's not thinking about music production, he's probably running a game of Dungeons and Dragons with his friends which he has been the dungeon master for for many years.