Mike Demero

A violin, a basement and 2020

Mike Demero came out of a family of musicians in Quebec and started on the violin at seven. Every biography he and his bookers put out leads with that instrument rather than with a laptop, and the melodic bias it left behind is the one consistent thing across a catalogue that has otherwise moved through several dance idioms in three years. His own account is that teachers noticed he was writing tunes rather than reading them, and that production followed from there.

The pivot point was 2020, when he began putting his productions on social platforms. He has described the effect bluntly: the clips let him build a career from nothing. He also made the music in his parents' basement, which is where the first tracks that travelled were written. By the time the Festival d'été de Québec booked him in 2024 he was arriving as a social-media act being tested on a festival stage, not as a club DJ working up through residencies — an inversion that explains both the speed of his rise and why his live reputation lagged behind his streaming numbers for a while.

'Night in Paris', then the radio record

His debut original single, 'Night in Paris', landed in the summer of 2023 with Aloe Blacc on vocals, and was followed the same year by a self-produced 80s remix of it and by 'Light Up'. 'Night in Paris' passed two million Spotify streams during 2024 and gave him a Canadian radio profile that his follow-up then consolidated.

That follow-up was 'Take Me Away (My Love)', released in 2024 with Zagata. His festival listings describe it as the most-played song in Quebec that year, and it is the record that moved him from support slots to billing. The Festival d'été de Québec used him twice in July 2024: a late-night set at the Manège militaire on Friday 5 July, and the Wednesday 10 July opening slot on the Plains of Abraham ahead of Loud Luxury and Alan Walker, in front of a crowd his team puts at 50,000. A month later, on 11 August 2024, he played ÎleSoniq at Parc Jean-Drapeau on a bill with Zedd and Tiësto.

Across those two summers he worked as the direct support for Tiësto, Zedd, Meduza and Alan Walker, warming rooms and fields of between 10,000 and 55,000 people. He has SOCAN awards for both a French-language and an English-language popular song, and by October 2025 had logged more than 170,000 radio plays in Canada.

'Forever Young' and a release schedule that does not stop

2025 was the year the catalogue filled out. 'Calling', with Sam Feldt and Dynoro, arrived alongside 'Outside', 'Back to the Bar' and 'Count These Stars' with DJs From Mars and SIKS. A French version of 'Calling' recorded with Lou picked up radio play in France, and 'Losing Myself' brought in EMMY. The releases were spaced close enough together to function as a campaign rather than a trickle.

'Forever Young', his first EP, came out at midnight on Friday 31 October 2025 — a project presented by its author as a statement of intent about where his electro-pop was heading rather than a compilation of the singles. He marked it with three shows in six weeks: Grizzly Fuzz in Quebec City on release day, then his first hall headline in Montreal at Le Studio TD on 1 November, then La Classique Hivernale at the Hippodrome 3R in Trois-Rivières on 5 December. He had also played Amsterdam Dance Event earlier that October, his first substantial appearance outside Canada.

The pace held through 2026. 'Criminal', 'Telephone', 'Never Better Off' and a French version of 'Take Me Away' all appeared in the first half of the year, 'Dance With the Sun (Olé Olé)' on 5 June, and 'Magical' — with Blackcode and Jordan Jade — on 31 July 2026, which remains the most recent release.

Where he stands in October 2026

The numbers he publishes have roughly doubled in a year. In October 2025 the figure quoted everywhere was 16 to 17 million streams across platforms; his own site now puts the catalogue above 38 million, against a social following that has sat at about 1.8 million since late 2025. Interpreted plainly, the audience stopped growing while the back catalogue started working — which is what a steady 2026 singles run would be expected to do. He signed with Independent Artist Group in the United States in 2025, a deal aimed at the touring market outside Quebec that has not yet produced dates there.

Inside Quebec he is now a fixed part of the summer festival rotation. He played FestiVoix in Trois-Rivières on 26 June 2026 at 8.15pm on the Loto-Québec Rivière stage, Les Grandes Fêtes TELUS in Rimouski at 11pm on 31 July on the Hydro-Québec stage, the Festival de montgolfières de Gatineau at 8.20pm on 4 September on the Loto-Québec main stage, and Unity Electro Fest in Quebec City on 6 September, where he held the main-stage hour immediately before Vini Vici on a weekend topped by Tiësto, Illenium and Timmy Trumpet. He is confirmed for Les Grandes Fêtes TELUS again in 2027.

What he does not have at the moment is a tour. Songkick lists him as off tour and his own site shows no scheduled performances; a single ticketed date is on sale.

What the set has become

The verifiable shape of a Demero set is a 60-minute festival hour built to hand over to a bigger name. Unity Electro Fest gave him 7.25pm to 8.25pm on the main stage on 6 September 2026, directly before the closing act, and his other 2026 slots — 8.15pm, 8.20pm, 11pm — sit in the same bracket: late enough for the production to read, early enough that he is still the warm-up. The one exception so far is Le Studio TD on 1 November 2025, doors at 9.30pm for a 10pm start, which was his first time carrying a Montreal room on his own name.

The material is his own and recent. A set now has 'Night in Paris', 'Take Me Away (My Love)' and its French version, 'Calling', 'Count These Stars', 'Dance With the Sun (Olé Olé)' and 'Magical' to draw on, which is enough for an hour without reaching for other people's records — a change from 2024, when the original catalogue ran to three singles. Full sets from the 2025 festival run are posted publicly, including Festivent at Parc Champigny in Lévis on 30 July 2025.