Mainstream Media Recognizes Electronic Dance Music As The New Rock

Supergroup Swedish House Mafia has come and gone but EDM (Electric Dance Music) is only gaining in popularity. Is EDM the new Rock and Roll? Whether you’re at a rave, festival or just bar hopping on Saturday night you’ll stumble upon and experience some sort of dance music. Once limited to trance music being played in dance clubs, EDM is even in top 40 pop tracks. What makes it so popular and pervasive?

Constantly Evolving
The EDM genre is always changing and evolving. Technical innovations over the past several years make it increasingly easy to produce tracks. The technology is getting smaller and more portable. In the early days of artists like Tiesto, it took a studio, or at least significant equipment infrastructure that was not conveniently portable, to make music. Now, artists like Avicii are able to produce hit singles with just a laptop and specialty software.

Social
EDM is the most social musical genre since Big Band. What other genre has gotten people on the dance floor and kept them there as successfully as EDM? The EDM crowd is social, outgoing and accepting. Festivals like Electric Daisy Carnival bring together 100,000 fans who dance and jam for hours at a time. Some have likened it to the Woodstock of this generation. EDC is a three day extravaganza of physical, pounding music enjoyed by huge crowds in sexy costumes from Yumdrop, glow necklaces and lots of neon.

Festival goers often visit multiple festivals a year, or return to the same ones over and over. Attendees of 2012 EDC Las Vegas called it an “Epic, epic party.”

[box type=”shadow”]There is a “feeling of unity when you get 100,000 people to express themselves this way,” said one party goer, “it’s unbelievable.”[/box]

Immediate
Our culture has become accustomed to instant gratification. We have to wait for so little with the pervasiveness of internet culture. EDM caters to this cultural phenomenon. While some artists do make physical albums, they are often also releasing new tracks online so there’s no waiting years for your favorite artist to finish a new album. In this way, the content is also very timely.

Soundcloud has been a huge part of EDM’s success, as top artists share new tracks alongside amateurs who remix as a hobby or who aspire to make it big themselves. Another major platform for music sharing is Youtube. Deadmau5 and Afrojack have their own official channels to share music, interviews, previews and other content relevant to their fans. Spotify also hosts a significant inventory of EDM tracks, providing an income source to artists with popular tracks and giving new or low-profile artists a chance to be discovered.

Collaborative
EDM is a tremendously collaborative genre. Top artists frequently work with each other as well as artists outside the genre. Steve Aoki and Afrojack made a splash with their co-op track “No Beef.” Worldwide megastar Rihanna had one of her biggest hits working with Calvin Harris on “We Found Love” which was eventually adapted for the show “Glee.”

By combining talent and star power these artist are furthering their careers and the building the genre as a whole. It’s good artistry and good business.