Electronic dance music
Electronic dance music (EDM)[1] is a broad range of percussive electronic music genres originally made for nightclubs, raves, and festivals. It is generally produced for playback by DJs who create seamless selections of tracks, called a DJ mix, by segueing from one recording to another.[2] EDM producers also perform their music live in a concert or festival setting in what is sometimes called a live PA. Since its inception EDM has expanded to include a wide range of subgenres.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, following the emergence of raving, pirate radio, PartyCrews, underground festivals and an upsurge of interest in club culture, EDM achieved mainstream popularity in Europe. However, rave culture was not as broadly popular in the United States; it was not typically seen outside of the regional scenes in New York City, Florida, the Midwest, and California. Although the pioneer genres of electro, Chicago house and Detroit techno were influential both in Europe and the United States, mainstream media outlets and the record industry in the United States remained openly hostile to it until the 1990s and beyond. There was also a perceived association between EDM and drug culture, which led governments at state and city levels to enact laws and policies intended to halt the spread of rave culture.[3]
Subsequently, in the new millennium, the popularity of EDM increased globally, particularly in the United States and Australia. By the early 2010s, the term "electronic dance music" and the initialism "EDM" was being pushed by the American music industry and music press in an effort to rebrand American rave culture.[3] Despite the industry's attempt to create a specific EDM brand, the acronym remains in use as an umbrella term for multiple genres, including dance-pop, house, techno, electro and trance, as well as their respective subgenres, which all predate the acronym.[4][5][6]
Terminology[edit]
In 1980 English producer Richard James Burgess, and his band Landscape, used the term on the sleeve of the single "European Man": "Electronic Dance Music... EDM; computer programmed to perfection for your listening pleasure." In response to a question about being credited with coining the term New Romantic Burgess has stated that: "Initially I was using three terms – Futurist, Electronic Dance Music (the Landscape singles have EDM printed on them) and New Romantic."[103][104]
Writing in The Guardian, journalist Simon Reynolds noted that the American music industry's adoption of the term EDM in the late 2000s was an attempt to re-brand US "rave culture" and differentiate it from the 1990s rave scene. It has been described as an era of electronic music, being described in a MixMag article as being "the drop-heavy, stadium-filling, fist-pumping, chart-topping, massively commercial main stage sound that conquered America...possibly somewhere between electro and progressive house, directed by Michael Bay, and like many music genres, trying to pin it down exactly is like trying to grab a fistful of water".[105] In the UK, "dance music" or "dance" are more common terms for EDM.[4] What is widely perceived to be "club music" has changed over time; it now includes different genres and may not always encompass EDM. Similarly, "electronic dance music" can mean different things to different people. Both "club music" and "EDM" seem vague, but the terms are sometimes used to refer to distinct and unrelated genres (club music is defined by what is popular, whereas EDM is distinguished by musical attributes).[96] Though Billboard debuted a "dance" chart in 1974, the larger US music industry did not create music charts until the late 1990s.[93] In July 1995, Nervous Records and Project X Magazine hosted the first awards ceremony, calling it the "Electronic Dance Music Awards".[Note 4]
(alphabetical)