You know, techno parties (and illegal raves) like the ones you talk about are still happening, especially here in Europe.

EDM is pure garbage and rife with narcissism.

I think of EDM as a dance tool (not a criticism). It's practical, a tight design to serve a specific purpose.

FTR I've adored techno my entire life - from back when synth, industrial and underground were more common labels.

eg: Eno, Cluster, Tim Blake, Sensation's Fix, Klaus Schulz, anything produced by Conny Plank

you must be using a different definition of edm to me. according to the definition I accept, then our rave scene is a small corner of edm which literally is an umbrella term for all electronic dance music.

...i'd be interested to know what term you use for the latter?

EDM is what I ascribe to as the sort of commercial stuff at big commerical festivals like EDC usually in the USA, encompassing US dubstep/brostep, electro house, a lot of trance. Really hyperactive and obvious, no subtlety, all about getting that big fucking drop or that dirty bassline. Tends to be extremely commercial and hugely about superstar DJs and conventionally hot people posting their outfits on Instagram. Like, brooooooo. David Guetta, Aviici, Excision, etc.

Not denying it can't be fun if you're fucked up enough, but it has completely and utterly lost any semblance of being a counterculture or challenging or underground. Not my vibe at all.

I know "EDM" has a literal definition but this is what I mean when I'm talking about it, hope that helps :)

Cool, ok. So what is the term you'd use for the literal definition of e.g. Everything in ishkur's (old) guide?

Not the commenter you posed the question to, but I suspect their dislike for the term EDM is similar to how I felt about the term "electronica" back in the 90's when mainstream artists were appropriating sounds and ideas from electronic artists. When the music was mostly underground or found at illegal parties it felt original and pure, but once the broader music industry took notice and started pillaging it for profit it felt dirty and sacrilegious.

My preferred umbrella term for electronic dance music is simply "electronic music". This helps make room under the umbrella for all manner of experimental and sometimes undanceable music as well. Death to the over-(sub)-genre-fication of electronic music!

I see where you're coming from, but though we might dislike the commercialisation, the fact you can complain that something got commercialised shows it's a continuation of the same genre. Electronica was always a rubbish pretentious ill defined term but at least edm (as I use it) is a good name from the perspective of being exactly what it says on the tin.

Thanks for the perspective though!

I was in the 90s Midwest rave scene as well.

This pattern repeats itself in music over and over. Jungle to DNB. Dubstep was like two tone, then it got destroyed by the US market takeover.

Garage, grime, dancehall, hip hop all stay mainly black (with some white artists accepted) to defend their scene. Precisely to stop the take over from happening again.

I thought the Jungle/DnB split was just the result of cocaine getting popular and the Jungle scene wanting none of that, but I wasn't there so I only have third party accounts to go off.

Remembering as well that these musical styles live on and elevated above their once-upon a time rave/club scenes. So this is commentary specifically about the club scenes in the UK at their time of provenance.

With streaming, what does make a genre more or less appreciated by a group of people? TBH for most of the artists I listen to, I have no idea who they are, how they look like or even how many of them are in the band.

I think the musical styles and their in the flesh club/rave scenes are getting conflated a bit. Music is often born in a specific location and scene and then grows into it's own monster. Especially now with the internet, music is for everyone. But locally speaking there are different groups listening and producing styles of music you may not even know about yet, that will enter the global lexicon of music and get much the same treatment of commercialization as house and others got.

Hm I don't quite agree but it could be that the scenes are different in different places. It could also be that our definitions of EDM differ. I might also be missing something so take my comment as just my perspective from where I stand.

I think there is a split between commercialized EDM and "real" EDM. The true culture and heritage of house and techno definitely live on in the greater electronic music scene in general, especially online and in clubs. I call that scene EDM because it is easier than trying list all the dozens of subgenres it has grown to include, and commercialised EDM used to be referred to as Top40 during the late 2000s, as a way to differentiate it from the "real" EDM scene. Not sure if that term lives on.

It is usually pretty easy to tell when a song exists in the commercial realm. House is unique in that it has had more than one era of commercial success, but I think there has always been a delineation between commercialised house (stuff on the radio and in adverts) and the culture of house music (in the clubs and mixes)

> I think there is a split between commercialized EDM and "real" EDM.

This could be a locale thing, but in the UK what you call "real" EDM is often known as the underground electronic music scene (at least in my circles). I.e. the long tail of folks pissing about with machines in their bedroom.

Note the lack of "dance" as not all underground electronic music needs to be danced to. Autechre is a good example of this.

In the UK at least, EDM as a whole is often viewed as a commercialisation that started over in the USA (e.g. with Skrillex) and spread. What the EDM term generally refers to has changed over the years, and is now closer to "pop trance with super saw synths EVERYWHERE" these days.

So, at least for us Brits, it's a catch all term for a specific type of electronic music (and most of the time a disparaging term).

I think we mostly agree on the differing content, and in disagreeing with the parent, but it's the general "lumping in" with the same terminology that is often protested by the underground folks over here.

Personally, I would hate for my tracks to be called EDM (I'd rather stab myself repeatedly in the eye with a spoon).

Disclaimer: I'm just one UK dude who has spent a lot of time around electronic music. Other UK residents may have other opinions or nomenclature that they prefer to use.

That's really interesting, this thread is definitely telling me I am out of the loop anyway, as it seems that difference in understanding has even morphed over time. It doesn't surprise me at all though, there's still disputes about what "real" Bossa nova is to this day so that a genre as broad and eclectic as electronic music has a blurry cultural lexicon isn't all that shocking.

I agree regarding EDM being a bit of a misnomer, I had always thought it was a weird term to use for everything. Another specific sub-genre in electronic music is IDM, Intelligent Dance Music, which occasionally doesn't even have a stable time signature, so it's not alone in that!

I wouldn't say you're out of the loop. Generally speaking I think you're right in what you're saying (commercial vs. underground).

Ultimately it's just a label that people can apply to certain things to lump stuff into a category for them to conceptualise what "thing in category" is.

In the UK (at least in my experience), we had an existing label to call this "thing". Then Skrillex, Steve Aoki etc happened and everyone tried to tell us it was called something different (EDM).

We were like, no. Piss off. It's not that. What you're doing is not what we're doing.

And it's sort of stuck as this "definitely not what we're doing" labelling category.

Tomato, tomaaato.

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IDM is an awful term. And I say that as someone who buys a lot of IDM.

My friend has a different (arguably better) name for it: "hurty brain music".

I believe Aphex Twin's label Rephlex called it braindance originally. I've always liked their description: "braindance is the genre that encompasses the best elements of all genres, e.g traditional, classical, electronic music, popular, modern, industrial, ambient, hip hop, electro, house, techno, breakbeat, hardcore, ragga, garage, drum and bass, etc."

IDM first gained mainstream attention with the Warp records compilation album "Artificial Intelligence", which called it "electronic listening music." It's a pity this name never caught on, because it's more accurate than IDM. Wikipedia quotes Warp co-founder Steve Beckett:

"You could sit down and listen to it like you would a Kraftwerk or Pink Floyd album. That's why we put those sleeves on the cover of Artificial Intelligence – to get it into people's minds that you weren't supposed to dance to it!"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_Intelligence_(compi...

Totally agreed on electronic listening music. I spend a lot of time listening to IDM in an armchair not dancing!

I find a lot of Aphex danceable though, especially the first album and Classics (Analogue Bubblebath!)

I've always seen "EDM" as the bastardization of electronic music by the American festival scene in the late 2000s.

That's not a knock on the USA as a whole (a lot of garage/acid can be traced back to Detroit house and techno), but it is mostly an American genre.

>But for some of those years in the 1990s it really felt like we were living in the future.

It certainly felt like it. But people were quickly put back in their place.

Yeah before PLUR and candyravers in the early 90s it was just warehouse parties and you'd see all kinds of people there. Gay/straight/black/white/young/old. I can still remember some black guy in a suit out dancing in the middle of the floor.

Motor City Lounge brings back good old memories! Still a fan of AUX88 to this day.