On Facebook, the blog Stoney Roads made a post about EDM being mainstream. In the post, they question if it’s really a bad thing. Now, I will admit, I didn’t read the article, but I decided to express my thoughts on the subject in general. Nonetheless, the post got liked by a lot of people. So I figured I’d re-share my thoughts on how EDM going mainstream has been a negative factor to 99% of the scene.
What it comes down to is that mainstream listeners don’t care about the quality or the history of the music they consume. Therefor, the recognition, money, and honors go to the loudest and most heavily advertised artists. The story of acid house is proof of this… guys like DJ Pierre are STILL relatively unknown to the general public. Mainstream listeners don’t care about originators or innovators. They don’t have the time or the interest to. They listen to the music which is easy for them to find and hear. Music which is served through mass multimedia outlets. This doesn’t make them bad people necessarily. It’s just the way it is. The problem is that quality is not the priority to the most powerful people who sell music. Instead the priority for the industry is finding someone who is marketable and focusing on advertising dollars instead of art. This is why “model DJs” and celebrity DJs are on the rise… Because they’re easy to sell. That’s why all this mainstream exposure has been a bad thing. Previously, tracks got discovered by DJs and word of mouth. House music was not dominated by skinny 20-something white guys from the suburbs. There were gay black men, overweight hispanics, white guys, girls, asians, and more. All types of people from any walk of life had a chance. I’m not saying it was a perfect world; there’s always darkness where there is light… but there was at least a chance to be heard. Now, the only way to get heard is to have enough advertising dollars to outspend your competitors.
