If that sounds like a bold statement, it is. It’s also very realistic.
EDM (yes, EDM, not “dance music” or “electronic”)
has undergone a dramatic rise in popularity. In the future, we might
credit the Internet’s penchant for rapidly spreading information for the
meteoric rise in EDM listeners worldwide. Regardless, this growth is
completely unsustainable, and now we have a severely inflated bubble
that is bound to pop.
The truly sad part is we are all to blame.
Whether purposely or inadvertently, we have created a culture in EDM
whereby it is no longer about the music. Our culture is now about fame,
stardom and name recognition. The days of a nameless, faceless master of
ceremonies taking the decks, reading the crowd and delivering the exact
track and set their expert musical diagnosis demands...are over.
Many in the industry are quick to blame the fans. I blame them the least of all.
First and foremost, I blame the agents who create
a frenzy of demand only to increase booking prices accordingly. For
those that aren’t aware, agents are the people you actually call when
you want to hire an artist for a performance. The promoter of the show
calls an agent, negotiates a price and date, then (depending on the
artist’s exact arrangement) artist management gets involved to plan
specifics of the performance. In only the last couple years, booking
prices have increased so dramatically it is becoming virtually
impossible to do single-performer shows in small markets (like college
towns.) The profit margins simply aren’t worth the risk.
This inflation of booking prices is at the heart
of EDM’s bubble of unsustainability, because touring now accounts for
the vast majority of an artist’s income. Spin recently published an editorial explaining how this focus on touring leads to less studio time. Mixmag followed up with its own feature on ghost-producers,
artists who sell music to more popular counterparts who then present it
as their own original work. Disappointingly, the magazine stopped short
of finding the courage to name names. Finally, The Guardian published
an article by the legendary Bill Brewster describing an argument between Calvin Harris and the BBC
over comments that appeared to endorse pre-recorded sets. All of these
issues are symptoms of the same cause: fans have lost their desire for
actual musical talent.
The explanation is simple. As prices increase,
fans are less keen on taking risks. For $10, I might be willing to go to
a random club and listen to a DJ I read about on a flyer. If I’m
spending hundreds of dollars to attend a music festival, I had better be
sure the experience will be worth it. For the vast majority of people
that don’t have time to properly research and stay up to date on the
music, popularity and fame become their benchmarks for judging the worth
of any given act.
Fame is truly a funny thing. We use fame and
notoriety to find common links with others. As much as some of us might
despise Paris Hilton, she serves as a cultural reference point. Humans
crave topics of conversation that connect us to each other and diminish
the intrinsic qualities that make us feel alone. Famous people are an
aspect of our culture that we actively desire.
We used to demand more from our famous musicians.
They used to demand more from themselves. When Eric Clapton, the famous
guitarist, wrote the song “Tears in Heaven,” his four-year-old son had fallen out of a 53rd-story
window to his death. He took that passion, emotion, and heartbreak and
poured it into song. Every time he played that song, he reopened an old
wound and shared that feeling with his audience. When he felt he could
no longer relate nor properly convey the emotion behind the song, he
stopped playing it.
The sad truth fans of EDM must face is that the
genre as a whole is young, immature, and enamored by the superficial.
For me, artists with the goal of enhancing their fans’ lives through
their music are the ones I will continue to enjoy. The
champagne-spraying, bottle-popping performances are undoubtedly fun, but
it is equally certain we’ll look back on them as the necessary and
unfortunate stupidity of youth, both our own and of our music. EDM is in
dire need of a mature, meaningful message, and there is no reason that a
young producer can't deliver it or that young fans can’t demand it.
The most interesting facet of EDM’s fan base is
there are now two main types. First, there are the social seekers, more
focused on taking a photo from behind the DJ or with their thousands of
dollars in liquor and posting it on instagram than with listening to the
music. For them, as long as the DJ on stage is sufficiently famous,
they are happy to empty their wallets in an attempt to fill some hole
within them that, they will soon discover, cannot be filled with money.
On the other hand, there are the devotees of the
old rave culture more focused on being with their friends than with
whoever is on stage. There is an undesirable element to this group as
well in the form of those who will dance to DJ-fill-in-the-blank as long
as they are on their preferred drug. For the most part, though, the
sincerity of valuing the music and the message over the mainstream is
alive and well. You just have to look for it.
At the highest level, the organizers of music
festivals and EDM events are eagerly anticipating the day fans don’t
need a famous performer as an excuse to have fun. Last summer, Insomniac’s Pasquale Rotella famously described how
“ [the fan] is the headliner.” The unfortunate fact is, fans are not
yet brave enough to let loose on their own, not the way they currently
do when a well-known performer is on stage.
This is why the bubble cannot last. Soon, the
fans will realize the emperor has no clothes. They will stop deluding
themselves into buying the fame of an artist they haven’t even listened
to just because a promoter is able to convince them he is a “big deal.”
We are all lying to each other and ourselves, because the money involved
has made us believe we have to. The time has come to put an end to the
farce and hype we have created.
In many ways, a bubble is a perfect analogy. It expands uncontrollably until it bursts, despite being filled with nothing.
Some day, that space will be filled with meaning.
Right now, it’s filled with Facebook likes, YouTube views and Twitter
followers.
Thanks to Albert Berdellans, Editor-In-Chief and dubstep.net for allow me to press this review, Visit the original article
nice spot on from 2B and very nice article by Albert
ReplyDeleteGreat article! I suppose that in today's world where we are exposed to so many different genres, more than ever before, we don't have time to dig through unknown artists to find something we truly like within a particular type of music. It is easier to eat something that is served to us on a plate than it is to go out and hunt, skin and roast it.
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