What do you guys think ? Do you think it is indeed happening?


I remember we had a topic about magazines and the media in late 2002-2007 claiming Electronic music was dying, but now all I hear is shitty electronic music on the radio. Rhiana, Enrique Iglesias,Black Eyed Peas, etc. all of them jumping on the bandwagon it really makes me throw up.




EDM was popular about a decade and a half ago but it doesn't feel the same to me.

And what would your ideal state be for the genre? Everyone liking the exact same style of music as you? Or not having anyone you don't like be a fan of the genre?

I think it's more my hate about Hypocrisy , people back in the day calling electronic music "soulless music", "gay techno" and now the same people listen to David Guetta and they love it.

So I would probably go with B:not having anyone you don't like be a fan of the genre.

You have a point there, mx. The famous line Nobody listen to techno...And now all the rappers singing over chiptune/trance sounds.

This is just a trend. When the electroclash boom emerged all the charts were dominated by crappy RnB or hiphop, and almost ten years later we have this electronic craze. Blame it to Guetta and RedOne, if they would have flopped we wouldn´t be in this phase.
I bet in two years Gaga and Guetta will do polka tracks or acoustic ballads or God knows. We´ll be the misfits again.

I've seen electronic music go from being underground to exploding above the surface - but I don't think this was an overnight phenomenon. I guess at one time when the map point raves I frequented disappeared and gave way to Ticketmaster events, I might have felt like "my" favorite music was being encroached upon. But times have changed and I have too. It doesn't surprise or shock me to hear popular artists embracing electronic music and personally I'm not too bothered by it either. Though I am absolutely more interested in what you guys are listening to, these gems that take me by surprise, than what's on the radio. The mainstreamification of electronic music has been happening over the past 15 yrs, at the very least. The evolution of mainstream is a continuous timeline and the good thing is it's never, ever static. What's big in music now will be yesterday's news tomorrow. Eventually. The masses are a fickle beast.

Consider the fans of 70's progressive bands such as Pink Floyd or Genesis eagerly anticipating the electronic revolution. Then...POP!...they got disco instead.

That's what this is like.

I think it is a good thing, because the real electronic artists won't want to be classified as mainstream, it will give them more incentive to come up with newer sounds and beats. Like what the Chems do, and especially did with Further. I think that was an evolution of galactic proportions.

It's okay, because the genre has stuff like this now:



I used to feel pretty pissed off that I grew up liking genres and groups that no one ever heard of, but then Lady Gaga became popular. But now I can just think "well, those people can like crap, but I was living in the genre first and, consequently, I have enough good taste so as to not buy into most of these crappy pop acts.

Here is some "Pop" that I did happen to like about 8 years ago:

I would later find out that Nellee Hooper produced this, and he has done some other really excellent stuff like his edit of "Six Underground" by the Sneaker Pimps.

R&B is ruined I tell you.....ruined! I can't even find one station that plays a straight up tune! EDM has an almost majority on radio airplay!

mx/, on 05 August 2011 - 11:23 AM, said:

If those artists stuck to their original genres, they probably wouldn't be around anymore! But hey, they need a new gimmick, and they probably say to themselves 'what do kids listen these days!' to get their ideas!

Rappers hopping on the bandwagon too! Pathetic!

The same thing can be said about a lot of subgenres too. Fo example dnb, it used to be great but now it has all turned into Pendulum/Qemists/UKF jump up mainstream bullshit.

I think one of the causes of that is the use of computers to make music. It has become so easy to make a track that all the creativity has disappeared. The production is so weak nowadays !

The bloke off the internet, on 05 August 2011 - 7:38 PM, said:

Bing!

Kind of like when you used to buy a CD! only 3 of the 12 tracks are good and the rest are just a waste! I would then sell the CD at the record store! (I'm actually going through Cd's right now to see what I might get rid of!) It's the lack of real instruments used, or basic fundamentals of producing music imo!

I think I'm in the minority here... but just seeing the phrase "fucking casuals" makes me incredibly angry. People all around the world are listening to, if not exactly the same music as you, at least a more accessible translation. Meanwhile less popular acts are making music you can love wholeheartedly. What's to hate? Were you not a "fucking casual" at some point in your life? And was there never a song on the radio that you actually liked? When everybody's listening to something else and it's a stigma to like what you like, everybody else is so deluded, and you can't understand why they don't see what you see in it. Now when you talk about your interests people say "oh cool" instead of "gay techno" and it's somehow a bad thing? I hear stuff like that and I can't help but feel that the hypocrisy is on the end of the people saying it, not those they're saying it about.
That being said I agree there is a high suck-to-excel ratio on the charts at the moment.

Champiness, on 06 August 2011 - 10:03 AM, said:

haha, i didn't know about this, this is hilarious

but you people raise valid points - totally agreed with Whirly, i'm not surprised by this situation and was more like expecting it, since it happens to almost every genre. Bloke i think hit the spot - usage of computers gave a larger crowd access to music making and it came at time when electronic music was in transition from "underground" to mainstream and everybody jumped at that train. Haha, George Michaels Flawless comes to mind, such a tag-along.
But why worry about that? It makes jewels like Further shine all the more brighter

Champiness, on 06 August 2011 - 3:03 AM, said:

Well I can't find another adjective for the artists that are jumping on the bandwagon, I was not referring to the listeners. I'm also not talking about liking something or not on the radio...I was talking about the saturation of the genre and using Electronic sounds as paper toilet of shitty Hip Hop/Pop artists.

Probass, on 06 August 2011 - 2:17 AM, said:

This track was produced by the Neptunes and one of their better productions. Talking about getting too mainstream, have the Neptunes produced a good track since their 2nd album? I say; Hell no!

But like Whirly said, electronic music has been becoming mainstream of the last 15 years or so. Madonna had her albums produced by Mirwais and Jaques Lu Cont aka Stuart Price. He also produced some Britney Spears tracks if I'm not mistaking. Freemasons have been producing electronic tracks for again Britney and also Beyonce. How much mainstream must you get? Maybe mainstream isn't the right word, if somethings hip it gets a lot of followers and it becomes mainstream while the pionering artist have already changed course (example: Chemical brothers in the Big Beat era). Making it commercial is a deathblow for a type of music. Guetta is filling his banks now it will be done in 2 years time. After that the sound is dead and all Guetta imitations are yeasterdays news

Joslyn, on 08 August 2011 - 3:58 PM, said:

Oh, whoops! I remembered wrong

BTW, I think that we should be saying that "Pop music is becoming more and more elctronic", not the other way around. Unless we're talking about electronic musicians using too many vocals from poppy people, but that has been going on for years.

bump...

just let it become pop music now, it will be underground again in a while - plus, there has been mainstream electronic music for quite a while now.

pop music's also not necessarily evil. some of it is actually quite good. pure mainstream productions suck: stuff which is only being produced to please for a while and to make some fortune, fame and bling with. that crappy shit indeed sucks. just don't listen to it!

bump again.

The state of the industry is always changing. And don't forget, a lot of your favorite producers doing electronic music 10-15 years ago are now THE producers putting their sound into mainstream tracks NOW. So why wouldn't they sound more electronic? The laptop producers we have no, will become the album producers of tomorrow. It's ever changing.

There will always be a high suck to genius in creative popular culture, whether it's music, art, fashion, whatever. But don't ever think something is purely crap merely because it's popular. Sometimes things that are good, do actually break out. It's whether the artist can sustain their vision and intentions in "the machine" that defines them as an artist.

As an example, the Chems have continued to do what THEY wanted to do with their music. I'm almost positive there have been compromises here and there, for labels, managers, whatever. But the pure intention in the music has been the same, and they haven't ever really sold out when it came to the sound they wanted to put out. (Or, at least, it hasn't been evident in the amazing music we're always getting from them. So either way, kudos as always).

Yeah you touched on something there, there is a "brain drain" of producers to pop pap instead of making their own stuff. Its just cheesey electro pop is in fashion at the moment.

Every new genre starts off to a degree "underground" and depending on its growth starts influencing more mainstream stuff. The same thing happened to bigbeat in a way, started off underground, cool, new, catchy but not cheesey. Then turned all pop and blew up in the late 90's, every git was making it, the quality went to shit and people got bored and moved on.
As pop goes one way the "underground" tries to go the other to offer an alternative and to be "scene and not herd".

Its mostly all 4/4 and fairly banal synths at the moment in pop. Breaks to make a return underground? you could say dubstep is a break from the norm? all demented drops ans squelching synths.

Personally i dont give a damn what other people listen to in deciding what I like, in saying that theres so many "me too" sheep when it comes to music. I did get farly pissed off when discovery came out and every manky git got into daft punk. "oh i love daft punk . . . .and black eyed peas . . . ."

GUN PLEASE . . .

I would like 1997 to come back.