Drugs and Raves, It’s More Popular Than You Think
Part 2: Current Trends in Dance Music
Welcome to the second half of the Electronic Dance Music series of Culture Jockey! For a brief overview of the development of EDM and rave culture, please check out Part 1. In today’s article, we will take a look at three current trends in EDM by exploring popular styles of Dance Music in different contexts. Let’s dive right in!
1. Tech House is in trend for live events
Recently, I’ve been noticing this trend first-hand as I go out to EDM nightclubs and music venues. Here in Chicago, the birthplace of House music, there are a number of places that host local and international House DJs every week. A year or so back when COVID just started loosening up, it was more common to encounter DJs that would play Deep House, as Chicago is traditionally known for. Though Tech House was not unpopular here historically, I would definitely associate this type of music more with Detroit.
Recently though, I’ve seen Chicago music venues starting to play more Techno and less Deep House. In addition, the more discrete raves that are actually hosted at secret warehouse locations would almost always play Tech House, as that is what the rave community prefers these days. The crowd is often dressed in all-black Gothic looking outfits, really emphasizing how alt they are. Basically, House is just not alt enough for them. They want to hear music that is stereotypically underground EDM, which is Techno.
The Tech House trend is prevalent not only in Chicago, but also world-wide. Below is a genre breakdown of the artists who played at Tomorrowland and EDC Las Vegas in 2022, two of the largest EDM festivals globally.
In 2022, Techno and Tech House made up 20.35% of the lineup at Tomorrowland and 32.04% at EDC Las Vegas. So if you’re an aspiring DJ mainly looking to play at EDM venues, you may want to gear towards more Techno and Tech House since clearly, Techno is not that alt anymore.
2. Tropical House is popular on streaming platforms
Although Tech House is popular at live events, that doesn’t mean it’s also popular in every setting. I mean, do you really want to listen to intense Techno while you’re folding laundry at home? Some people may, but probably not in most cases. I analyzed what genres are prominent in 50 popular EDM playlists on Spotify:
Apart from Pop Dance, Electro House and Tropical House are the leading genres in these playlists, and Tech House is a lot less favored than at live events. While Electro House is quite popular in EDM playlists specifically, this isn’t the case when we take a look at what EDM genre is favored among the general mainstream audience.
With the dataset I compiled for this interactive dashboard from my previous series, Selling Culture, I analyzed what genres (overall, not just EDM) were most popular globally in the past year.
Tropical House was the first EDM genre that came up in 57th place, followed by Slap House in 80th place. Hence, we can see that House music with bright summery sounds is popular amongst the general audience on Spotify.
House music, which is on the chiller side of EDM, is a lot more friendly for mainstream listeners, and honestly not that different from Pop music when it comes to recent tracks. Thus, if you’re an aspiring EDM producer hoping to gain more traction on streaming platforms, Tropical House would be the way to go. If you’re specifically targeting the EDM audience, Electro House may also be a good option.
3. More EDM sounds in Pop music
And lastly, we are definitely seeing more Pop artists come out with Dance albums and tracks these days, such as Beyoncé’s Renaissance and Drake’s Honestly, Nevermind. Many of Dua Lipa’s songs also incorporate EDM sounds, such as Levitating and Cold Heart.
These are the songs that Spotify categorizes as ‘pop dance’ (different from ‘dance pop’), which are basically Dance Music tracks by Pop artists. The question is, what is the difference between a Pop song that has House elements and a House song that sounds Poppy?
Throughout my analyses of music trends, I extensively explored how Spotify labels genres and came to the conclusion that genre-labelling is more based on context rather than musical elements nowadays. There are so many cross-overs between genres that it is difficult to categorize a track as one particular music style. Hence, many industry experts say that genre isn’t a thing anymore, which is true, but absolutely unhelpful for analysis purposes.
Rather than giving up on labelling genres altogether, Spotify decided to go hyper-specific and come up with a name for thousands of different combinations of music styles, as well as categorize by contextual information. For instance, the genre ‘francoton’ is an abbreviation of ‘French Reggaeton’. This is an example of a genre that is based on both context and musical style.
There are also genres like ‘canadian pop’, ‘uk pop’, or ‘australian pop’, which I personally see little difference in musical style, but are differentiated by the artist’s background.
So basically, if someone who is considered a Pop artist comes out with a House song, it’s a Pop Dance song. If a House DJ comes out with a House song, it’s a House song. It’s really more about the artist than the actual track.
I recently read a Billboard article about Justin Bieber’s dissatisfaction with Changes being nominated for the Grammy’s best pop vocal album, when he meant it to be an R&B album. I get what he’s saying, but that’s simply not how genres are labelled these days. Whatever album Justin Bieber comes out with, it will be considered a Pop album. And because he’s white, he doesn’t get to complain. (Sorry Justin, I’m actually a big fan of your music.)
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this second series of Culture Jockey and are as excited as I am to see how the EDM scene evolves from here. Please follow for more data-driven analyses on global music trends and culture! Thank you for reading :)
