How Do You Change Mainstream?

Too many times I’ve been told that EDM is dying and DJing is a dying art.

I’ll admit that sometimes I’ve fallen into this trap and claimed the same thing as well, only because it seems like the majority of EDM ‘hits’ by top artists all sound exactly the same, use the exact same formula and have zero creativity attached to them. I’ve publicly proclaimed my hatred for ‘big room’ music exactly for this reason. To me it’s just the same bass drum repeated for 3-5 minutes, no drop, no hook, just repetitive loops over-and-over-and-over…..

Prime example? Check out this mashup done by Daleri. He put together 16 tracks into a minute and clearly they all sound almost the same.

It’s not like this mashup only contains independent ‘bedroom’ DJs and producers either. We’re talking producers like Dimitri Vegas, Krewella, W&W and Fedde Le Grand.

Of course it doesn’t help when other big name artists also claim that EDM is dead. Steve Aoki, Deadmau5, Tiesto, Porter Robinson and Nicki Romero all have said it’s dying and that they’ve outgrown the ‘wait for the drop’ template. Deadmau5 has moved more into a house, deep-house sound, Aoki does deep house in his spare time as well.

Now in saying all of that… I think I actually have to disagree that EDM, DJing or even Producing music electronically is dying.

First of all there are multitudes of new EDM festivals and events popping up everywhere, in fact more and more every year. We’re talking all over the world as well. North America, Russia, China, Europe – all have tons of events going on yearly.

As I mentioned before, it seems like lots of big name artists are diving more into producing ‘deep house’. Sure that’s great, but if all the famous producers switch over to deep house – doesn’t that then become the new ‘EDM’? Doesn’t it also become over saturated just like trance and progressive house have already? How do you change and evolve electronic music exactly?

I remember when the internet exploded and twitter went crazy the night Avicii played a ‘country western’ version of EDM – everyone hated it, people said he ruined his career, they said he’d never play another show again. Almost three years later that same track has become platinum in 8 different countries. See what I’m talking about now?

At the end of the day, I say EDM isn’t dying.

My formula when I make music is simple… Everyone has different musical tastes, everyone is going to like what they like. So just continue to produce the music that you enjoy, and hopefully the people listen to it and enjoy it as well.

So.. how do you change the mainstream? You don’t….If you constantly try to follow what’s ‘trendy’ or what’s ‘mainstream’ you’ll never get anywhere.

Make the music you’re comfortable making because you will never be able to evolve or change the mainstream anyhow.