At what point did dance music become "EDM"?

Pawnless Endgame

Pawnless Endgame

Pawnless Endgame

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On Wikipedia, "dance music" refers to music played in clubs at whatever era you're in. So it could be jazz or swing if you're clubbing in the 1950s or disco if you were at it in the 1970s. In the 1980s, we had synthpop like Erasure and Human League, then bands like the Pet Shop Boys and the New Order pretty much closed the gap to nowaday dance. Full-on dance started around 1987 with house hits like Pump up the Volume by Marrs, then Ride on Time by Black Box soon after. House then became breakbeat hardcore and happy hardcore in 1991, then jungle in 1994, drum'n'base in 1996, garage in late 1990s, hard house in the early 2000s, dubstep in the early 2010s and now trap is a big thing in recent years. Year numbers are approx. Meanwhile, house has remained a mainstay and trance grew in the mid/late 90s and has also remained a mainstay in the clubs.

Again on Wikipedia, "EDM" pretty much refers to all of the above dance music as we know it nowadays 1987-present when it became electronic music.

Is EDM an actual style though or is it generic? I've only known the term in the last 5 years or so.

There is for example, this tune which is referred as EDM, although to me I would classify it as house. A lot of EDM-labelled dance sounds like house to me. Just more modern sounding house with the occasional wink to dubstep.

 
EDM for me is just an umbrella term for modern dance music and that covers all genres (at least those of an electronic nature).
 
‘Dance’ was deemed too generic since, frankly, you don’t always dance to it. EDM is a wider term encompassing what most of us think when we hear the term ‘dance’ and more.
 
I always saw EDM as an americanism for dance/house/trance in general as we in the UK had so many subgenres they couldn't/wouldn't really classify or identify what most of it was actually known as.

Granted this goes back to my late 90's Mixmag days. ;)
 
MookJong said:
Americanism that seemed to emerge with Deadmau5
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I suppose ‘dance’ had, in the early 2000s, modern connotations of cheesy female pop vocal DJ Sammy music... which is nevertheless great and has its own place... and people wanted to distance themselves from that.
 
It used to be a term to refer to all electronic music, now it's a specific term for the crappy commercial electronic music that americans love.

It seemed to happen around the time that both the electro house and dubstep genres got watered down and the yanks jumped on board
 
Cheers guys. Seems like EDM is a fairly general term then.

Nitefly said:
I suppose ‘dance’ had, in the early 2000s, modern connotations of cheesy female pop vocal DJ Sammy music... which is nevertheless great and has its own place... and people wanted to distance themselves from that.
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Good call about DJ Sammy. Although there is a lot of decent dance / club music nowadays, DJ Sammy definitely killed it for a while back in 2002!
 
Nitefly said:
I suppose ‘dance’ had, in the early 2000s, modern connotations of cheesy female pop vocal DJ Sammy music... which is nevertheless great and has its own place... and people wanted to distance themselves from that.
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Electronic Dance Music is just a clarification for the Dance Music that we all know, I mean all the Music TV channels like MTV Dance, Viva Germany, Viva Plus, MTV 2 Pop, MCM used to broadcast Eurodance and Eurotrance music in the past. Nowadays, MTV Dance no longer exists, if it does, it uses RnB and HipHop which also can be referred to as "dance music" but has nothing to do with the original intentions.

You know that during the 1990s, the Eurodance was the dominant music genre.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurodance

Eurodance (sometimes known as Euro-NRG or Euro) is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in the late 1980s in Europe. It combines many elements of techno,[2] Hi-NRG,[1] house music[1] and Euro disco.[2]

This genre of music is heavily influenced by the use of rich melodic vocals, either exclusively by itself or inclusively with rapped verses. This, combined with cutting-edge synthesizer, strong bass rhythm and melodic hooks, establishes the core foundation of Eurodance music.[2] Eurodance production continues to evolve with a more modernized style.

This is Eurodance:


Also this:


And that:


And this:


All, today, would be under the EDM umbrella.
 
cu3ed said:
As I understand it, it was a term Sony came up with to market it more.
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To market it more? They almost destroyed it.

They don't simply switch such brands as TMF, VIVA, MTV, MCM off in order to market it more lol

"There was also a perceived association between EDM and drug culture, which led governments at state and city level to enact laws and policies intended to halt the spread of rave culture." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_dance_music#Dance_music_in_the_1990s
 
4K8KW10 said:
To market it more? They almost destroyed it.

They don't simply switch such brands as TMF, VIVA, MTV, MCM off in order to market it more lol

"There was also a perceived association between EDM and drug culture, which led governments at state and city level to enact laws and policies intended to halt the spread of rave culture." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_dance_music#Dance_music_in_the_1990s
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Sony used it to market certain producers more in festivals etc state side. If other brands desice to use it more it helps them and the artists they represent.
 
The current use of EDM has basically replaced the catch-all of 'techno' by those not in the know.

It does however lend itself to a style, also known has big-room, which it a bit of a mishmash of cheesy trance and house, usually stuck at 128bpm and featuring basic synth stabs as opposed to the more complex melodies of Trance, and more generic basslines sans any groove like you would get with proper house. Oh, and tracks tend to be less than 5 minutes to cater to the adhd younguns who lap it up.
 
The term EDM was coined by American record executives who saw the explosion of electronic music & specifically dubstep (or rather the horrific American version 'Brostep') in the US in the mid-late 2000's. They needed a new cool term to market it to American youth who were relatively clueless about electronic music.

As a style of music it basically means god awful lowest common denominator 'big room' dance music which usually sounds really childish, uses horrific plastic sounding synth presets and lacks any hint of originality or substance... it's always hideously overproduced as well.

I don't know anyone over here in the UK who calls it EDM, but most people I speak to nowadays are in their 30's... maybe all the 18 year olds are calling everything electronic 'EDM'.

To summarise, it's all americas fault for being 20 years behind the rest of the world when it comes to Electronic Music.
 
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