EDM : The Rise of Trap Music: Here to Stay?

 

Trap music. Got your attention yet? 2012 was the year of hybrid dance genres and trap music certainly led the way, as it has exploded across the electronic dance music scene in North America. The genre has undoubtedly created a buzz this year, and there have been many debates about the origins and history of a genre that seems to have gained quite a big fan-base in such short time.
The original trap music genre is far from new. It originated in the south of the U.S., more specifically in the southern ‘crunk’ music scene in the mid 90’s. It is characterized by a hard-line attitude in sound, integrating triple hi hats, loud kicks, snares, brass, and of course, the booming 808′s. The 808 Roland was the first programmable drum machine that was introduced to the music world back in 1981. The signature sounds of this machine are all too familiar to anyone who listens to hip hop. The drum beats are then pitched and re-sampled with various hip hop/rap vocals, pipe flutes, and heavy synth leds to create the now infamous Trap music genre.
The first artists to popularize the genre were southern rappers like T.I., UGK, Swisha House, Young Jeezy, and Gucci Mane. But in recent years, many record labels and electronic producers started to integrate more hip-hop sounds and samples into their tracks. This led to the inevitable merge of hip hop & electronic dance music. This was the beginning of EDM-Trap.
Some of the biggest up and coming producers of 2012 have made their name in electronic dance music from the ever growing Trap movement. Some of the top names in the genre include artists like Flosstradamus, Baauer, RL Grime, TNGHT, gLadiator & UZ who have exploded onto the scene this year.
But is this whole ‘trap movement’ here to stay? Producers are experimenting more than ever these days, looking for that signature sound, and integrating hip-hop with electronic dance music was just a matter of time. The question is: Is this just the beginning for a genre that has rejuvenated itself in a new scene? Or is this just a phase in the ever revolving door of electronic dance music.

Credit : EDM Insider

EDM : Why Marc Sarnoff and the City of Miami couldn’t afford to topple Ultra

Ultra Music Festival usually takes places over a span of three days – six, as of 2013 – but remains relevant for 365 days a year. News surrounding the festival has dance music fans on their feet and excited for March — most of the time. The latest bit of controversy, however, was far less optimistic than the announcements of Swedish House Mafia’s finale or Deadmau5′ return. The two-weekend expansion that had been announced in October was found in jeopardy when the City of Miami’s commissioner, Marc Sarnoff, introduced a resolution that would’ve prevent Bayfront Park from hosting the festival’s second weekend. Despite arguing that “Ultra doesn’t bring a dollar to the city of Miami,” Sarnoff lost, and Ultra’s double-header survived the commissions vote.
But was Ultra really ever in danger? The statistics say no.

The man behind the plan to topple dance music’s favorite festival, Marc Sarnoff, quickly became public enemy number one in the eyes of Ultra fans. Much like Al Walser and his Grammy heist, Simon Cowell and his rumored reality show, Madonna and her drug references, or Paris Hilton and her Afrojack affair, Sarnoff has landed on dance music fans’ list of villains – only not for threatening the integrity of the genre, but for threatening one of its most famed weekends.
Sarnoff has had it out for Ultra; listing noise and traffic gridlocks as reasons to close down the festival in his latest piece of legislation. Off the legal documents, yet on the record, he has slammed festival attendees, estimating “about 70 to 80 percent of these kids are on some sort of mind-altering drug.”

“I happen to have an office in the Miami Center. We average about 30 people a day either urinating, defecating, or throwing up in our building, in the traffic garage” – Marc Sarnoff

How much power does the commissioner of the city really have over the fate of event? Let’s just say all the shit, piss, and puke in the world couldn’t stop Ultra from its annual reign. Why? Monetarily, these “kids” are urinating gold and defecating dollar bills all over Biscayne Boulevard.
Ultra Music Festival pumps millions of dollars into Miami-Dade’s economy – enough to staff an army of janitors to clean the vomit outside Sarnoff’s office and then some. The statistics from last year’s one-weekend event are astounding, and the economic impact from a two-weekend event would just be mind-boggling. Let’s take a look at Ultra by the numbers:
165,000 – The number of people in downtown Miami, not only for the festival, but to experience the greatest week in dance music, Winter Music Conference and all. At a rate of 55,000 people per day, the expansion would result in over 300,000 consumers spending their time and money in South Beach for 2013.
60% – The percentage of attendees from outside Miami-Dade County. These are tourists, the reason every hotel in Miami is booked a year in advanced for March occupancies. Higher demand, higher rates, and those in the business of Miami hospitality have more to be excited about than their costumers.
915 – Over the span of a single weekend, Ultra Music Festival supports almost one thousand jobs for Miami laborers. For a nation concerned with job creation, who can oppose such a statistic? If that number doesn’t double across two weekends this year, the paycheck for those already employed will.
$40M – Forty million dollars are pumped directly into the county’s economy. This derives from everything festival related – from equipment rentals to rave gear, and everything in between.
$79M – Almost eighty million dollars are spent in Miami beyond the realm of the festival. When Ultra closes at midnight Friday and Saturday, and at 11pm on Sunday, the 55,000 partygoers are looking for more. After parties and events affiliated with Miami Music Week and Winter Music Conference bring in the type of revenue that doubles Miami’s economic profit from the festival alone.
When Miami’s commission members kicked off their Ultra debate, Sarnoff was quick to withdraw the repercussions that would’ve doomed the festival. Instantly throwing in the white flag, Sarnoff appeared defenseless and helpless in a near-empty board room, in front of his few colleagues — all of whom stood ground, leaving their leader cornered. Watching the commission’s chatter via live stream, Sarnoff’s trepidation was clear even through the lens and a computer screen. The commissioner opened his mouth and before the conversation was under way, it was perceived that Ultra was safe from its wrongful fate. As for Marc Sarnoff’s ”Ultra doesn’t bring a dollar to the city of Miami” comment — well, the numbers don’t lie.

Credit : Dancing Astronaut

EDM : How overzealous party planners are squeezing the magic out of dance music

It has happened countless times: A show gets announced, tickets go on sale and sell out in record time, and then, suddenly, there’s another date added. This, and other variations on this (admittedly genius) strategy have become commonplace over the past few months with US events, and the trend has me worried — and it has understandably pissed off many fans.
Promoters and event organizers can certainly do whatever they want — and we all know that they do — but it’s getting to the point for most high profile events that a second show is almost a guarantee. It’s all becoming too predictable. Sure this is great for the artists and promoters (if demand stays high enough for the ‘added on’ shows), but these practices hurt the most important group of people in the equation: the fans — you know, the people that actually pay money for tickets.


Discussions of an ‘EDM bubble’ have been going on since the craze began, but I, like many others in the industry, believe that this music is finally here to stay. There’s simply too much invested in it, too many people working to make it stick, and too much influence that it has had on ‘pop music’ and our culture for it to disappear. The radio waves are congested with dance-inspired productions often produced by dance artists, our younger siblings longingly watch event aftermovies on YouTube, and our parents recognize Avicii as a household name. This isn’t going to subside in the short term. If anything, it’s only going to get more pronounced as the scene continues to get more concentrated and influenced by large corporations.

Ultra Music Festival announcing a second weekend for its 15th year continues this trend. Organizers technically announced the additional dates before tickets went on sale, but the mentality is still the same. My first reaction was a simple “wow,” but amid all the backlash from frustrated fans on social media and accounts from my own friends, I am starting to see that the anger is not completely unfounded. Ultra used to be the ultimate way to cap off Miami Music Week, but now going for three days isn’t even enough. Unlike another two-week festival like Coachella where you go first week or second week, the way Ultra sandwiches MMW forces fans to choose whether they want to start there or end there. It makes things harder to plan with friends, barely any other MMW events have been announced yet, and we were completely unprepared for it. I don’t think it’s bad that organizers want as many people to experience UMF as possible — it is an incredible festival and everyone should go at least once. But, I do think it makes the experience a lot less special.

We’re already seeing a shift in tastes from more of the forward-thinking members of the dance community. The rising popularity of underground events and the return of warehouse parties is an homage to yesteryear, where a large-scale event wasn’t just something you went to, but something you had to make an effort to attend. (Watch How Clubbing Changed The World for more details.) The advent of all-age or 16+ festivals has granted access to a whole new demographic of listeners (and ticket purchasers), but it has also begun to make these events less desirable to more seasoned attendees. Here’s the thing though: in a networked world with things like Twitter, Facebook, and, yes, music blogs, everything that’s ‘good’ is eventually going to ‘blow up.’ It happened with ‘house’ that has morphed into ‘EDM,’ and it will happen to the ‘underground’ stuff too.

From my standpoint, if anything will break the industry it will be overzealous promoters who get too aggressive, aim too high, and harm the other major stakeholders in the process. A number of high profile tours were undersold this summer, forcing performers to cancel dates and switch venues with regularity, and having negative side effects on their booking fees. Despite these shortcomings and the increased number of shows, ticket prices have only continued to rise. Maybe it’s because the majority of the shows do sell out that this is the case, but this isn’t going to last forever — and things need to start changing now if this music is to progress the way it should.

The saddest part of the current situation is that it is the fans who lose out the most. They are the ones forced to pay the asking price if they can buy tickets fast enough when they go on sale, and they are the ones who must overpay on StubHub or Craigslist when scalpers get there first. Some fans have even turned into scalpers themselves, buying extra tickets just to finance the costs of going to so many shows. If history teaches us anything, it’s that when the people get unhappy, they revolt — or they just find something else to do instead. I’m not suggesting that there will be one day when this all just falls apart, but slowly and surely, it will.

Last time I wrote an editorial like this, I asked DJs to leave us wanting more in their sets. This time around, I’m asking the promoters and event planners to do the same. You will still make money and you will still sell out shows, but we, the fans, won’t feel cheated or deceived. If you are planning multiple shows — tell us ahead of time, and stop playing these games with our heads and our wallets. The shows might not sell out as fast, but if there’s enough demand, they will eventually.
It’s an amazing time for dance music right now, and I know I want it to last as long as possible. If practices like this continue, however, it might have a shorter lifespan than we think.


Credit : Dancing Astronaut

Dance music has gone mainstream, but it doesn’t have to sell out

Dance music has gone mainstream. There. I said it. Afrojack and David Guetta are all over the radio. Avicii “Levels” is in too many commercials to count. Flo Rida is rapping over “In My Mind.” I could go on and on, but there’s no denying that the influx of attention, money, and new fans has thrust a once “underground” genre into the national (and global) consciousness.
Here’s the thing though: This isn’t bad — it’s natural. It’s survival of the fittest. In the same way that people were clamoring for Lil Wayne and Kanye West tickets just a few years ago, now it’s all about snagging passes to Sensation, or EDC, or Electric Zoo, or any of the other hundred EDM events slated to go down in the next few months.
There is a bad thing happening now that EDM is so popular however: We’ve allowed the talent to get complacent. And that’s not cool.

The always outspoken Deadmau5 recently published a post to his Tumblr entitled “we all hit play.” If you read the entire piece (which you should if you care enough to read this one), you will appreciate his honesty and level-headedness about the realities of being a musician in 2012. He draws a fine line between the skills required for a live show and the skills required to be an actual producer, saying that “my ‘skills’ and other PRODUCERS skills shine where it needs to shine… in the goddamned studio, and on the fucking releases.” That’s the exact distinction that has needed to be made for some time now. It’s not a DJs job to make new tracks in front of a crowd — that’s borderline impossible — but it is a DJ’s job to take a crowd “on a roller coaster… and connect with them.”

 ”A DJ is a guy that comes into a room… scans it in… is like: ‘Okay. What do I need to do to get these people to go bananas?” – Sebastian Ingrosso

What worries me is not that DJs are simply “pressing play,” but that they’re pressing play on the same tracks in the same order night after night after night. There’s new music being released at a breakneck pace, but many of the big name DJs are still spinning the same freaking sets every time. They are playing the same bootlegs, making the same transitions, and delivering the same exact shtick every day of the week.
You would think that the DJs themselves would get bored of it, yet they continue to drop predictable, staid combinations like “Coming Home” vs “Quasar” in nearly every set they play. Maybe it’s because we’re still jumping around as ferociously as we did the first time or maybe it’s because they still get paid regardless of what they play. I’m not saying that these sets are bad, because they’re not. I am saying that they’re getting old.

“because this whole big “edm” is taking over fad, im not going to let it go thinking that people assume theres a guy on a laptop up there producing new original tracks on the fly. becausje none of the “top dj’s in the world” to my knowledge have. myself included.” – Deadmau5

The draw to see any DJ live usually stems from an affinity of their original productions, so their skills in the studio should be able to make up for the fact that they are going to just “hit play.” These guys get more music submissions than anyone on the planet; is it really that hard to find new material to play out? They spend countless hours on planes with their laptops and production tools at the ready; is it really that hard to put together a new mashup or bootleg before a set? I miss the days where I would say “Whoa, what is this?!” instead of “Ugh, this bootleg again?” As much as it sucks when Shazam can’t ID a track, it sucks even more when you know every single song being played.
If the current trajectory of DJ sets continues, it won’t be long before everyone catches on to what’s really going on here. In the same way that mainstream radio stations have killed songs by playing them far too often, DJs are quickly doing the same.
Luckily, this problem is easily rectified. Now is the time to capitalize on the momentum of the industry, to embrace the sudden infatuation with our music as opposed to shying away from it. People want to be surprised. They want to be blown away. They want a reason to keep liking it.

“you know what makes the EDM show the crazy amazing show that it is?  you guys do, the fans, the people who came to appreciate the music” – Deadmau5

Playing the same stuff over and over is not the way to make that happen. That’s the way to turn people off. That’s the way to repeat history from the rap game — and dance music is so much better than rap.
So this is a message to all the DJs out there who read Dancing Astronaut (and to the ones who don’t too): Don’t be afraid to take risks. Don’t be afraid to play a song that you released in 2011, 2010, or 1995 for that matter. Don’t be afraid to play a new song from an up-and-comer that has the potential to make people “go bananas.” Don’t be afraid to omit your latest single for once. Don’t be afraid to leave us wanting more.
If you do, we’ll keep coming back for it.

Thank You Jacob Schulman

Credit : Dancing Astronaut