Metro Manila (CNN Philippines) — The Electronic Dance Music (EDM) genre has swept the music industry in the past decade or so, as evidenced by reports from the International Music Summit (IMS) in Ibiza, Spain last May.
According to these reports, EDM is currently a whopping $6.9 billion industry, but the growth and success of the genre wasn’t something anyone could have easily predicted.
CNN Philippines caught up with Swedish DJ and producer John Dahlbäck before his performance at Chaos Manila in the City of Dreams on July 17 to talk about his experience as a part of the growing EDM industry.
Early days
Dahlbäck started out in the industry at the tender age of 17 in 2002 after his cousin Jesper, who is also a DJ, introduced him to the genre.
In those days in Sweden, Dahlbäck was in the company of now-familiar names in the industry, rubbing elbows with them before the EDM boom that took over the world.
“It was really cool in Sweden, everyone who was doing music at that time was like a small family,” said Dahlbäck. “It was me, (Sebastian) Ingrosso, (Steve) Angelo, Axwell, Adam Beyer, and well everyone from Sweden.”
It was also a time before music was digital and records were objects you could hold.
“When I signed something to a record label back then, it was pressed on vinyls, and it cost money for a label to do vinyls,” said Dahlbäck. “It was like a confirmation that you did (good) music because no one would invest money on a bad song.”
Despite all the big names in Sweden back then, EDM still wasn’t a big thing in the country; it was even put under pressure by the authorities.
“It was very underground for a long time in Sweden,” said Dahlbäck. “We even had for a long time a ‘rave commission’ that shut down parties because they thought (there) was a lot of drugs.”
A bigger audience
A lot of that changed when the U.S. took notice of a particular David Guetta song that hit the airwaves.
“It all took off with the Guetta track ‘When Love Takes Over’,” said Dahlbäck. “When U.S. started to open their eyes to House music, the rest of the world started to look at it as well.”
The mainstream exposure propelled EDM to become one of the biggest music genres today.
“It’s the biggest — I would say the biggest genre in the world,” said Dahlbäck.
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And with the new-found popularity, advancements in technology brought about a rise in the number of artists in the industry.
“Back in the days you had to have synths and you had to have these hardware stuff, while now you can just do it in any laptop,” said Dahlbäck.
Sticking out
The Swedish producer is currently working on a new album, and he believes the sheer number of artists today make it difficult to stand out.
“Since everyone is doing it I guess it’s pretty hard at the moment to succeed,” said Dahlbäck.
Dahlbäck believes that EDM in itself hasn’t changed much despite all the attention it has been getting worldwide throughout the years. The biggest hits in EDM are still marked by strong hooks and big repetitive melodies.
“The instrumental tracks that get really big is the one with very repetitive melodies that people, you know, can sing along to,” said Dahlbäck. “ Even the songs that were popular ten years back, they had strong hooks and melodies.”
With a larger field of competitors comes the need to up your game as an artist.
“You have to leave the comfort zone a bit when doing an album,” said Dahlbäck. “You can’t only do stuff that you do all the time, you have to push yourself.”
Losing steam
Even with the rosy numbers that the EDM industry has been posting, its growth has slowed down considerably according to IMS reports, a development that Dahlbäck has observed in Europe in particular.
“It has been big in Europe for a long time, Holland has been doing festivals like Tomorrowland for so many years,” said Dahlback. “It just feels like, maybe it became too much in Europe, people just got tired.”
Despite the decline in Europe, Dahlbäck believes that other areas are learning more and more about EDM.
