The beginnings of EDM come from the disco genre, which was very popular in the late 1970s. Disco music aimed to move crowds of people on the dance floor, using drum machines and electronic instruments to create synthesized rhythms. Electronic dance music, also known as EDM, encompasses a panoply of musical styles that emerged in the mid-1980s. Rather than designating a single genre, electronic dance music (EDM) encompasses styles that range from ambient music without rhythm to hardcore with 200 beats per minute, with house music, techno, drum and bass, dubstep and trance among the most notable examples.
The birth of EDM came from Disco. Disco music was very popular in the late 1970s. The disco genre was created with drum machines and electronic instruments. The progenitors of what we now know as EDM began in Europe.
The Acid House, Dance and Techno genres were established in Germany and the United Kingdom. They then spread to the rest of Europe before being adopted by the Americans and becoming Detroit Techno. It continued from there, growing and branching like the stems of some strange tree from another world. This music became popular under the name “electronic” during the second half of the 1990s.
Groups such as Underworld, Fatboy Slim, The Prodigy and The Chemical Brothers were imported from England and had a big impact, bringing electronic music to popular fame. Electronic music, better known as EDM or dance music, is a type of music composed with the main purpose of being listened to at clubs, raves or festivals. After the popularization of EDM in the United States, several producers and DJs, including Carl Cox, Steve Lawler and Markus Schulz, expressed concern that the supposed excessive marketing of dance music had an impact on the art of DJing. Electronic dance music (EDM), also known as dance music, club music, or just dance, is a wide range of electronic percussion music genres created primarily for nightclubs, raves and festivals.
The term and, more generally, the EDM genre is much newer than electronic music (not to be confused with electronic dance music). In an article published in The Guardian, journalist Simon Reynolds pointed out that the adoption of the term EDM by the American music industry in the late 2000s was an attempt to change the name of American rave culture and differentiate it from the rave scene of the nineties. The EDM umbrella encompasses a wide and varied selection of music that is played at raves, festivals, clubs and large scale parties. The genre had been latent on the nightclub scene since the 1980s, however, in recent years the demand for EDM has taken over commercial music by storm.
One of the frequent topics discussed by young and promising EDM artists is the overly commercialized tone that many EDM artists are forced to adopt, due to strong corporate influence. Nowadays, EDM isn't just a type of music, it's also a land of innovation, whether musical or technological.
