Spotify
As the electronic music ecosystem matures, listeners are gravitating away from main stage EDM towards underground styles.
A fascinating deep dive into dance music was recently published to Spotify's For the Record, a dedicated blog and podcast managed by the streaming giant.
According to Spotify's "The State of Dance Music" report, For The Record spoke with the company's global dance curators about current and future trends they're observing within the genre. This is the team responsible for providing listeners with playlist content for Crate Diggers, mint, and a plethora of other popular dance music playlists.
The piece provides a prescient perspective into how these decision makers view the genre at large—and where we may be headed.
Overall, the health of dance music's immediate future received glowing remarks. Despite stagnation related to closed clubs and cancelled festivals worldwide over the last year, the editors believe we will shake the rust off quickly as the scene reopens.
They point to recent genre-related movements—such as the rising popularity of the red-hot slap house genre—as evidence that dance music's innovative spirit is still alive and well. “As listeners head back to the clubs and producers are able to tour again, expect even more noise,” they reaffirm.
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Not everything within dance music is necessarily on the rise, however. The piece makes a claim that mainstage EDM is not dead, but it has progressed in its lifecycle to a stage where listeners are likely to find it "nostalgic." That is to say the hunger for this content is still alive, but it's not necessarily in the spotlight at the moment.
Instead, the editors point to a rising appetite for underground flavors within the house and techno world. It's perhaps a natural progression of the genre's dedicated listeners returning to the roots of what started the dance music boom to begin with.
They point to a class of new rising bedroom producers filling this void, such as Fred again.. from the UK, who recently caught the attention of Ed Sheeran. His unique blend of techno and dance-pop sonics brought about "Bad Habits," Sheeran's most dance-heavy single to date.
Discover more insights as well as a new arsenal of dance music playlists in Spotify's full "The State Of Dance Music" report.
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