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.WAITING FOR THE DROP
As the EDM explosion of the 2010s cools off, many promoters
and managers are bracing for a downturn
BY STEVE KNOPPER
Clockwise from left: Harris, Illenium, Marshmello,
The Chainsmokers and deadmau5.
A
FTER PERFORMING
his usual flashy, bass-
filled set at a Milwau-
kee club in February,
Destructo found
himself at a backyard
afterparty, where kids he had never
heard of were blasting dance mixes to
40 or 50 freezing revelers. “They’re
not thinking, ‘How can we turn this
into some big fucking festival to make
a bunch of money?’ ” recalls the long-
time DJ, also known as Gary Richards,
North American president of dance
music promoter LiveStyle and founder
of festival specialist HARD Events.
“It’s just got to be fun — when it gets
too scientific and too researched and
too business-oriented, it just becomes
another random business.”
To Richards and other dance music
veterans, EDM — the genre of Marsh-
mello, Calvin Harris and The Chain-
smokers — has been booming for so
many years that it finally dipped into
a financial correction. Last summer,
the International Music Summit
reported that the 10 highest-earning
DJs’ salaries had dropped to their
lowest total since 2013; Las Vegas
club and pool-party attendance de-
clined; and dance music’s share of the
U.S. recorded-music market dipped
from 4% to 3% over two years. None
of this data suggests an all-out crash;
Electric Daisy Carnival still sold 90%
of its tickets in five hours last fall. But
managers, agents and promoters say
EDM — the most lucrative and promi-
nent segment of contemporary dance
music — is finally retrenching after
reaching its commercial and cultural
peaks in the 2010s. The biggest stars
are fine, but those on lower tiers may
have to evolve if they want to return
to big streaming numbers and ticket
sales. “That sound that was so big in
2017 definitely has peaked out,” says
Ultra Records founder/president
Patrick Moxey. “And new things are
on the rise.”
“It has just been a reset. The balloon
deflated,” says Dean Wilson, manager
of deadmau5 and CEO of Seven20,
whose clients include Luke Wylde and
Qrion. “It had that moment, and now
it’s back to some kind of reality.” Adds
Will Runzel, co-founder of Prodigy
Artists, which manages Nghtmre,
Slander and Joyryde: “Dance music
has plateaued. It’s just kind of wig-
gling in its place. I do not anticipate it
dropping any farther, and I wouldn’t
anticipate a second boom.”
Even before the coronavirus rav-
aged Asian music festivals, many in
the EDM business had been bracing
for some kind of economic slowdown.
Top DJs still command high-end Ve-
gas salaries, but the shuttering of the
nightclub KAOS last November fol-
lowing the cancellation of its reported
two-year, $60 million deal with
Marshmello suggested the market
for pricey, flashy parties wasn’t what
it used to be. Vegas-style nightclubs
tend to look and feel the same, while
the Instagram generation in recent
years has sought travel and adventure
opportunities over bottle service.
“It’s not that exciting to show off in a
nightclub where you spent $50,000
and there’s a DJ and some confetti,”
says Lee Anderson, the Paradigm
agent who represents Skrillex, Zedd,
Disclosure and others.
Music cycles may be contributing
to EDM’s business dip. Not so long
ago, EDM evolved from an out-of-the-
mainstream niche to the dominant
sound in pop music, with hits from
David Guetta and Daft Punk as well
as crossover production styles used
by Britney Spears and Lady Gaga. An-
derson says EDM blew up to the point
that “the captain of the football team/
valedictorian/class president was all
of a sudden in neon and attending all
these exciting EDM raves.” But the
dance music genre has declined in
streaming, from 4.4% of the market
in 2017 to 3.8% last year, according to
MRC Data. As SoundCloud rap and
other styles of hip-hop have grown,
says Anderson, EDM is no longer
“the new toy.” Adam Alpert, CEO of
Disruptor Records, a joint Sony Music
venture and home of The Chainsmok-
ers, agrees: “Hip-hop is the dominant
genre by far right now, and thus every
[other] genre is suffering.”
The sound that Moxey refers to
as “EDM frothy” — the pumped-up
bass drops and whizzing synths that
dominated dance music for much of
the decade — is giving way to other,
less easily recognizable sounds, like
future bass and tech house, while
DANCE 2020
44 BILLBOARD • MARCH 14, 2020 PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY THE SPORTING PRESS