Electric Daisy Carnival is one of the biggest EDM music festivals on the planet. So why is it cancelling EDC NYC, one of its largest dates?
EDC NYC is one of the largest Electric Daisy Carnival events on the planet. Now, it’s toast. According to a Facebook post from Insomniac CEO Pasquale Rotella, the New York event is taking a ‘break’ for 2017. Insomniac, part of Live Nation, is one of the largest EDM live event companies in the world.
Rotella encouraged fans to attend the flagship Vegas festival instead, half a continent away. That sounds like a stretch, though die-hard fans will definitely hop on a flight.
But why do they have to? Here’s the post. which has now been deleted. Update: it actually wasn’t deleted, according to Insomniac.
Although EDC New York 2016 was one of my favorites hosted in the Big Apple, we’ve decided to take a break in 2017. We hope many of you East Coast Headliners will join us in Vegas. We’ll have an Art Car sound system paying homage to New York DJs past and present.
The cancellation hints at a number of problems, including high costs, attendance issues, or problems with local authorities. Several years ago, Electric Daisy Carnival was booted from Los Angeles, and quickly shifted to ‘no rules’ Las Vegas. Regulators in New York, similar to Los Angeles, may have been applying heavy pressure to curtail drugs.
Is the EDM bubble popping?
The bigger concern is that EDM is now past its peak. And without fans, regulations and rules are irrelevant. “This must be what the bubble bursting looks like,” quipped EDMTunes author Scott Lombardo. “It’s already looking like 2017 is going to continue the dark trend of festival cancellations off-years.”
The EDC NYC cancellation follows the disappearance of TomorrowWorld, including a flat-out cancellation in Brazil. But that was tied to the collapse of SFX, another bubble pop entirely.
Image by unblessed_scalar, CC by 2.0.
The whole thing about “EDM” was that it was so full of hype.. and it wasn’t cheap.. DJ’s became money titans making $400,000 a night spinning disc’s while waving
their hands up in the air..
Really it was over blown and of course if couldn’t sustain on that level..
The phrase EDM sounds somewhat old-hat and yesterday now (to me anyway..)..
Dance music has never gone away and although it may change a bit from time to time.. it’s still has a thumping 4/4 beat and most songs are in the minor keys..
Disco, House, High-Energy, Eurobeat, Garage and really EDM is just another word for it.
Now everyone’s using the same equipment and software that there’s no financial
divide between those that have the wealth to afford an SSL Duality console when a MacBook Pro with a state-of-the-art DAW can deliver great results with it all mixed In-The-Box !
Mind you, the SSL Duality 48 channel large format production console is top class and those with the $$$ will say Yes to one in a flash !!
Your focusing on the fanicial issues from live performances though. I know that is a huge part of being a relevant Dj but i for one could be happy with the raves ive been to and never go to another one because i just like the music itself. The concert scene is playing to heavily into the demands of the majority so we have djs playing house that has generic drops put into it so that people can rage in the crowd. That annoys me to no end because it seems incredibly disingenuous to the music and what the dj intended it to be when he wrote it. EDM is an older term and i agree it does seem a bit worn but as it stands its the only all encompassing phrase we can use. I for one get really irritated when people refer to it as dubstep all the time. I could live with techno more than dubstep as a goto generic term but would still be off. So until theres a better phrase to use EDM it stays
Whatever. This argument that music that can be made on a laptop by an amateur is comparable to that produced by someone who knows the ins and outs is preposterous. But, sure, EDM has become more and more automated. It can be a boring medium, especially without vocals, which is ultimately what people grab onto, apart from needing a beat.
Songs always have, and always will rule, at whatever tempo. EDM is a huge user of tech and that’s going to keep it relevant from a show aspect. DJs will cut their rates, no big deal. The question though is who will generate the new songs and the new vocals, and ultimately, you have to play an instrument to write a truly decent song.
The reality is it was a shitty culture of shitty people who only get along for the day and it’s back to reality… as a musician I realized the fault pretty quickly… only sounds good if you’re fucked up and in a club dancing poorly with other attractive young people who won’t play this type of music in their cars or homes… which makes it live only and really a waste sadly. The celebrity DJ’s aren’t even DJ’s and no one buys the music or truely knows anything they are hearing apart from the DJ… that’s why hip-hop/R&B is the largest growing genre where you get “hype”, “nostalgic”, or “want to sing along”. You hear it everywhere even in mundane places now. In all forms for all people. Even if it’s Jason Darrolo and snoop dogg. I work with kids that all know how to whip as white as coolwhip…. slightly older kids singing every word of trap queen…. it’s wild but promising. If only hip-hop artists were better entertainers and performers… can’t have it all can we? Oh wait! Childish Gambino is the new Eddie that can rap and sing? Geeze
huh? childish bambino what crap, lets hear him sing rap without any electronics, now that would be talent….no more cut and pasting….sing like you took lessons for years not just a few weeks in other word like a pro.
That may be true a lot of people out there but thats what happens when music becomes trendy. Those people will eventually drop off and they wont be missed because they didnt truly care. I know everything about every DJ i listen to. I spend hours scouring the internet for leaks of new tracks and i listen to nothing but EDM, instrumentals, and electro swing but those all fall in a close group. I take this shit seriously like a bad addiction. Theres nothing like finding an artist you like and get into them 6 months or so before they become really popular and everyone else likes them too. Ive been ahead of the curve that way for ten years now. Im the complete opposite of those douchbags you see rollin up to the venue bumpin rap and they cant tell you a single thing about anybody theyre seeing and honestly dont even like the music.
Interesting also the reference to jazz. Yeah, jazz was super-trendy and far more popular at one time. BUT, what’s really interesting is that lots of people still like jazz because it’s cool, or hip, or a great night out, or whatever. It’s not people that have every John Coltrane album, or listen constantly. Maybe post-bubble, EDM takes on a strange sort of existence too.
People still like jazz because it can be a high-end art form. And they have more jazz albums than you imagine, Paul. People still like the great painters and sculptors, too, and good work continues there. Some people still take to art .
EDM.=dj’s turning knobs
maybe now its back to real musicians playing real instruments and creating great music again . i can’t wait
Sick of hearing this about EDM. Yes i dont dispute that most of what they do on stage is button pushing and knob turning but they did write they music and produced it. They obviously cant produce music like that one the fly on stage, if mistakes were made the results would be horrible and Djs cant risk that when they make most of their money from touring. Do a little research too before you say things like djs cant play real instruments. Some cant no, maybe not at first but they had to learn something to become effective. And many know how to play several instruments. Most popular one being piano since its easily translatable between instruments and even platforms. I think the quality of the music today is better than ever. More thought and time is put into it to where its not just mindless strings of random noises. Just defending my opinion, though you are right about the knob turning but what do you expect anyways. Thats only one issue relates to one side of the EDM fan coin. One side is the ravers and concert goers. The other is really just into the music itself and could do away with all the hype and bullshyt that comes from live shows. Ive been to three raves and its an entirely diffrent experience with the music than chillin in your room listening to it.
I can say for sure that the EDM bubble is not popping. There may be a time coming soon where these companies and producers will have to either get along and agree on fair pay or they will go broke and fade out. There is definitly no shortage of fans out there. I went to Paradiso in 2015 and 2016 and the tickets for that sold out so fast you had to be on the ball to get them. There was close to 30k people both years and thats not even close to how many would show up if the venue could hold more people. Ive been into EDM since i was a kid but i never owned any cds of that flavor so i didnt officially get into it until about 2005 or so. Ive seen the meta change four or five times in that time, some people lost interest but there was always more people being turned on to it everyday. And now that EDM has become cool over the last decade that amount of fans has skyrocketed so i would expect i significant decrease as it moves out of the trendy zone but us diehards will still be here forever.
It’s not a bubble, it’s a genre of music. There’s a difference. People still listen to jazz, folk and classical music.
EDM is Culture of Hippies on Steroids.. its all about mass drug consumption .. no one attends these events sober. The music is so dull you need to be really high to understand it.. every track same build up ,same production techniques.. The Edm bubble has popped after SFX Bankrupt. beatport was its main driving force and the dj store is shifting focus to other sub genres of Electronic Music… Real musicians should be playing on big stages not button pushers.. That being said its nice to see this garbage of a culture being put to its final resting place .. the EDM scene really hurt the business of music it was managed by really unprofessional people who did not value music .
Well said. Thank You.
Is this a troll comment? There’s shitty artists in every genre, just because an artist uses an instrument that isn’t electronic doesn’t make then talented.
I used to be a huge heavy metal guitarist and I’d talk shit about all the pop stars who used nothing but power chords and one note songs. But they’re using “real instruments” so it “counts” right?
Pretty sure edm also hasn’t taken away from any music venues that don’t play pop. The people following “real” music wouldn’t be attending the pop concerts even if edm wasn’t around, and the people attending edm concerts wouldn’t be attending the concerts of these so called “talented” artists, they’d be at the concerts of whatever genre was trending.
Thank you.