The Evolution of Electronic Music

Most people believe that the first implementations of electronic music could not have been before the 70s and 80s Synthpop era. However, electronic musical instruments creating sounds which were considered "not musical" have existed and slowly grown in popularity since the 1920s. Fast forward to today and literally all the music we listen to has been heavily influenced by electronic instruments and style of progression. Electronic music can be termed the most influential genre in modern music and it's evolution.

Most people believe that the first implementations of electronic music could not have been before the 70s and 80s Synthpop era. However, electronic musical instruments creating sounds which were considered "not musical" have existed and slowly grown in popularity since the 1920s. Fast forward to today and literally all the music we listen to has been heavily influenced by electronic instruments and style of progression. Electronic music can be termed the most influential genre in modern music and it's evolution.

In the 1970s and 80s a genre called Synthpop started gaining a noticeable amount of popularity in mainstream music. It is essentially a piece of music with an electronic synthesizer as a dominant instrument in its composition. This era of music is what greatly inspired pop musicians to use more electronic instruments in their music, thus taking possibly the biggest step in the evolution of electronic music. Artists like Cher and countless others lead this change in the late 90s and it's been incredibly prominent since.

Now from that point where pop music and electronic music essentially merged into one, electronic music also started gaining popularity in its niche implementations, such as what we now call EDM(Electronic Dance Music). These EDM subgenres existed during the Synth wave era but now they started to gain a lot of attention from bigger labels as the new sort of indie electronic music in the early 2000s. However, in the early 2010s, this genre took over the pop Industry due to its constant exposure in nightclubs, with prominent artists such as David Guetta and Zedd. Soon enough, electronic music and dance music were everywhere, possibly becoming the biggest phenomenon in the early 2010s with artists like the Cataracs and LMFAO who took advantage of its popularity and catchy rythms. Then with the rise of artists like Martin Garrix in 2016-27 EDM took over the world. Not that it has fallen in popularity since then, but with more creative usage of electronic instruments and ear candy slowly evolving around that time, this genre was set aside again as sort of a niche(around late 2018), but in no way did its influence die.

Today everything from hip-hop to folk songs show heavy implementation of electronic music. A lot of pop and hip-hop songs still use trap, garage and other electronic/EDM genres as their base, but over time these genres have grown more complex and it is much easier to appreciate music as it is rather than over analyzing its influences. This genre that started as a niche experimental way of producers to have fun and mess around in a studio, has grown into a staple for all music today. Especially with the rise of bedroom pop(which is a genre/concept based around the fact that anyone can make the next hit song right in their bedroom with just a laptop), music in general has changed from this incredibly strenuous profession to something anyone can achieve. Many may argue that this has hindered the complexity and quality that music is supposed to have and it is true that a general knowledge of music theory is highly appreciated, this is what evolution is all about. It's not a downgrade from what was before, but rather an expression of the freedom we have today with technology and the internet. Electronic music is less of a genre and more of a phenomenon, which changed music as a whole in just a few decades, paving a path for the future.