2015: EDM's End Of Days

In 2015, the bass dropped directly on EDM and dance music's dayglo moment in the spotlight passed.

We saw EDM head towards a fall in March when Puff Daddy graced the main stage at Ultra during a guest spot with Skrillex and Diplo. The rap pioneer had turned hanger-on to the coattails of EDM, the Bad Boy icon's presence a harbinger of the fall to come. Diddy's a fan of exhorting people to "take that, take that." When it comes to halting EDM's momentum it's quite possible that's exactly what he assisted in taking away from the musical movement.

And while 400,000 people attended the Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas this year, it's entirely possible that much more than 50 per cent of the people in that throng were there to do everything but dance. Aware of this and also growing tired of teenagers popping molly and putting their lives in danger at other EDM festivals, seasoned scenesters raving elsewhere caused attendance to spike at events not specifically promoting EDM.

Detroit's Movement Festival - an American paean to techno lovers worldwide - grew to well over 100,000 revelers. Burning Man's popularity is now on par with Electric Daisy Carnival, a reality that came to light when the state of Nevada announced it was levying an entertainment tax on all future festival events. Noting that Burning Man is dissimilar to EDC, Burn organizers, motivated by wanting to appear in all ways different to EDC and EDM, are rumored to be moving Burning Man to the state of Utah, some 500 miles away.

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We also can't talk about EDM in 2015 without mentioning the utter shit-show of a film We Are Your Friends. Grossing $1.8 million in its first few nights, the film had one of the worst opening weekends of a major studio release in Hollywood history. To provide some historical clarity here, do note that when comparable disco-film-as-pop moment Saturday Night Fever opened in 1977 it grossed $2.538 million in its premiere weekend. Adjusted for 2015, that's $10.152 million, which means that John Travolta's iconic disco ode was 82 per cent more successful as a film than this year's Effron EDM flop.

The failure of We Are Your Friends pales in comparison to the $295 million debt accrued by 2015 by Robert Sillerman's SFX Entertainment. The mogul barrelled into the EDM scene in 2013 via a series of high profile purchases including iconic festival brands, dance music retailer Beatport and several industry-quaking personnel hires. However, by 2015, a myriad of issues including a lack of development in these purchases as revenue streams has proven so difficult that Sillerman himself has attempted and failed three times to buy back the initial public stock offerings and take the company private while attempting to right SFX's sinking financial ship.

Sinking as well is the build-drop and turn-up template of EDM music itself. Scene stalwarts Swedish House Mafia, Avicii and Calvin Harris became ubiquitous pop stars when they cracked Billboard's Top 10 between 2012-2014 with radio-to-festival ready hits 'Don't You Worry Child', 'Wake Me Up' and 'Summer'. At 2015's International Music Summit-Asia Pacific, SFX Live's Director of Special Operations for Asia Richie McNeil outlined the bust that accompanied EDM's boom. "There's been a shift in numbers. The big moment for dance music, according to the numbers, was probably two or three years ago. The growth has flat-lined in some territories. It's interesting times."

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Times were apparently so interesting that 2015 came and passed without either of the promised album releases from ex-SHM members Steve Angello (who bought back his album's rights from Columbia Records) or Axwell and Ingrosso, who did not deliver on their promised Def Jam album release. Instead, 2015's big winner was 'Where Are U Now', Skrillex and Diplo's Billboard pop chart top 10 collaboration with Justin Bieber for the production duo's Jack Ü side project. That track features no car alarms or thunderous basslines, but is a rather blissful garage-meets-soul journey sounding more like UK post-dubstep than Afrojack.

EDM's victors celebrated and healed in 2015. Calvin Harris canoodled with Taylor Swift, Avicii coalesced, and the Swedish House Mafia remained separated. And of those who remained active in a tumultuous 2015? "[EDM] is a wave right now and you can ride on it... [But] if I look at what I play, 99 per cent of the sets that I play on aren't EDM events. I haven't played [Electric Daisy Carnival] since 2011," Skrillex told Pitchfork, summarizing how he and others survived the year in dance that featured EDM's cataclysmic fall.

2016 is mere weeks away, and on the horizon Justin Bieber's likely to sing over more house-inspired and bass-laden funk, while it looks like Drake's possibly stepping more significantly onto the dancefloor, threatening an EP with garage don Craig David. Though different than what EDM offered, what's next still certainly appears quite appealing.

Marcus K. Dowling is a freelance writer based in Washington DC, follow him on Twitter here

Patch D Keyes is a freelance illustrator based in Bristol, follow him on Twitter here