A Lesson on Electronic Music, Be it House, Trance, Dance, or Techno

First off, if you don't listen to electronic music then I don't know why you are reading this article. This article is intended to educate those who are not familiar with the way Electronica (trance, in particular) music works.

Electronica (or "techno" as it is so often incorrectly coined as) music does not follow the same rules as rap, pop, country, hip-hop, or any other music genre in general for that matter. For example: if you purchase a CD by Nelly Furtado or "fitty" cent, chances are that you expect all of the songs on that CD to have been done by the artist who released it. This does not hold true for electronic music: a CD released by DJ Tiesto or Armin Van Buuren may only have one or two songs on the album that have actually been produced by the artist who released the album. Therefore, you cannot apply the same logic to an Electronica CD as you would a CD by a mainstream artist. For example:

If you buy an album by, say, nickleback (or whatever the hell kids listen to these days) and you like all or most of the songs on the album, then chances are you can safely presume to like the band as a whole.

If, however, you buy a techno CD (Tiesto's In Search of Sunrise series, for example) and you like all or most of the songs on that CD, you cannot presume that you will like the DJ because 90% of the songs on that album were not his. You can appreciate that DJ's particular taste in music, but the CD itself tells you nothing about how well his technical DJ'ing skills are or what kind of music he typically produces himself.

If you think this problem is all in my head, just take a look at some of these youtube links where people have uploaded trance songs and mislabeled them as Tiesto's when they were simply either being played by him or on one of his albums.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjla29Y1I5g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1PY7MpwTjI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8lb74tXYUk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqmkEX93zRA

I don't mean to rag on just Tiesto here, this is a problem with all the major DJ's. It's a very unique problem for the electronic music genre, and perhaps the reason why there are only a handful of major DJ's and yet thousands of artist who produce music and never get the credit they deserve. Its a disturbing trend and perpetuates a never ending cycle: people think a DJ is good for all the wrong reasons, they buy his albums and go to his shows, said DJ gets boatloads of cash and is able to put all the top songs (from other producers, no doubt) in his setlist and CD's, and people continue to think he is amazing.

As for me, I can feel fulfilled even if I have managed to educate only a handful of people who have just broken into the Electronica music scene or perhaps even those who have been there for awhile and were still unaware. There's nothing wrong with liking an artist that is popular, just make sure its because of their own music and technical prowess and not because of another artist's hard work.