A graph published by the Los Angeles Times really surprised me: 69 of the 169 (40.8%) acts playing Coachella this year are classified as EDM, and only 62 are rock acts (36.7%). The other numbers? 18 are pop/rock (10.7%), 10 are hip hop (5.9%) 8 R&B (4.7%) and only 2 (1.2%) are jazz, I am still looking for these jazz bands in the schedule…
However, on Saturday afternoon and evening, when I was streaming the whole thing, I wasn’t under the impression that many bands proposed on the three channels were EDM, … I would only see Dillon Francis, GTA and Skrillex as EDM acts,… is Empire of the Sun one too? It is more and more difficult to correctly label all these bands, but the other ones I watched — White Lies, Foxygen, Chvrches, Temples, Ty Segall, The Head and the Heart, Bombay Bicycle Club, City and Colour, Cage the Elephant, Washed Out, Capital Cities, Future Islands, Lorde, Warpaint, Foster the People, Pixies, Queens of the Stone Age, MGMT, Pharrell Willliams, Nas — navigate between rock, pop, synth pop, and hip hop,… So the question is, does their streaming service truly represent what Coachella propose? Coachella also booked Zedd, Calvin Harris, Duck Sauce, Krewella, Martin Garrix, Carnage, RL Grime, Disclosure and other EDM acts and if some figure among the choices on the channels during the three days, I wasn’t under the impression there was such a dominance of the genre.
At the end what does this say about music, is rock pop truly on the decline? Many bands incorporate electronics among their guitars anyway, in fact, is there still a band that doesn’t use a computer on stage? So the borders become more and more fuzzy, but true EDM acts are such a bore on streaming service (and in reality). Going back in time, it is difficult to compare and see an evolution since EDM is such a recent phenomenon, but if you take the lineup of Coachella 2004, exactly 10 years ago, dance music was represented (LCD Soundsystem for example), but wasn’t certainly dominating the game.
Ending the streaming day with Skrillex yesterday (they skipped Muse which can be streamed today) was weird, he wasn’t truly the headliner, but was playing at the same time that the pompous English rock band, so he could be regarded as a headliner. And there is a repeat of this on Sunday, Duck Sauce plays at the same time that headliners Arcade Fire. This, alas, says a lot about the dominance of EDMs in 2014.
