“My favourite acronym for EDM is event-driven marketing”: deadmau5 reflects on the commercialisation of rave culture
“That doesn’t take away from anyone wanting to go out and have a good time.”
Credit: Santiago Felipe/Getty Images
Rave culture and electronic music are becoming increasingly commercialised, says Deadmau5.
Speaking to Tom Power, the DJ explains, “I hear kids saying, ‘Hey, going to the rave, bought my ticket on Ticketmaster, and it’s in Vegas, it’s sponsored by Live Nation and Coca-Cola’ … you know what I mean?”
Deadmau5 continues, “My favourite acronym for EDM is event-driven marketing. That’s so funny, I know, because it’s what it is really – that doesn’t take away from anyone wanting to go out and have a good time.”
He compares the contemporary scene to the one he grew up in, where “We had to beg the cashier for like, print-out tickets done on a Xerox thing for a meet-up point, to get on a bus to take us to God knows where, for a party, for a raid. You know, that’s exciting.”
He adds, “I was having a great time. It was new, it was different. It was illegal, yeah, in some cases, and that was rave. Now I am so salty and old – in the sense that, like, that is dead; that is long and gone.”
Deadmau5, real name Joel Thomas Zimmerman, was inducted into the Canadian Music Week’s Music Industry Hall of Fame earlier this month, where he stands alongside some of Canada’s most well-regarded musicians. Among them are Alanis Morissette, Rush, and Andy Kim.
Last month, Deadmau5 poked fun at another fellow Canadian, Grimes, during his set at Las Vegas’ Electric Daisy Carnival after her infamous Coachella set rife with technical issues.
Before going into his track, Maths, he played clips of her discussing the problems she faced, saying, “It’s hard to explain”, with the sound of a metronome present, Then, the beat dropped for the song.
