8 Electronic Dance Music Prediction Trends in 2018

#1 Voice Will Become the New Way to Hit Play at Home

Amazon just announced today that their number one selling product this holiday season were “millions” of the Echo Dot; a hands-free, voice-controlled device that uses far-field voice recognition, has a small built-in speaker, and can also connect to your speakers over Bluetooth or used with the included audio cable. What does this mean? Streaming will continue to dominate the way we listen to music and we will start to use our voice, even more, to get the tracks we want to hear in our homes played faster than ever.

#2 Cryptocurrency Will Become an Accepted Form of Payment in the Music Industry

With the rise of Bitcoin, Etherium, and Litecoin at the end of 2017, companies will start to accept cryptocurrency as a form of payment for festival tickets, merchandise sales and more. I believe if Amazon raises their hand and decides to start accepting Bitcoin in 2018, then everyone else will soon follow suit.

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#3 Artists Will Implement Creative Ways to Get Closer to Their Most Loyal Fans & Make More Money

Last month, Gramatik jump on the cryptocurrency bandwagon with the release of his own coin GRMTK. This allows his fans to share his success by owning the rights and royalties of his music. This also means they will own anything he creates and distributes on his upcoming channel.

 


Photo Courtesy of Choon

Gareth Emery has plans to launch his own blockchain streaming service in 2018. He’s expected to give 80% of earnings to artists. I believe more artists will see the value in blockchain and cryptocurrency to use it to their advantage.

#4 A Surge of Artists Will Become Anti-Record Labels

Labels take a cut of artists profits and claim ownership over their music to make money. I believe in 2018, even more artists will finally understand the importance of complete control and ownership of their music and creativity. They will document more of their journey with Vlogs and use already established fan bases (like YouTube stars) to get their music into the eyes and ears of new listeners. This method will empower independent artists to go at it alone without a record label.

#5 Storytelling Will Become a Requirement for Brand Building & Fan Engagement

Artists will start to utilize social media even further to expand their brand to encompass who they are even more as a person outside of their music. We’ve already seen this new trend with the likes of cooking with Marshmello, comedy in ‘What Would Diplo Do?’ with Dillon Francis and Kung Fu With Laidback Luke.

#6 EDM Producers Will Further Experiment with Multi Languages in Their Tracks

This year we saw one of the biggest tracks on the radio airwaves from Luis Fonsi featuring Puerto Rican rapper Daddy Yankee and Justin Bieber for their hit track, “Despacito.” I think this has opened up the minds of many artists to think about how they can collaborate with artists who speak other languages in their tracks beyond English. We’ve also seen the rise of K-Pop’s boy band BTS. The Asia market is booming and I believe there will be a lot of interesting collaborations in the works for 2018.

#7 Trap Will Continue to Dominate

With blowout stars like Cardi B in the female rap game, more trap producers will look to the Hip Hop game to collaborate and make the newest tunes of the year. Female trap tracks perhaps?

#8 Soundcloud Will Continue to Lose Its Footing

Now that Spotify and Apple Music have emerged as the go-to place for streaming music, I feel that Soundcloud won’t be able to hold on much longer without a fresh idea to help bring artists back to the platform.

Do you agree or disagree with these predictions? What do you think will happen in 2018? Swipe up and let me know in the comments below!

1 Comment
  • Justin Bleile
    Posted at 04:56h, 28 January Reply

    I feel like SoundCloud is losing its footing mostly because of its premium “Go” feature. Which causes people to only be able to listen to 30 seconds of popular songs unless they purchase this premium. Although it is still a very powerful platform for EDM and House mixes and originals of the smaller up and coming artists as it’s so easy to post. Genres like Tropical House and grimier Dubstep are very present in SoundCloud. The younger generations have also had a strong influence in SoundClouds growth as they don’t want to listen to what everyone else is listening to and would rather hear a song they found and loved even if it only has 3k listens. This brings the average usage of the app up. But who knows, there might be an entire flip flop.

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