Monopolization in a electronic music

 In a situation that contributed to my recognition, a friend told me that I am “competition.” And in a way, this situation showed that someone can become known more as independent “competition” than by submitting to monopolization — which is what this post is about. I write competition in quotation marks because if someone has no interest in something, they are not competition. A person can destroy themselves, and that is their problem as long as they do not intrude into someone else’s space. And I want to thank so many people from the western side for acknowledging that my freedoms and rights were violated, and for saying that no one should ever behave like this toward another person.

Given politics, I do not want to be associated in any way with what I am supposed to be “competing” with. I have no desire to participate in something that is against my nature. I did not start producing liquid DNB mixes for that purpose. And if meaning in music disappeared, I would stop producing altogether.

I think electronic music is a vast ecosystem branching into dozens of subcultures, styles, and local scenes. And within this music, there are significant differences in how individual genres are organized: for example, one that spreads into hundreds of independent currents, and one that concentrates into a few monopolies or forms of usurpation. This can be seen most clearly when comparing the techno or even EDM, Progressive, House music with drum & bass, I think. 

While techno or EDM thrives as an open, decentralized network of thousands of artists, collectives, clubs, labels, and individuals, drum & bass is becoming monopolized. This is one of the parts that, for me, form a visible difference between DNB and techno, EDM, Progressive or House music. 

The consequences for artists are concrete. Artists involved in techno (or EDM, Progressive, …) are more independent in everything they do and in who they are than those in DNB.

In DNB, artists are often required to form ties with monopolies, creating pressure to adapt their sound, policy or image. In techno, because of the diversity of forms, artists can function in highly varied ways.

In the techno scene, the relationship between an event and an artist is more of a host–guest relationship than an “ownership” one. A festival or club invites an artist to play, but the artist is not bound to their brand or their “family.” They can play for one group today, for another tomorrow, in a completely different context, in another country, in an underground club or on a mainstream stage — without the need to belong to a specific group, because especially the artist is the specific group alone. 

This is quite a contrast to how drum and bass is sometimes presented: as if it’s supposed to be more independent than anything else.