Hey granddad, EDM is huge in vegas

Yeah, I didn't see this article coming.

Of course I knew about EDM taking off and the incredible success of Skrillex et. al. and the re-re-re-rise of the superstar DJ charging obscene fees for two hours of work.  Naturally there's some crap being peddled in that article by the kinds of people you'd expect to be peddling it in the interests of making money, i.e. everyone who boasts about how there's no end in sight to the growth potential of the scene and whatnot. I seriously doubt that the EDM industry is worth $4.5B annually, because that's not much less business than what major North American sports leagues are doing every year.  The article doesn't even clarify if that's supposed to be just in North America, or worldwide, or what kind of tickets/merch/other are included in that number.  Does it include the total cost of a weekend in a major city centre if somebody travels there for festival or a party (probably)?  The scene is undoubtedly big, but whether it's a 21st century rave fad or something more permanent isn't yet clear.  That's implied in the article too.  The merging of technology (state of the art animation, video screens, and lighting) with the excitement of electronic music has finally led to the EDM scene becoming  more accessible to a wide spectrum of people.  That's obvious to anyone with a passing interest in the scene as well, and it's a relief to finally move on from the "laptops and video screens: is it 'real' live music or not?" arguments.

What I didn't know before reading Andrea Domanick's report in SPIN is that the epicentre of EDM excess is VEGAS.  I had no idea that Vegas could draw 200K people for an EDM festival.  I didn't know that Vegas was making Celine Dion-sized investments in EDM clubs for partygoers.

I aged about five years reading this article.  Hell, I still read "EDM" as "EBM" half of the time, and wonder how I managed to miss out on the Front 242 revival.