Upcoming EDM Events & Concerts

Oct 23
Wolfgang Gartner's Love & War Tour @ Showbox Sodo
View Event

Oct 24
EDM Wednesday @ Volume featuring Zomboy
View Event

Oct 26
Freaknight Festival @WaMu Theater featuring Armin Van Buuren & many more
View Event

Oct 30
One More Time: A Daft Punk Tribute @ Neumos
View Event

Support local EDM DJs and Companies

There are many established as well as up-and-coming production companies within the Seattle region who dedicate their time into creating the best EDM atmosphere for all Seattelites. Each of these companies have signature EDM events. Many have multiple annual events with the same title happening each year that have become tradition to attend for many EDM lovers. Of course, they are welcome to newcomers as the scene grows.

Check out these company's pages, Facebook, and receive updates on upcoming events hosted by them!

Digital Innovators 

Facebook

Twitter

Emerald Roots Entertainment 

Official homepage

Kaos Theory Events

Facebook

Twitter

Tap Tap Productions
Facebook 
Twitter

Don't forget to check out local DJs as well!

Soundcloud is a great place to discover new music. There is a whole group dedicated to Seattle EDM for local DJs to post their remixes and tracks. Check it out to get yourself familiarized with the sounds of Seattle!
CLICK HERE

What is EDM?

For everyone who is unfamiliar with the term and its culture, or just beginning to discover it, here is a bit of background information on Electronic Dance Music. 

Electronic dance music (EDM) is electronic music produced primarily born from nightclubs and other environments with dance-based entertainment. The term emerged in America in the late 1990s and describes a set of percussive music genres that largely stem from the production methods of disco music, techno music, house music, and trance music. It uses lively synthetic beats and bass lines with sometimes vocals involved. 
It was first marketed to the United States as "electronica" music when it first got its popular exposure in the 1990s, but did not have a large impact yet at the time. In 2011, Spin magazine reported that the American dance music scene had finally reached critical mass with a "new rave generation" of mainstream consumers having emerged. Today it has become common for established Top 40 artists and producers to infuse elements of popular EDM styles in their music. In 2012, for the first time, the Grammy Awards even included EDM in their categories.

Some world-wide popular EDM artists (click to visit their site): 

Afrojack

Avicii

Skrillex
Deadmau5
Swedish House Mafia

Swedish House Mafia's latest single Don't You Worry Child. The music video encompasses what an EDM concert looks like (on a large scale)

EDM Nightclubs

A lively city that never sleeps on the West Coast, Seattle is packed with nightclubs in every area of the city. Just last year, only about half of the nightclubs mentioned below had specific nights of the week dedicated to EDM. But Emerald CIty being one of the leading cities in the growth of EDM, many nightclubs now have EDM-only nights to cater to the boom both to satisfy customers and to boost their venue's popularity. 

Tap Tap Productions, one of Seattle's leading entertainment company dedicated to their mission of spreading EDM culture all around the Pacific Northwest, partnered up with Volume Nightclub in the summer of 2012 to begin one of the current crazes: EDM Wednesdays at Volume. Volume, nestled in the Pioneer Square area of downtown Seattle, has always been a popular destination for dance lovers ages 18 and up (most Seattle clubs are 21+). The club, however, saw an extreme growth in their popularity once they added their Wednesday night special guest DJs and EDM themed events. 

On any given night, Volume would have about 300-450 guests in their venue, sometimes up to 600 guests on special weekends. But the fact that Wednesday is in the middle of the work week has never stopped new and old EDM lovers from going out to Volume. Their mid-week event, mostly publicized via social media and radio ads, has the highest attendance rate, sometimes even having to turn people down, which the club barely ever has to. 

EDM Wednesdays which began in August 2012 only retained about 400 or 500 guests in the beginning, but by mid-September when they began featuring more popularly known artists, more than about 900 people showed up. Their biggest headliner yet, Krewella, guest starred on September 12th where the wait outside the club wrapped all around the corner for as people stood for 3 hours, hoping to get in. Needless to say, many did not due to the club's small capacity. That did not stop music lovers to continue coming back every Wednesday. It is now one of Seattle EDM's staple weekly events, which now feature more nationally known artists as well as showcasing local talents to spread the joys of the music culture. 

By adding EDM-themed nights at clubs, many have seen a growth in their venue's popularity while spreading the love of EDM to newcomers and retaining the dedicated customers who are already hooked.  

Here is a list of nightclubs that feature special nights dedicated to EDM:

Contour
807 1st Avenue  Seattle, WA 98104
Launch Wednesdays every Wednesday

Neighbours
1509 Broadway  Seattle, WA 98122
The Ultimate Dance Party Fridays featuring c89.5's DJ Richard Dalton & DJ Skiddle

Q
1426 Broadway Seattle, WA 98122
This nightclub is dedicated strictly to electronic dance music so you can enjoy it every night!
*The grand opening of Q took place within the last month. To read more about this new venue click here.

Republiq
2946 1st Avenue South  Seattle, WA 98134
Electronik Wednesdayz every Wednesday

Trinity
111 Yesler Way  Seattle, WA 98104
Thursdays at Trinity with Cobra Crew, DJ Tre McClorran Guy, TIgerbeat
Famous Fridays hosted by DJ McClarron

Volume
172 South Washington Street  Seattle, WA 98104
18+ EDM Wednesdays featuring a new DJ every week

USC Event's Paradiso Festival, a first of its kind that began at the Gorge Amphitheater in George, Wash. this past summer.

Where Can I Listen to EDM?

Seattle has one of the only radio stations in the nation dedicated all to Electronic Dance Music. 

Visit http://www.c895.org/ to live stream the station and to find out more about their Listener Appreciation Dance Parties which are hosted all around the city!
Click here to read articles about the radio station published by Seattle PI and Seattle Times.

Not Only a Local Growth - A National Growth!

Just how popular is EDM, exactly? Well it's definitely a national phenomenon and Seattle just happens to be one of the leading cities for the craze. 

Here, EDM Snob shows us the statistics and graphs on how insane its growth has been. Many people would agree that EDM is the new Rock n' Roll for the new generation! 

Here are some facts from the site:

• Between January 2004 and June 2012, Engaged and Interested Listens and Plays (EILPs) of EDM rose from approximately 234 million to 842 million, a 260% increase.
• In 2010, 2011 and the first half of 2012, more people listened to EDM than in the previous six years combined.
• In 2004, nearly 90% of commercial radio stations played no EDM whatsoever. In 2012, only 24.5%omitted EDM completely.

Seattlite's Take on EDM

Seattlite's Take on EDM Scene

The success of EDM shows would be nothing without dedicated fans who help promote and attend the shows. Sophomore Seattle University student and long-time EDM lover, Nick Dimas, knows the scene all too well, almost always referring to this culture as his "home" and his EDM friends as "family".

He was first introduced to this culture in 2008 in Phoenix, Ariz. and has been immersed in it ever since. "I was always curious about [EDM culture]," with a childish laugh he continued, "it was a playground that I was fascinated with, so I gradually started playing in it!" Dimas knew he found a place that he needed to be at.

Four years later, he finds himself in a new city, listening to the same type of music, but said that the experience is much different here. The Arizona EDM scene to him seemed to have replicated a "SoCal vibe". Seattle on the other hand, he said, is much more individualistic and unique.

"Back in Arizona, I would see the same people over and over again every weekend. Here, every single event is so different, I get a chance to meet so many more people and enjoy a different atmosphere each time," he even said that the senses here - especially smell and taste - were very different.

With such positive comments to make about the Seattle EDM scene, Dimas is sure glad to see a growth in the culture he is so proudly a part of. He says he likes it because music is the most powerful thing that unites people. However, with growth comes some followers who are not in it for the right reasons: "I have to remind myself that each culture goes through this faze, and some people do it for the popularity. Hopefully the right people will stay and others leave or take them to a whole new level."

He likes to think of each musical note in EDM songs as a different memory. "Each note takes me back to certain memories," he said, "and that's the beautiful thing - I can live through entire lifetimes in one night just by listening to certain songs and having so many interactions with people who share the same love". Dimas truly shares his passion with this city and hopes to get his message across others jumping on the bandwagon.

Whether you attend because it's popular or because you enjoy it, you are bound to experience a whole new level of what a "musical event" means.

"To me, EDM becomes a culture instead of just a genre of music because it's the experiences that affect people and hopefully have people coming back for more. It's a portal of PLUR - which stands for Peace Love Unity Respect - and is the motto of this culture. Subconsciously, every human being is trying to find a place where we belong, and I believe that this scene is really welcoming to all types of people. If people are willing to open that portal to PLUR, they're here [in this scene] to stay." -- NICK DIMAS

Local EDM DJ: Hyperfunk

DJ Hyperfunk is one of USC Event's resident DJs. He always opens for internationally known artists who come to Seattle and have been heavily involved with the EDM scene for decades now. As an artist who has been here from the beginning and seeing the growth of the music scene, he had only positive comments about the Seattle EDM scene.

Noted: This interview was done by DList Magazine. To read the rest of the interview, please click here.

Q: What’s your involvement with USC?
USC Events has been pushing electronic music for so long, and I'm so grateful to be one of their staple local DJs. The company went from the upswing, where everybody was on-board with electronic music, to the downswing where everybody hated electronic music and thought it wasn’t cool. Now, it’s back and they’re in the right place and getting all the right artists. Having them in the city is amazing.

Q: How have you seen Seattle's EDM scene grow and evolve?
I got into it at a time when it was blowing up really big all over America. Then they had the big war on drugs and there was a huge EDM music scene crackdown. It used to be cool and then it became really underground. It wasn’t commercial at all, and tons of people didn’t go anymore...

I remember going to parties that were really well-promoted and would only have 100-200 people at them. Now, if you threw the exact same party, you’d have 600-1,000 people there, no matter what. There are so many people, today, who love electronic music.

Having people like David Guetta, Black Eyed Peas, Deadmau5 and Skrillex has helped the electronic music scene grow into the mainstream music culture. They’re getting on MTV, they’re getting on the VMAs. Daft Punk did a track with Kanye. Hip-hop, which was the "ir" music just a few years ago are actually helping make electronic music huge. 

Everybody is jumping on the electronic bandwagon, which is wonderful for the people who are already established as electronic artists, even local artists in their own cities, like here in Seattle.

Q: Do you think there’s anything that defines the Seattle EDM scene, anything that sets it apart?

I've been told by other artists and crowds everywhere I go that Seattle DJs play a lot harder. By that, I mean that we're a bit more upbeat and in-your-face. I think there's always been such an accepting musical culture in Seattle that audiences here are more open to different tempos and types of music. The crowds go wild when I play hard! After all, I've got to stay true to the title of electron dance music! 

Visit his Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/djhyperfunk

Listen to his music: http://soundcloud.com/hyperfunkseattle

Find DJ Hyperfunk at Trinity Nightclub spinning his tunes on some nights of the week!

The EDM scene on the rise -- Big Influence: USC Events

Electronic Dance Music has been around for almost two decades, and yet, its popularity just began to rise about two years ago. Artists who were never heard of are now common names known all over the world. As this craze drops is heavy bass influences all throughout our nation, Seattle's music scene got a makeover. A city always known to birth many famous musicians and musical festivals, this new era of music has become a huge success here in The Emerald City. 

One company we can heavily thank for that is USC Events. United States of Consciousness has been providing the Seattle music scene with the best Electronic Dance music since 1996 but wasn't until very recently that the concerts began to sell out and their business became much more demanding. 

One of their signature events is the annual Halloween concert called Freaknight Festival where about twenty local and national DJs perform over a period of seven hours at Seattle's WaMu Theater. 

"Just two years ago, I bought my ticket at the door of Freaknight an hour before the show started," said one dedicated USC events fan, "last year, I was safe buying my ticket about five days before the [same] event." 

Surprisingly, this year, Freaknight sold out 23 days prior to the event. This just goes to show how much more popular EDM shows are becoming. 

To find out more about events put on by USC Events as well as their photographs from past shows, please check out their website: http://www.uscevents.com/

Imagine going to your favorite musician's show. 

You're in the front row, waiting for them to take stage.

The technicians are vigorously setting up the set. 

There's no guitar, no bass, no drums, no piano.

But you hear screams from fans all around you as one of them spots the musicians coming onto stage.

Here he is; just one man and his MacBook laptop, ready for his concert. 

Welcome to the year 2012 where this is the norm. 

Not only that, but this is the most popular type of show nowadays.

Welcome to the world of Electronic Dance Music