How The Party Started: An Interactive 'Auxploration'

EDM is a £4 billion global industry as reported by the International Music Summit. It’s huge rise in the last 5 years has been staggering and fandom surrounding the culture is something that no one could have expected. Artists like David Guetta, Avicii, Calvin Harris and Hardwell have brought a new meaning to the phrase ‘Superstar DJ’ and according to Billboard Magazine, “Hardwell in particular quadrupled the fans he added per day year-over-year…Per Music Metric data, Hardwell saw as many as 70,000 new fans on social-media a day during Ultra [Music Festival] 2014.”

But where did ‘EDM’ as it’s widely known today come from? How The Party Started is an interactive ‘auxploration’ of exactly that, it maps the past, present and future of Electronic Dance Music and shows those navigating the site a history of more than just the current phenomenon of EDM. It describes the history of House, Techno, Drum & Bass and more, it plays the music of over 100 artists, introducing you to new sounds and has comments from key influencers like Nice n Ripe Records affiliate Jeremy Sylvester, Trance artist Markus Schulz and more acquired specifically for the project.

How The Party Started aims to highlight the many genres that helped slingshot EDM into the limelight, the many artists of varying styles that perhaps provided inspiration and the plethora of sounds that culminated in what we hear in EDM today.

“I am in an incredibly privileged position to help people connect worldwide through the love of music and melodies. When you receive correspondence from a fan who says that my productions or DJ sets has helped inspire them, aid them through difficult periods, or indeed changed their lives; it is incredibly gratifying and humbling. That to me is what trance is all about. Uniting us all.” Markus Schulz for How The Party Started.

“One of the things I love most about techno is how much room there is to maneuver within what’s generally considered a fairly rigid framework.” Tayyab Amin (contributor at Truants, Pitchfork, FACT and more) for How The Party Started.

This is by no means a complete history. We understand that music is subjective, that there are many genres and artist that are not yet included, and even artists that fans will argue fall within a different genre type but we aim to emphasize more than genre debate. We aim to chart the development of a cultural movement called EDM and shine some much needed light on the music that helped it to become the musical powerhouse it is today. You can access How the partystarted with the following link: http://www.howthepartystarted.com/