Finnish electronic dance music is currently experiencing a strong upswing. Large EDM events are organized nowadays more than before. In addition, smaller gigs are held around Finland almost every day. The most popular Finnish artists in the field gather millions of listeners on Spotify every month.
The strong rise of electronic dance music is clearly visible, for example, in the program of Weekend, the largest Nordic festival in the field. A few years ago, Weekend's audience popularity was supported by domestic pop artists, but nowadays the event's repertoire is only techno, house, trance and other electronic dance music in its many different forms.
- Nowadays, our audience wants to listen to EDM, and we offer that to them as well. At the same time, in recent years we have clearly increased the share of domestic artists in our repertoire and we have wanted to support the entry of new artists into the market, says Atro Anttila, Weekend's Marketing Director and an EDM artist himself.
Luxonia Family, the biggest EDM collective in Finland, founded at the end of August, is also a good example of the growing popularity of domestic electronic dance music. It includes a total of 17 artists from the field and three background people from different parts of Finland. Luxonia Family artists have made music for numerous domestic and foreign record companies and have already been seen on the stages of many festivals and events.
- Luxonia wants to raise the profile of Finnish EDM and its artists in Finland and around the world. We have also seen the rise of EDM concretely. Last summer alone, a total of twelve of our artists performed at Weekend and its follow-up events. In addition, we organized two successful outdoor events in the center of Helsinki, and at the end of September, nine of our artists will take the stage of the Electric Carneval cruise heading to Tallinn, says Tomi Lindblom, Luxonia's artist manager, who has more than ten years of experience in e.g. as spokesperson for numerous festivals and artists in the industry.
The popularity of the special EDM cruise, Electric Carneval, which takes place on the stages of Tallinck, is clearly on the rise. Cruises are generally sold out. In addition, as the newest event concept in the industry, the Bass Boat charter boat trip organized for the first time last Saturday took place.
- Electric Carneval's special cruises have already been organized almost 30 times on ships departing from Helsinki and Turku. Their repertoire focuses solely on Finnish artists, who perform on the ship's two stages from 9 in the evening to 6 in the morning, says Heikki Liimatainen, the producer of the event. Liimatainen is an active machine music artist himself under the artist name Heikki L. He is also involved in the arrangements of numerous other electronic dance music events. Last July, for example, his company organized a special concert by Yotto, one of our country's most international electronic dance music artists, in the center of Helsinki.
The popularity of techno music has also been clearly growing in Finland. An example of this is the special techno festival The Vault, which will be held in Helsinki this coming weekend, September 6-7. Smaller techno events have been organized especially in Helsinki for a long time.
- The Vault is the biggest techno-specialized event I've organized. A few thousand techno music lovers are arriving at Suvilahti's Kattilahalli, and expectations are high, as our events are especially known for spectacular light shows and unique stage setups created by Top Stage, says Martin Karm of Soundvault, who is organizing the event, and who himself will take the stage at The Vault under his stage name Martin K4rma.
The most popular Finnish EDM artists gather a total of almost 30 million listeners on Spotify every month. The information appears from the list of TOP 30 Spotify listens of Finnish EDM producers maintained by the Luxonia collective.
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