On a pure headcount basis, for talent Britain appears to beat America hands down. Of course, it doesn’t there is so much “undiscovered” talent in America. As a Brit’ abroad, I regularly get asked why either people or a certain style or culture seems to catch on and then move over to the US. Most recently this came up on Greg Wilsons’ blog in relation to electronic dance music and here is the answer I gave. It does though, in my opinion, apply to almost everything.

America is a very different place from the movies, and a massive country compared to the UK. Leaving aside the racial aspect to dance music, and from the 1970’s the fact it was heavily tied to the gay scene; and the disco is dead revolt of the late 1970’s, all of which made it much harder for dance music to get heard.

America is a culture, where the country is massive and they only way to succeed, largely, is to associate with established clubs/cults. You dress, think and act like them, and to succeed, you are then the best amongst them. This applys in across both geographic and societal barriers.

There are almost no national media outlets, even today, those that are have to pander to the masses, or fail. People, music etc. that are out of the norm’ are mostly excluded, even the extremes are pretty normal and/or manufactured rather than organic. News travels slow.

Compare that to the UK, the country is VERY (geographically) small, people live next to each other, on top of each other, in close proximity.  All media, for the most part is national, news travels fast. Something that catches on in the UK only has to be 1/100th as popular as the USA, or even less.

In the UK, different is celebrated, not shunned. Add to that a more tolerant sexual society, a less racial society, and a more progressive music industry where change makes money, not controlling interests protecting their investment. Dance music came along, it caught on with a small crowd, it was celebrated, successful and grew in the UK, after a while each generation moves on, my daughter(29) now bemoans the state of dance music, much as I did back in the 1980’s, but it will carry on.

The same thing happens here in the USA, but they are complaining and comparing the AOR music from 1980/90’s while EDM has captured the youth market because the music business no longer controls the distribution channels in the same way.