Evan
Arnay,
Capstone
Project
ABOUT
ABOUT ME
Hi, my name’s Evan Arnay and I am a senior at Rutgers University, where I am one semester away from graduating with a degree in Strategic Public Communications and Public Relations. Throughout my life as early back as I can remember I have been a passionate fan of music, constantly listening to and discovering new music from different genres. Some of my favorite artists from over the years include The Beatles, The Police, Led Zeppelin, Blink-182, A Day to Remember, Biggie Smalls, Drake, and Kendrick Lamar. But around the time I graduated from high school, I, like millions of other individuals around that age, became an avid fan of Electronic Dance Music. These past six years I have been exploring the various sub-genres within EDM and in the process, have become an active member in both the on and offline EDM communities. I hope to someday work in the live entertainment sector of the music industry, working with the planning, setting-up, and execution of electronic dance music festivals. With the value of this industry being at an all time high, and my personal interest in this industry being equally as high, I thought it would be beneficial as well as interesting to conduct my research on the consumers who helped fuel EDM's recent success, and then use my findings to develop potential ways to market more effectively to this demographic.
I began my research looking for previous texts and studies pertaining to EDM's fans, culture, and recent rise in popularity. Much of what I found reinforced many notions I previously held myself. For example, the vast majority of EDM fans would agree with statements such as, "Its created a culture bigger than itself, its a huge part of my life, its a defining aspect of this generation, and I feel connected with the music on a deeper, emotional level." There was also much information I only recently discovered through the process of my secondary research, like EDM fans are considerably more active on twitter than average users or fans of other music genres. The insight provided by the literature gave me with a great deal of valuable content to be used in answering my overall research question: how can EDM be better monetized? However, to confirm certain statements made in the literature, as well as to gain further insight into the mind of an EDM fan, I conducted a survey on twenty members of my Greek life organization who regularly listen to EDM, like myself, and asked them questions related to social media habits, artists, and festivals. The responses ended up confirming the claims made in the literature as well as revealed further, useful information about EDM fandom. The final result of my overall research allowed me to draw three conclusions about how EDM can be better marketed to consumers in order to increase revenue.