Baauer Makes EDM History With #1 Song On The Billboard Charts

A few weeks ago at the end of January 2013, serious questions were raised about the long term popularity of Trap Music. DJ Carnage, who had the biggest trap hit up to that point with his “Spaceman Festival Trap Remix”, advised aspiring producers to have versatile skills and be more than a one-trick-pony with trap beats. At the same time, he expressed that trap was essentially a fad and it wouldn’t last much longer.

Just a couple weeks later, questions about Trap music were answered with the nationwide explosion of Baauer’s “Harlem Shake”. Sure, the song’s rise to popularity was mainly because of the viral gimmick videos. But now that the dust has settled on making the videos, everyone in America is still purchasing and listening to the song.

The Billboard Hot 100 Chart – the nation’s top songs regardless of genre – is ranked based on a combo of digital downloads, physical singles sales, online radio streaming (Pandora, Spotify), and the newest measurable of YouTube streaming data. “Harlem Shake” has dominated all of these measurements since mid-February and is currently the #1 song for the 2^nd week in a row.

This is historic news, considering highly marketed EDM artists such as Skrillex, Avicii, David Guetta, and Swedish House Mafia have not achieved the #1 song in the U.S. even one time. Even more staggering is that the first EDM song to take the #1 spot wasn’t from sub-genres of House or Dubstep, but from the least expected sub-genre of Trap. Also consider that an instrumental song, with essentially no lyrics or verses, was able to eclipse all other songs, and this becomes almost unthinkable.

Rather than worrying about EDM being too mainstream, this moment should make all EDM fans proud. The success of “Harlem Shake” gives validation that the EDM movement is here and now, and that the boundaries for the future of EDM are limitless.

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