Armin van Buuren Speaks With CNN

After all the publicity for Ultra Music Festival has finally died down this year, there’s only one thing you can take away from all the coverage. Dance music is finally big in the United States. For all dance music fans, this has its ups and downs, but I think everyone can agree that this means the US will have more tours and shows from the genre’s biggest artists. And hopefully, this will also translate into more interest for up-and-coming artists as well.

With that said, it’s great to see a national media outlet as large as CNN cover Ultra Music Festival like the proper fixture of the festival circuit it’s become. To kick off the interview series, CNN entertainment correspondents sat down with Swedish House Mafia and Tiësto earlier this week releasing those videos this morning. Although each are heavy-hitters in their own right, neither had quite the impact at Ultra this year as Armin van Buuren, the venerable A State of Trance host and headliner of the festival’s third night.

Armin van Buuren’s Interview with CNN

In the interview, Armin attributes American’s seemingly newfound interest in dance music to radio play. “Popular radio like daytime radio, has picked up on a lot of EDM records. So instead of hearing pop music or rock music, dance music is the new daytime radio thing,” Armin said. “What you’ve seen in recent times is that the mainstream crowd has sort of discovered electronic dance music. Which is great. Obviously there’s a new young generation–kids that are 18, 19 years old–and their rock music, or their hip-hop is EDM.”

Overall, Armin described all of this as beneficial to dance music as a whole. In the US, this means more sponsorships and opportunities for much bigger shows and events are on the way. If you’ve been to Las Vegas at all in the past 18 months, then you can definitely relate to what he’s saying. Marquee, XS, Lavo, and TAO have together created a whole new world for dance music on the strip with some of the country’s most elaborate and immersive shows.

Not surprisingly, Armin also credits iTunes and other internet platforms like SoundCloud with allowing artists to get music into their fans ears quicker and easier than ever. This combined with the rest of festival circuit has certainly pushed dance music to center stage in the US.

Check out video and pictures from last year’s Armin van Buuren performance at Relentless Beach.