Where’s the Drop? Identifying EDM Trends Through Deadmau5
Joel Zimmerman's musical alias Deadmau5 is among the most recognizable names in all of Electronic Dance Music. Frequently spotted wearing his iconic, enormous mouse head at the world's biggest festivals, Deadmau5's prolific output reaches millions of monthly listeners, with early hit "Ghosts 'n' Stuff" surpassing 100 million streams and album 4x4=12 earning platinum certification. Deadmau5 has been nominated for six Grammy awards and was named "Best Progressive House Artist" and "Most influential, forward-thinking and relevant person" by prominent online electronic music store Beatport as early as 2008. Zimmerman's prominence has led him to teach an electronic music production course for MasterClass, a platform reserved for luminaries in their respective fields, and in 2019, he realized a decade-long goal of scoring a feature film by composing the soundtrack for Jonas Åkerlund's Netflix film Polar.
These milestones make Deadmau5 an exemplar of modern EDM stardom and an excellent case study, but more than that, his career intersects with multiple trends that have come to define the genre as a whole as it grows in its status as a major music force worldwide.
Published in the anthology “The Evolution of Electronic Dance Music” by Bloomsbury Academic. More details here.