the commercialisation of dance culture

this is slightly off topic but still a very interesing article posted on inthemix.com.au called "Culture: Marketing and the death of dance culture?". I'll quote one section which i found interesting and relevant:

"Call me jaded, but I do remember a time when people didn’t even dance facing the DJ. When clubs barely advertised who was playing, and if they did, most people didn’t really know who they were anyway. When the most common way of communicating a favourite tune was by humming it. When the music was the vehicle, but the people were the engine. When it wasn’t so much of a business. The easy thing to do is to blame the promoters, or the DJs. It’s an easy target, however all these guys (and not all of them) are guilty of is being led by the desire to be revered for doing something they love; a fairly natural human motivation. No, the true villains of this piece are the marketeers.

There was a time when dance culture was raw, and unknown, and undefinable, and a social nuisance. Dance refused to be pigeonholed. It wasn’t punk and it wasn’t rock; it wasn’t based on aggression or disillusionment; and it wasn’t anything anyone could package for sale. It was a culture defined not by the record labels or MTV, but rather by those who inhabited it. It was something very alien and something that those outside it found difficult to comprehend. Fuelled by the shocking enthusiasm of those within (and, no doubt, by the escapist properties of Ecstasy), it grew at a rather impressive rate."

the mention of the "most common way of communicating a favourite tune was by humming it" is particularly interesting. This refers (i think) to two aspects that made dance music hard to access in this period (presumably circa early 90's): firstly the uncommerical nature of the music (as this article discusses) and also the availability of technology to make the music accessable. the accessability of music has increased enormously due to the advent of file sharing, and also PC's and mp3 players that make this medium even more user friendly.