Electronic music

Electronic music is a genre built primarily around electronic instruments and technology, such as synthesizers, drum machines, and samplers, rather than traditional acoustic instruments. Its defining characteristics are an electronically shaped sound and an unusually wide stylistic range, covering everything from calm, textural ambient music to high-energy dance genres.

Electronic music spans dozens of subgenres, generally falling into two broad camps: dance-floor styles like house, techno, dubstep, and trance, and more atmospheric, non-dance styles like ambient. Within Epidemic Sound's catalog specifically, that breadth also includes big room house, melodic techno, tech house, and future bass, each defined mainly by tempo, rhythm structure, and mood.

Electronic music is produced primarily with synthesizers, drum machines, and samplers, along with digital audio workstations that let producers sequence, layer, and manipulate sound entirely in software. Many producers also use MIDI controllers and, increasingly, AI-assisted production tools, but the common thread across every subgenre is that the sound is generated or shaped electronically rather than played on acoustic instruments.

Not exactly. Electronic music is the broad genre for anything made primarily with electronic instruments and technology, spanning ambient, experimental, and dance-oriented styles alike. EDM (Electronic Dance Music) is a narrower, dance-floor-focused subgenre within that umbrella, built around festival-ready drops and hooks, that became a mainstream marketing term in the early 2010s. All EDM is electronic music, but not all electronic music is EDM.

The same logic applies to techno: it's one specific electronic subgenre, not a synonym for the genre as a whole.

If you're after that festival-style, dance-floor-first sound specifically, browse our EDM tracks.

Yes. An Epidemic Sound subscription clears every electronic track in the catalog for commercial use, including monetized platforms like YouTube and paid advertising. Tracks stay cleared for content published while your subscription is active, even after you cancel, so there's no separate rights clearance or royalty payment to arrange.