Big room music is made to fill large venues like clubs, arenas, and festivals while bringing in a lot of revenue.

Definition

Big room is a commercial style of EDM made for big clubs, festivals, and arenas. Like pop music, it is designed for mass appeal in order to generate large profits for the artist. Because of this, big room music is frequently criticized for being uninspired and less creatively challenging.

Related terms include mainstream and mainstage. EDM is often used as a synonym for the highly commercialized big room sound, although EDM also refers to the broad spectrum of dance music including underground and less-commercial genres.

Explanation

The typical big room EDM song has a strong four-to-the-floor beat using a heavy kick and snare, a simplistic structure, vocals (with lyrics about dancing, partying, drinking, drugs, or love), several large buildups and big drops. Big room songs often rely on a very simple melody (such as Martin Garrix‘s “Animals” or Avicii’s “Levels“).

The term “big room” comes from dance clubs, where the most accessible or popular music is usually played in the biggest room of the club in order to fit in the most people. Some clubs offer multiple rooms with other DJs playing at the same time to accomodate customers with different musical tastes. The music in these smaller side rooms is likely to be less commercial and more underground, experimental, or genre-specific.

Big room artists include Tiesto, Martin Garrix, Avicii, David Guetta, Calvin Harris, Swedish House Mafia, and many of the most famous DJs and producers in the EDM scene.