I've heard a few songs that are called "dub-step" - why isn't is all called "Techno music" anymore? That's what it sounds like to me!

Yeah, I don't get what's so different about it. Then again, electronic music especially has always really, really enjoyed making up it's own subgenres that come and go with time.

A quick example. Wikipedia lists Trance as a subgenre of electronic music. Its subgenres are:

Acid, Balearic, Classic, Dream, Euro, Goa, Hardstyle, Neo, Progressive, Psychedelic, Tech, Uplifting, and Vocal

Now, if you go into Psychedelic Trance, that's even further differentiated into:

Psybreaks, Dark psytrance, Full on, Progressive psytrance, Psybient, Suomisaundi

I can't think of anything worse than listening to two bespectacled dudes wearing Akira shirts and/or tevas discussing the intricate differences between these.

Oh boy, of course there are huge differences in electronic music.
Dutch culture has alot of different parties, so you have alot of genres.

Dubstep http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubstep
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Electro http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electro_(music)
<iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/lhuqYgjp7PQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>


Hardstyle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardstyle
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Hardcore http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardcore_techno
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Of course there are loads more genres, same as in rock or metal really. However Hardcore remains my favorite, the sheer intensity of it and the wildest parties make it my number one choice.

I listen to quite a bit of electronic music, and I guess because I do I can differentiate genres. Dub Step to me sounds nothing like what people classify generally as techno. Just like Dark Wave, EBM, Synthpop, Future Trance, or anything else doesn't sound the same to me.

I don't fit your typical electronic listening to crowd. I don't wear Akira shirts, care much for anime, but I am bespectacled. And I won't jump down your throat if you can't differentiate. I couldn't for a long time.

I mostly take the attitude of "I like what I like" when it comes to Electronic music artists, I tend to not bother getting too hung up on genre specifics.

But I can assure you that I will never confuse Daft Punk with Underworld, Orbital with The Prodigy, Kraftwerk with Justice, or BT with Skrillex.

And "Akira" gets no love in this house.

That's because he produces "Terror"

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All sounds the same to me too.

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There are two key components to Dubstep: wub and wub.

To kids really like that Skrillex shit? I tried to listen to some of his stuff, it's like the Nickleback of electronica: dumbed down, made more obvious and annoying as hell.

I heard someone describe dubstep as an over-usage of serrated bass drops. That, and a whole lot of wub wub wubbing. That's dubstep.

I don't mind a few tracks by Skrillex. Summit is chill; good to listen to at work.

it's called 'brostep' not dubstep

I'm forgetting the DJ name (guess he wasn't that memorable) but the one that opened for Deadmau5, he was dropping songs so sequentially that it didn't even sound like he was actually mixing, in the wrong hands dubstep seems like dance music for people who suffer from ADD.

I started listening to dubstep and really enjoy it, though I really cant tell one genre of electrinica from the other. Ive also been listening to pretty lights music non stop for the last few weeks.

I still only really know of one song classified as dubstep and that's because of a snowboard video. The classification of its subgenre still baffles me but I assume the bass drops have a lot to do with it, but then it seems like there'd be a genre within the genre for that too.

With electronic music it is almost impossible to separate the genre from the time it was introduced. That's why many of the genres overlap is because one was born out of the other. PsyTrance sprung from Goa Trance and became the much broader genre name. Many of these names are interchangeable.

What you read and hear about is just the tip of the iceberg. There are net labels with 100's of free CD. I am betting there are millions of Soundcloud.com clips (youtube for audio). These people just want want to be heard. I can spend hours browsing soundcloud.com and it's free.

Also BandCamp.com is huge for small time electronic artists selling their albums. It's one of the few places that sell albums as a flac (lossless) download.

A "drop" occurs in most types of electronic music. It's a build up to when you want the crowd to go crazy so to speak. I still can't understand why some people can't tell the difference of the genres, to me it seems like you can't tell the difference between The Beatles and Metallica.

I get all the other primary genres, but the primary definition I've seen for Dub-step makes it seem like there would be subgenres within the Dub-step genre itself. All I was getting at.

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If you watch one single video about Dubstep, this is it:
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First and only time I have heard dub step is this clip.