But to take your insight to the next logic step...where is all this innovation and creativity? If the means raised raised the tide, where is the result? The trend, again following your observation, should be a continuous spiral up? Now should be The Pinacle of the craft. The most golden of all golden ages. It should be the late 80s to mid 90s endless stream of "WTF was that?" on steroids.
I still know DJs and working high profile producers and to the best of my knowledge none of them is seeing that.
What are we all missing? Where should we be looking? (That's not sarcasm, like the opening line. It's a serious inquiry. Tia)
If you’re aware of the evolution and still connected to the music scene, I am not sure how you could look at the state of electronic music today and not find a slew of artists and albums released in the past twenty years that at the very least pique your interest. Just in the Detroit milieu (since you mentioned Robert Hood in another comment), artists continue to innovate on the Detroit minimal sound (Omar S, Theo Parrish, Kyle Hall, among others), electro (DJ Stingray, The Other People Place). Admittedly some of these were also releasing music in the 90s…but they didn’t stop then.
Since 2000, we’ve seen the creation of dubstep and footwork (RIP DJ Rashad), and then seen the sounds created in those genres incorporated into the jungle/drum and bass sound among others to create a very fun and interesting array of artists (check out the Astrophonica or Hyperdub labels if you haven’t)
To give you an overview of the entirety of innovative and interesting music that has come out recently would be near impossible because there is _so_ much of it, I don’t know all of it, and I’m nowhere near a musicologist. But even not having sold music for any years of my life, the idea that there is not interesting electronic dance music being released today is laughable. Where should you be looking? Everywhere. Any sound you have ever been interested in probably has people releasing new and interesting music in it all the time. Popularity waxes and wanes but people don’t stop creating.
Maybe go back and reread my comment? Keep in mind it's based on 17 yrs as a shoppe owner, in addition to the years prior and since as a dedicated music aficionado. It's not a perspective you'll get often, as it's not a life many have lived ;)
If you're just on your computer in your room, making beats and perhaps not even moving to them because to you it seems trivial and all about the marketing, you might be glossing over a fundamental part of the music. Seeing what moves an actual dance floor full of real people is important feedback.
Dancing or not, the music is still music and it has to stand on its own, at least in the context of its peers.
When something is cheap and easy to produce and release, there is an overabundance. That glut clogs up the environment (read: the haystack buries the golden needles). Plastic seemed like a great idea at first but then we've (kinda) come to realize cheap and easy ain't such a good thing ;)
From 1990 to 2007, I owned a (vinyl) record store (B&M then ecomm) that catered to DJs. I got to listen to quite a bit of "dance music". The early, mid, and even late 90s was jammed packed with creativity and innovative sounds.
Eventually things changed (as Ableton and similar became popular). More and more tracks were "half baked". As you noted, workable / good enough, but the extra time to create magic was not being invested. As digitl came along, it got worse because non-vinyl releases lowered the bar further. In a addition that noise, that glut made the good stuff hard to find.
I'm not a snob. Taking anything more accessible is generally a positive. That said, for "dance music" too easy cause problems. The higher bar of the 90s was a form of quality control. If you invested in gear, you generally did your best to get the most out of it. The culture was quality. Then ease and a lower investment bar put the emphasis on quantity.