What do we really know about the effects of screen time on mental health?

http://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2013/aug/29/screen-time-mental-health-children
Pete Etchells
A recent briefing from Public Health England warns that too much screen time is causing emotional problems in children. But is it that simple?



Public Health England this week announced that too much time in front of TV and computer screens is causing increasing psychological problems, such as depression and anxiety, in children. The report, which can be found here, suggests that the amount of time spent playing computergames was negatively associated with wellbeing in children – in other words, their general mental and physical health, resilience and the extent to which they are happy or worry about different aspects of their lives. The effects, particularly on mental health, were most pronounced for those children who spent more than four hours a day using some sort of screen-based technology.

While this sounds all doom and gloom, there are some caveats that need to be taken into account. The briefing was released to coincide with theChange4life campaign, and isn't a piece of peer-reviewed, scientific research. In its discussion of screen time, it cites data from other reports, for example, commissioned for the Department of Health that are themselves secondary analyses of existing data sets, such as theMillennium Cohort Study. If you have a read of these reports, it's really difficult to get a sense of what they did and didn't control for in looking at the effects of playing video games or watching TV.

But it's worth pointing out that the PHE briefing starts off with a very clear outline of the limitations of their research – perhaps the most important being that it's not possible to establish causal links from most of the studies involved. In other words, when a study says that 'X is associated with Y', it doesn't mean that 'X causes Y', which is how it can often be interpreted. It could also mean 'Y causes X', or maybe some other factor is having an effect on both.

So it's a shame when you see headlines such as the Independent's"Overload of screen time causes depression in children", or the Daily Mail's "TV is making children unhappy" – the study didn't say anything like this at all.

But what do we actually know about the effects of screen time on childhood development? It's actually a really tough question to answer, in part because "screen time" is a pretty rubbish concept. It takes into account the use of anything that has a screen – TVs, mobile phones, games consoles and tablets. In a sense, it's easy to see how it's a compelling measure to use: it's a simple idea that everyone can easily relate to. The trouble is, it doesn't really do justice to the sheer diversity of content that screen-based technology can provide. For instance, two hours of watching Teletubbies is probably going to affect our behavior in a completely different way to playing Halo for a couple of hours (although it's questionable which one will do the more damage).

With this issue in mind, what does recent scientific evidence in this area look like? In March, researchers at the Public Health Sciences Unit in Glasgow published data that also came from the Millennium Cohort Study (although it wasn't cited in the PHE briefing), which looked at whether watching TV or playing video games at aged 5 was associated with behavioural or psychological problems at age 7. They controlled for a large number of factors that could potentially impact on their results – things like health, family socioeconomic status, frequency of parent-child activities, and a measure of chaos in the household.

The results showed that when considering screen time on its own, there were associations between the amount of time spent at a screen and all of the problems they looked at – hyperactivity, conduct disorder, peer relationship problems, and so on. However, these associations all but disappeared once the confounding factors mentioned above were included. The remaining significant association was between viewing TV for more than three hours per day and conduct disorder.

Obviously, one study doesn't tell the whole story – for instance, we know that the amount of time spent watching TV is linked to poorer physical health. But we also know that there is – or should be – a distinction between passive and active screen time. Along these lines, a systematic review from 2010 pointed out that active video games actually promote light-to-moderate physical activity in children.

As it stands though, research into the long-term effects of screen time is still relatively young, so we don't yet know what effects playing video games, using computers, or watching TV has on childhood development.

In releasing the briefing alongside the change4life campaign, the PHE is trying to encourage people to take up a more active lifestyle, swapping the car for bikes or walking, limiting screen time and cutting down on unhealthy snacks in favour of healthier foods. These are all great ideas, but it seems that the best way to stay healthy is to change all of these things, not just one.

In the same way, we must be wary of looking at the effects of screen time in isolation from the myriad factors in the wider home environment that could be impacting on childhood behavioural development.

Coffee: yes or no

Caffeine may help in some cases of fatty liver disease

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/health/caffeine-may-help-in-some/779522.html

An international team of researchers, led by Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School and the Duke University School of Medicine, has suggested that increased caffeine may help prevent and protect against non-alcoholic fatty liver disease 

SINGAPORE: An international team of researchers, led by Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School (Duke-NUS) and the Duke University School of Medicine, has suggested that increased caffeine intake may reduce fatty liver in people with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).

Using cell culture and mouse models, the team - headed by Associate Professor Paul Yen and Dr Rohit Sinha - observed that caffeine stimulates the metabolisation of lipids stored in liver cells and decreases the fatty liver of mice that were fed a high fat diet.

A news release issued by Duke-NUS on Friday said that the findings suggest that a caffeine intake of about four cups of coffee or tea a day may help prevent and protect against the progression of NAFLD in humans.

The statement also said that worldwide, 70 per cent of people diagnosed with diabetes and obesity have NAFLD, the major cause of fatty liver not due to excessive alcohol consumption.

Currently, it is estimated that 30 per cent of American adults have this condition and its prevalence is rising in Singapore.

There are no effective treatments for NAFLD except diet and exercise.

The team hopes that the research could lead to the development of caffeine-like drugs without the side effects related to caffeine while retaining its therapeutic effects on the liver.

The findings are due to be published in the September issue of the journal Hepatology.

The study was supported by funding from Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and Research; the Ministry of Health; and the Ministry of Education. 

Death by coffee: Why that caffeine boost could be killing you

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/diet/332700/Death-by-coffee-Why-that-caffeine-boost-could-be-killing-you

That morning latte and afternoon cappuccino could be shortening your life, warn boffins

DRINKING more than four cups of coffee a day could be shortening your life.

Younger people in particular should avoid heavy coffee drinking, investigators warned.

Research found the risk of death from all causes rose by more than 50% for coffee lovers younger than 55 who drank more than 28 cups a week.

Dr Carl Lavie, from Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans, said: “There continues to be considerable debate about the health effects of coffee.”

Did evolution happen in a rapid burst? Ancient fossils the size of sand grains could give us an incredible insight into our origins

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2389820/Planktonic-foraminifera-Ancient-fossils-size-sand-grains-insight-evolution.html
ELLIE ZOLFAGHARIFARD


Planktonic foraminifera are aquatic creatures which are often less than a millimetre in size and resemble grains of sand to the naked eye

Microscopic fossils of aquatic creatures, dating back hundreds of millions of years, could help clear up mysteries about how we evolved. 

Evolutionary ecologist, Dr Thomas Ezard, is undertaking an extensive study of planktonic foraminifera - aquatic creatures which are often less than a millimetre in size and resemble grains of sand to the naked eye. 

Sediment made up from shells of these single-celled creatures are thought to make up nearly 70 per cent of the sea floor in some parts of the world's oceans.

‘The major advantage of using planktonic foraminifera to understand evolution is their amazing, abundant fossil record,’ Dr Ezard told MailOnline

.‘Once dead, individuals sink through the ocean to the seabed. On the seabed, they accumulate on top of one another. 

‘Drilling into the seabed then recovers thousands of individuals in a sequence of what each species looked like during its history. This sequence is evolution in action.’

Sediment made up from shells of these single-celled creatures are thought to make up nearly 70 per cent of the sea floor in some parts of the world's oceans


Dr Thomas Ezard from Southampton University is undertaking an extensive study of planktonic foraminifera to find out if their shells contain useful evidence about our evolution

A new paper by Dr Ezard, published in the journal Methods in Ecology & Evolution, re-opens the debate on the best way to understand how new species come into existence.

The debate concerns whether fossil records such as those of the planktonic foraminifera, contain useful evidence about genetic and molecular evolution.

The theory supported by Dr Ezard and his colleagues at the University of Southampton is controversial.

They believe that speciation - the biological processes by which a new species is formed - is associated with a rapid burst of genetic evolution. 

This rapid burst, claims Dr Ezard, might help isolate the new species from its ancestor.

Dr Ezard believes that speciation - the biological processes by which a new species is formed - is associated with a rapid burst of genetic evolution. This rapid burst helps isolate the new species from its ancestor

‘This is controversial because it is very difficult to detect these new species coming into existence accurately without the fossil data,’ said Dr Ezard.

‘It is more commonly determined from assumptions made from the study of species alive today using molecular evidence.’

‘We support this theory by showing a relationship between two independent lines of evidence: the fossil and the genetic data,’ he added.

Molecular evolution traditionally uses evidence from species that are alive today to determine what their ancestors may have looked like. 

Rather than providing a bursts of change, theories of molecular evolution traditionally focused on gradual molecular change over time. 

The idea of speciation-related bursts was first put forward by Mark Pagel and colleagues at the University of Reading during the mid-2000s, who suggested that time was, on its own, insufficient to explain the molecular diversity of life on Earth.

Molecular evolution traditionally uses evidence from species that are alive today to determine what their ancestors may have looked like

The new research promotes the importance of using fossil records in conjunction with the molecular models

The new research promotes the importance of using fossil records in conjunction with the molecular models.

‘Because planktonic foraminifera have been around for many millions of years and rocks containing groups of their species can be dated precisely, we can use their fossils to see evidence of how species evolve over time. 

Dr Ezard’s intention is that the use of both types of data will become widespread in the future study of evolution.

‘One classic limiting factor for studying evolution with fossils is the lack of genetic data,’ he said.

‘We related fossil evidence and all the available genetic data for the foraminifera. The genetic data is limited to a single gene at present, but work is ongoing to expand this.’

Dr Ezard will conduct this research in the Centre for Biological Sciences at the University of Southampton, in close collaboration with researchers from Ocean and Earth Science at the National Oceanography Centre. 

Dr Ezard will conduct this research in the Centre for Biological Sciences at the University of Southampton, in close collaboration with researchers from Ocean and Earth Science at the National Oceanography Centre

Do all middle class parents have spoilt kids?

http://www.dailylife.com.au/life-and-love/parenting-and-families/do-all-middle-class-parents-have-spoilt-kids-20130812-2rrly.html

Sarah Macdonald

As I eagerly await the new Chris Lilley dramaon the ABC I’ve been thinking a lot about Ja’mie King.  Ja’mie is Lilley’s drag teenage character that does a one term exchange from her posh private school of plenty to what she calls a ‘povo bogan school’ - Summer Heights High.  In the first episode, Ja’mie marvels at the ‘cute disabled, the fuglies, scanky bogans and sluts’.  I especially love the scene when she begs the kids not to be intimidated ‘just cos I’m rich doesn’t mean I’m a bitch’

Chris Lilley’s cleverness is in creating characters that are so familiar that our belly laugh comes with a knife between the ribs.   For me, Ja’mie’s awareness of her privilege in all the wrong ways is particularly painful. She illustrates a ‘middle class problem’ that is actually worth thinking about.

Namely, how do we ensure kids don’t become ungrateful wretches at best and spoilt brats at worst?

I often laugh at the tired, grumpy complaints from my children such as wanting a rabbit, or a motorised scooter but sometimes I am pushed over the edge to panic.  A few weeks ago my son came home and said ‘Why don’t we have an upstairs? Everyone else has got a two-story house. I want a teenage retreat’.  I told him that he was an ungrateful little wretch who had no idea how lucky he was and he could be living on the streets or in a garbage dump and then forgot all about it.

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Until the next day when my daughter arose soft and flushed from sleep her hair in a wild mess, her body still so warm and soft.  As I stepped towards her for a hug she shrieked ‘is that my egg? That’s not hard-boiled! I HATE SOFT EGGS!’  Admittedly, she wasn’t well but my sympathy was lost in a rant about not being her slave, and that there were starving children all over the world who’d kill for that egg.

Many of us lucky enough to have food, shelter and most mod cons are aware of our privilege.  Or should be.  Hence we search for a path to ensure our children are too.  When they behave like entitled little so and sos we question if we cater for too many whims, pay them too much pocket money and are not making them aware of their good fortune.

I know about child egocentrism – small children are simply not able to understand or appreciate a viewpoint different to their own.  My university psychology thesis actually studied how it reduces over time but is still active in adolescents.  Yet as a parent I still insist on trying to rail against egocentrism and hasten my children’s development of understanding and perspective.  Not just because I don't want them to be spoilt and revolting. Not just because I want them to be grateful.  But also because I want them to be effective adults.  Privilege breeds complacency and that is the enemy to the development of drive and resilience – vital factors in life.  I also want them to be citizens who care for others.  As I age I’m understanding more and more that privilege has its limits.  It can’t buy complete safety and it can’t shield you from loss, grief, illness and despair.  That’s something I feel they need to realise gradually – if we live in a bubble it hurts more when it bursts from a great height.

There are many ways of building perspective in children but sometimes the most obvious and easiest are not the best.  We’ve all seen kids quickly throw away that Christmas card that declares they’ve donated a goat to Timor.  But I’ve seen worse.  I’ve seen Ja’mie appear in my home.  Some years ago my then five year old came home from a neighbour’s asking ‘Can we buy an African girl from the internet?’ Our neighbours sponsor children but her understanding reminded me so much of Ja’mie rating her sponsored children in hotness, that I recoiled.  While we actually contribute to a very different ongoing aid program in India, I realise we need to talk carefully about how the money is spent and why it is done.  Yet as I discuss helping a community with education, clean water and engineering projects, I wonder how much sinks in.

I know other parents who visit an orphanage while holidaying in Bali.  I know teenagers who attend high schools where they can pay to travel to Nepal, or have build huts or water wells in Africa. Many American schools require up to 20 hours a year community service for graduation.  All terrific but, of course such programs also raise questions of ‘aid tourism’ and the attitude of those involved.  When students adopt patronising feelings of sympathy and feel they sweep in as rescuers they are not always achieving understanding. 

In an integrated community children build friendships with children of diverse backgrounds.  That’s as helpful as anything else.  I don’t want to get this bogged down into the private versus public school debate here because I acknowledge that diversity is not always possible in certain suburban bubbles of Australia.

One of the world’s wealthiest men Warren Buffet has said “wealthy parents should leave their children with enough money to do anything they want but not so much that they are doomed to do nothing at all.”  While I won’t have to every worry about having too much money I still consider my children lucky.  But I want them to be plucky as well. So I make sure they see me struggle to pay off a credit card bill, or not buy things I want.  And I make sure they visit friends so poor and hard done by that they don’t have a teenage retreat or, God forbid, whose boiled eggs are too soft.

In the meantime I’m hoping to help them acknowledge privilege and I’m interested in your suggestions.  Because if Ja’mie moves off the television and into my life, I’m moving out.

The new age of algorithms: How it affects the way we live

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2013/0811/The-new-age-of-algorithms-How-it-affects-the-way-we-live
Robert A. Lehrman
'Big Data' impacts how we work, elect our presidents, and play tennis. It also affects the way we're watched.

WASHINGTON

They work a few hundred yards from one of the Library of Congress's most prized possessions: a vellum copy of the Bible printed in 1455 by Johann Gutenberg, inventor of movable type. But almost six centuries later, Jane Mandelbaum and Thomas Youkel have a task that would confound Gutenberg.

The researchers are leading a team that is archiving almost every tweet sent out since Twitter began in 2006. A half-billion tweets stream into library computers each day.

Their question: How can they store the tweets so they become a meaningful tool for researchers – a sort of digital transcript providing insights into the daily flow of history?

Thousands of miles away, Arnold Lund has a different task. Mr. Lund manages a lab for General Electric, a company that still displays the desk of its founder,Thomas Edison, at its research headquarters in Niskayuna, N.Y. But even Edison might need training before he'd grasp all the dimensions of one of Lund's projects. Lund's question:

How can power companies harness the power of data to predict which trees will fall on power lines during a storm – thus allowing them to prevent blackouts before they happen?

The work of Richard Rothman, a professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, is more fundamental: to save lives. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta predicts flu outbreaks, once it examines reports from hospitals. That takes weeks. In 2009, a study seemed to suggest researchers could predict outbreaks much faster by analyzing millions ofGoogle searches.

Spikes in queries like "My kid is sick" signaled a flu outbreak before the CDC knew there would be one. That posed a new question for Dr. Rothman and his colleague Andrea Dugas:

Could Google help predict influenza outbreaks in time to allow hospitals like the one at Johns Hopkins to get ready?

They ask different questions. But all five of these researchers form part of the new world of Big Data – a phenomenon that may, for better or worse, revolutionize every facet of life, culture, and, well, even the planet. From curbing urban crime to calculating the effectiveness of a tennis player's backhand, people are now gathering and analyzing vast amounts of data to predict human behaviors, solve problems, identify shopping habits, thwart terrorists – everything but foretell which Hollywood scripts might make blockbusters. Actually, there's a company poring through numbers to do that, too.

Just four years ago, someone wanted to do a Wikipedia entry on Big Data. Wikipedia said no; there was nothing special about the term – it just combined two common words. Today, Big Data seems everywhere, ushering in what advocates consider some of the biggest changes since Euclid.

The NSA is turning the internet into a total surveillance system

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/11/nsa-internet-surveillance-email
Alexander Abdo and Patrick Toomey
Now we know all Americans' international email is searched and saved, we can see how far the 'collect it all' mission has gone

Another burst of sunlight permeated the National Security Agency's black box of domestic surveillance last week.

According to the New York Times, the NSA is searching the content of virtually every email that comes into or goes out of the United Stateswithout a warrant. To accomplish this astonishing invasion of Americans'privacy, the NSA reportedly is making a copy of nearly every international email. It then searches that cloned data, keeping all of the emails containing certain keywords and deleting the rest – all in a matter of seconds.

If you emailed a friend, family member or colleague overseas today (or if, from abroad, you emailed someone in the US), chances are that the NSA made a copy of that email and searched it for suspicious information.

The NSA appears to believe this general monitoring of our electronic communications is justified because the entire process takes, in one official's words, "a small number of seconds". Translation: the NSA thinks it can intercept and then read Americans' emails so long as the intrusion is swift, efficient and silent.

That is not how the fourth amendment works.

Whether the NSA inspects and retains these messages for years, or only searches through them once before moving on, the invasion of Americans' privacy is real and immediate. There is no "five-second rule"for fourth amendment violations: the US constitution does not excuse these bulk searches simply because they happen in the blink of an eye.

The government claims that this program is authorized by a surveillance statute passed in 2008 that allows the government to target foreigners for surveillance. Although the government has frequently defended that law as a necessary tool in gathering foreign intelligence, the government has repeatedly misled the public about the extent to which the statute implicates Americans' communications.

There should no longer be any doubt: the US government has for yearsrelied upon its authority to collect foreigners' communications as a useful cover for its sweeping surveillance of Americans' communications. The surveillance program revealed last week confirms that the interception of American communications under this law is neither "targeted" at foreigners (in any ordinary sense of that word) nor "inadvertent", asofficials have repeatedly claimed.

Last week's revelations are a disturbing harbinger of future surveillance. Two months ago, this newspaper reported that the US government has been forcing American telecommunications companies to turn over the call records of every one of their customers "on an ongoing daily basis", to allow the NSA to later search those records when it has a reason to do so. The government has since defended the program, in part on the theory that Americans' right to privacy is not implicated by the initial acquisition of their phone records, only by their later searching.

That legal theory is extraordinarily dangerous because it would allow the NSA to acquire virtually all digital information today simply because it might possibly become relevant tomorrow. The surveillance program revealed by the New York Times report goes one step further still. No longer is the government simply collecting information now so that the data is available to search, should a reasonable suspicion arise at some point in the future; the NSA is searching everything now – in real time and without suspicion – merely on the chance that it finds something of interest.

That principle of pre-emptive surveillance threatens to subvert the most basic protections of the fourth amendment, which generally prohibit the government from conducting suspicion-less fishing expeditions through our private affairs. If the government is correct that it can search our every communication in case we say or type something suspicious, there is little to prevent the NSA from converting the internet into a tool of pervasive surveillance.

Because of this very real possibility, these programs should be brought out of the twilight zone of the national security state and into the daylight, so that the public can decide for itself what privacy means in a digital age.

Google Doodle celebrates birthday of physicist Erwin Schrödinger (and his theoretical cat)

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/google-doodle-celebrates-birthday-of-physicist-erwin-schrdinger-and-his-theoretical-cat-8756744.html
ROB WILLIAMS
Nobel prize-winning Austrian quantum physicist perhaps most famous for the mind experiment known as Schrödinger’s Cat

Schrödinger won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1933 for the introduction of Schrödinger's wave, a mathematical equation of wave mechanics that is still the most widely used piece of Mathematics in modern quantum theory.

Erwin Schrodinger was born in Vienna on the 12th August 1887 to Rudolf Schrodinger and Georgine Emilia Brenda.

He was initially tutored at home then studied theoretical physics at the University of Vienna under Franz S. Exner and Friedrich Hasenohrl. By 1911, he was already assisting Exner.

He later undertook military service, before returning to academia.

In 1925, while he was professor of physics at the University of Zurich, Schrödinger formulated a wave-equation that accurately gave the energy levels of atoms.

The theory won him the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1933 and was possibly his greatest contribution to the field.

Schrödinger’s other work was wide ranging including the physics of dielectrics, statistical mechanics and thermodynamics,  colour theory, electrodynamics, general relativity, and cosmology.

In the years after his Nobel Prize win Schrödinger was critical of contemporary interpretations of quantum mechanics.

He used the thought experiment, known as Schrödinger's cat, to illustrate the problems surrounding the application of the "Copenhagen interpretation" of quantum mechanics to everyday objects.

The thought experiment presented a cat that could be alive or dead, based on an earlier random event.

Erwin Schrödinger died in Vienna in January 1961 from the tuberculosis.

Electronic Dance Music

How electronic music industry takes festivals global
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/08/09/business/david-guetta-electronic-music/index.html?hpt=hp_c3
Antonia Mortensen



(CNN) -- From Brazil to Malaysia, Thailand to Canada, electronic music festivals are springing up worldwide as record labels and promoters push for a dance revolution with a new beat.

Major players in electronic music -- an industry worth an estimated $4.5 billion -- are shipping festival brands to emerging markets in Asia and South America in an effort to increase the music genre's following.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with CNN, superstar DJ David Guetta said: "We are keeping that scene alive and always exciting."

The french music producer -- who has 45 million Facebook fans -- added: "I think it's going to grow even bigger because if I look at the history of Hip Hop ... they are 2 musical genres that you can compare because they both came from the underground then became trendy."

But he admitted that electronic music has a long way to go before it's as successful as Hip Hop, an urban street genre.

Festivals such as Tomorrowland and Sensation White -- a leading dance event which will visit 22 cities worldwide in 2013 -- are rolling out to new markets to give audiences the chance to listen to electronic music.

In July, 180,000 music fans massed on the small Belgian town of 'Boom' for Tomorrowland -- one of world's largest music festivals -- as gig enthusiasts from 214 countries flew in for a 3-day bonanza of electronic dance music.

Festival organizers ID&T even teamed up with Brussels Airlines to arrange 140 flights from every continent to Belgium.

At 30,000 feet, fans were treated to an in-flight DJ, allowing them to party to their favourite electro beats in transit.

This unique approach is all part of ID&T's strategy to take electronic music global. After eight successful years, the entertainment company is planning to host its first Tomorrowland festival outside Belgium in Chattahoochee Hills in Atlanta.

Speaking at the International Music Summit (IMS) in Ibiza in May, ID&T boss Duncan Stutterheim said electronic music has "no language barriers," adding that the company is going to "enjoy a nice ride" in the next 10 years.

"We are talking finally to India, to Japan, to China, to Malaysia. We did a tour in Thailand... They all want to do the festivals so we are in a luxury position," Stutterheim said in his speech.

Tomorrowland already has 4 million social media followers and over 80 million people watched the after-movie of the concert online.

According to a report by industry consultant Kevin Watson, who produced the IMS Business Report, over half the electronic dance industry's value, approximately $2.5 billion, comes from live clubs and festivals.

Speaking in Ibiza, he said: "We've got recorded music, we think that's worth $1.25 billion and we've got a couple of other things, sales of hardware and software, brand sponsorship and everything else linked to Dance is getting ridiculously popular. So we think that's worth at least another three quarters of a billion."

Marc Geiger, head of music at William Morris Endeavor, one of the first agencies to start a dedicated electronic division about six years ago, believes industry growth is providing firms with new resources.

But he warns: ''It's big money now and with big money comes a bigger responsibility of growing up."

Electronic Dance Music: How bedroom beat boys remixed the industry

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/03/30/showbiz/electronic-dance-music/index.html?iref=allsearch

Antonia Mortensen

Electronic dance music was once an underground genre, but its high-energy rhythms and thundering basslines have now exploded into the mainstream.

Its success has made global superstars of DJs who began mixing beats in their bedrooms, and generated revenues that defy the current music industry downturn.

Acts like David Guetta, Tiesto, Swedish House Mafia or Deadmau5 are now household names, adored by millions, and their homegrown success has made the major labels sit up, take notice and even adopt radical new business models.

If further proof was needed that electronic dance music, or EDM as it is more commonly known, is no longer on the margins, this years Grammys saw DJ/Producer Skrillex walk away with three awards and a nomination as "best new artist."

Such is EDM's popularity that more than 250,000 fans and professionals descended for two EDM events in Miami this month -- the Winter Music Conference and the Ultra Music Festival. Even Madonna made a surprise appearance, joining Swedish Producer and DJ Avicii to showcase his remix of "Girl Gone Wild", a single from her upcoming MDNA album.

"Dance music has always been around but I really feel that this time it had absolutely crossed over the line and permeated popular culture, and when it gets into popular culture that's when these types of things happen with music," Glenn Mendlinger, managing director of EMI's dance music label Astralwerks, told CNN.

Mendlinger credits DJ David Guetta, among EMI's roster of stars, with playing a major role in bringing EDM to the American mainstream by breaking down musical boundaries. His collaborations with Rihanna, Snoop Dogg, Black Eyed Peas and others have all risen to the top of the charts.

"I remember having a meeting with David Guetta in Paris ... and he explained his mission statement to me. He wanted to cross urban cross-over music with dance music," he said.

The formula appears to have worked. Among the music executives and artists -- including Tiesto, Armin van Buuren, Avicii, Dada Life -- converging in Miami this month, there was agreement that the genre had finally come of age.

"It's getting bigger and bigger and here in the States it has become the genre of 'now'... of course it will have its moments when its more popular or less popular -- just like rock music or hip hop -- but there will always be dance music," said Tiesto, a Dutch music producer and DJ who is now one of EDM's biggest names.

The success of EDM comes against a backdrop of decline in the music industry -- the internet has caused a decline in physical record sales that has not been replaced by digital demand. So how has it managed to flourish?

Prior to the digital era, the high cost of recording, distributing and promoting acts meant that without support from a major label, it was difficult for individual artists to become successful.

Key to EDM's success has been new low-cost technology enabling high quality music to be recorded as easily in a bedroom as a state-of-the-art studio and giving rise to a new generation of DJ/producers.

"Ten years ago you needed access to a half-a-million dollar studio to make a track, now all you need is a program that costs $250 -- every 15 year old kid can make a huge hit right now," Tiesto told CNN. The other benefit of this is that DJs are never in short supply of fresh material to mix into their sets.

Tech-savvy EDM labels have also been quick to leverage social media, using platforms like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube as a means of building awareness and a relationship with their fans, says Tiesto.

"Television and media used to control what we were listening to, radio stations programmed what we were listening to... but nowadays people listen to what their friends are listening to, and through Facebook and Twitter it is so much easier to share music, it's so accessible to everybody and that is why I think EDM became so popular."

These techniques have allowed Armada Music, an independent Dutch label established in 2003, to grow into one of EDM's biggest powerhouses.

"From the outset, Armada was focused on digital," said Maykel Piron, who co-founded the label with David Lewis and superstar trance DJ/producer Armin van Buuren. "While other labels were still focusing on physical record sales, we were focused on online consumption of our artists' music."

Piron said making music available online was often more about building awareness than profit. "At first I was hesitant about putting Armada artists' music on YouTube and making it available [for free] ... but today we create 2.4 million daily views ... so that's a great reach and I'm pretty sure that because we have that reach we sell better on iTunes."

Another key promotional tool for EDM artists have been weekly radio shows. Most episodes of these are syndicated to local radio stations worldwide and are also available for free download.

"I started the radio show out of the belief in using radio as a means to spread dance music -- the love for dance music around the world," said van Buuren, whose "A State of Trance" was one of this new breed of radio shows.

With more than 10 million listeners every week, van Buuren has managed to create a major brand around his show.

Many of EDM's biggest names -- including Armin Van Buuren, Tiesto, members of the Swedish House Mafia and Deadmau5 -- are able to leverage their brand into further revenue opportunities and use it as a platform to promote and support other artists.

"[Branding] opens the doors for major sponsors from around the world and now corporate America [that] see the possibilities [to access specific audience segments]...therefore generat[ing] more funds [for artists] so that we can do bigger and reach bigger audiences,"adds van Buuren.

Many of the biggest EDM names have developed their brands in-house without assistance from major labels, giving them in a strong hand when making deals with music industry players.

This has led to the creation of so-called "360 deals" or joint ventures under which major labels help fund an artist's marketing and tours in return for a percentage of income from all revenue streams.

"From the label perspective it opens up a whole other gamut of people and places to market to ... we will add value to whatever type of artist agreement and if we are in fact involved in merchandising in live and touring and other pieces of that artist's business," says Mendlinger

Live performances are the main revenue source for EDM artists, with some playing more than 250 shows a year, from small, underground venues to music festivals such as Ultra where hundreds of thousands of people pay up to $299 a-head.

Tiesto, a pioneering "arena DJ," says his fans get their value for money.

"Most people went to dance shows but it was basically a table and a DJ playing and not really a spectacular thing," he said.

"I brought the whole production with the effects -- the best sound, the best lighting to blow the fans away."