EDM Identity: San Diego's Fan-Built Voice for Electronic Dance Music
EDM Identity, at edmidentity.com, is an electronic dance music news publication based in San Diego, California, founded and edited by Grant Gilmore. It covers EDM news, new music, events and festivals, and the culture surrounding the rave and festival scene, in the United States and abroad, through news stories, interviews, event coverage and features written largely by fans of the scene itself.
EDM Identity's own stated purpose sets it apart from a straightforward news wire. It strives to provide quality content about electronic dance music and the culture that surrounds it, reporting on the happenings in its community while promoting companies and artists on the rise — and, distinctively, giving the fans who make up the scene a platform to express themselves and showcase their own involvement in the community.
Overview
EDM Identity organizes its coverage into the sections its readers live by: News, Music, Events, Culture, Festival Tips and Interviews, with a shop alongside the editorial content. A festival-goer can read a lineup announcement, a review of a new release, a practical guide to surviving a massive festival weekend and an interview with a headlining DJ in the same visit. That blend of journalism and community service reflects the site's origins inside the scene it covers.
The publication is based in San Diego, where Gilmore was born and has lived his entire life. Southern California — home to some of the largest electronic music events in North America — is its home territory, and its coverage of the region's festivals and club culture is a foundation of its identity, even as its reporting extends nationally and internationally.
History and Founding
Grant Gilmore came to music media from outside journalism. In interviews he has emphasized that, unlike others in the music and festival blogosphere, he did not have a background in journalism or marketing; he started EDM Identity because he wanted to make a difference in the dance music scene and help shape its future, bringing readers quality stories that would be relatable and would educate them on the history of the scene and the remarkable things that happen within it.
Before EDM Identity, Gilmore spent nearly a decade working in the non-profit sector for the Pro Player Foundation, which addresses the needs of the underserved through campaigns, special events and projects; he has credited his boss there with instilling a strong work ethic and teaching him skills he still uses. When he found the rave and festival community, he has said, it changed his life — he was welcomed with open arms — and the publication grew out of that experience. The site was active by October 2014, when Gilmore, then a 25-year-old graduate of San Diego State University, introduced himself to readers as its editor-in-chief in the site's ID Spotlight series; at that time he was splitting his time between the site and his foundation job, writing as a guest for other scene publications, promoting for companies in the EDM world and moderating online communities for major festivals.
Ownership and Business Model
EDM Identity is an independent, founder-led publication. Gilmore is its founder and editor-in-chief, and no parent media company stands behind it; the site presents no corporate ownership, and its public materials do not disclose revenue or staffing figures. Its model is the one common to independent music media of its generation: an editorial website supported by its presence in the industry it covers, with a shop, event and festival coverage relationships, and a podcast among its extensions.
That independence shapes its economics and its editorial alike. The publication's asset is credibility inside a community that is skeptical of outsiders: its writers attend the festivals they cover, and its founder's long personal involvement in the scene — as a fan, promoter and community moderator before he was an editor — is the credential the site trades on.
Coverage and Content
EDM Identity's news coverage tracks the electronic music world day to day: artist announcements, new releases, label news, festival lineup reveals and industry developments. Its Music coverage reviews and highlights releases across the spectrum of electronic genres, from mainstage EDM to trance, dubstep, house and techno. Its Events and festival coverage reports from the field — the site's writers have covered major events including Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas, Dreamstate SoCal, CRSSD Festival, Splash House and Secret Project, among others.
Interviews are a centerpiece. The site has interviewed major international artists including Armin van Buuren, Adventure Club, Gorgon City, Lane 8 and Afrojack, and its coverage of festivals often pairs reporting with artist conversations conducted on site — including, memorably for its team, interviewing Adventure Club at EDC Las Vegas in 2019. Just as characteristic is ID Spotlight, its recurring segment turning the lens on the people of the scene — including, in its earliest edition, its own editor — and on the unsung figures of the industry alongside the headliners.
Editorial Voice
The editorial voice of EDM Identity is that of the knowledgeable fan. Its mission statement emphasizes education — teaching readers the history of the scene — as well as celebration, and its festival tips and culture coverage treat newcomers as people to be welcomed and taught the community's norms, in the same spirit in which its founder says the community welcomed him. Its descriptions of the publication stress accurate, informative coverage of the rave scene and electronic music as a whole, a standard it sets for itself against a blogosphere it saw as superficial.
The site's year-end Favorite Moments features illustrate the voice in practice: writers recount, in the first person, the interviews, festivals and encounters that defined their year — covering Dreamstate, EDC and regional festivals not as detached critics but as participants documenting a culture they belong to.
Audience and Reach
EDM Identity's audience is the electronic dance music community in the United States and abroad: festival-goers, ravers, DJs and producers, and the industry around them. Media databases describe its scope as international and its subject as the quality end of EDM and festival culture, and its archive — its founder alone is credited with thousands of articles in journalist databases — reflects more than a decade of continuous publishing for that audience.
Its reach is community reach as much as traffic. Gilmore's involvement in the scene's own institutions — moderating the Facebook groups and subreddits for Coachella and Electric Daisy Carnival, involvement with the rave family Strangers With Kandi, whose members attend shows across Southern California — placed the publication inside the networks through which EDM fans actually organize their festival lives.
Notable People
Grant Gilmore is the publication's founder and editor-in-chief and its most prolific writer. A San Diego native and San Diego State University graduate, he built EDM Identity alongside his non-profit career, and he has been profiled in local media as a San Diego founder whose family support and decade of non-profit work shaped the publication's work ethic and community mission.
Around him, EDM Identity is a team effort of writers and correspondents whose first-person festival coverage fills its pages; the site has historically introduced its contributors to readers through the ID Spotlight format, an unusual transparency about who is doing the covering. Gilmore also co-hosted Face The Music, the publication's podcast devoted to the dance music scene, with correspondent Alec Rubman, extending the site's interview and commentary format into audio.
Digital Presence
EDM Identity is a digital-only publication whose website is organized for the festival calendar: news, music, events, culture, festival tips and interviews, with social channels on the major platforms — Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, SoundCloud and YouTube are all linked from the site — carrying its coverage to the platforms where its audience plans its weekends. Its podcast, Face The Music, added a regular audio presence, recapping events and interviewing artists from across the scene.
The brand name itself is a piece of digital-native thinking: identity, not just news — a publication named for the question its founder asked in his first spotlight piece, "What's my EDM Identity?", inviting readers to define their own place in the culture.
Recent Developments
EDM Identity has continued publishing through the electronic music industry's post-pandemic restructuring, covering the return and evolution of the major festival circuit, new labels and releases from the scene's biggest artists, and the culture debates of a maturing global dance music business. Its recent coverage spans everything from legacy acts launching new labels to new albums by trance pioneers — the same mix of superstar news and scene documentation it has published since the mid-2010s.
A decade on from its earliest spotlights, EDM Identity remains what Gilmore set out to build in San Diego: an independent, fan-rooted newsroom for electronic dance music that reports the news, teaches the history, shows up at the festivals and gives the community that welcomed him a platform of its own.
