But know this: as far as a music culture goes, EDM is the one who will accept the kids on the outliers, the ones who get bullied, the ones who feel like they may not quite fit in. This community is exceptional in its ability to bond all types together, and I am not exaggerating when I say it saves lives. Our audience is intelligent and kind, discriminating only in regards to which sound they like best. Our audience is unprecedented in their drive to proactively support each other.

But know this: as far as a music culture goes, EDM is the one who will accept the kids on the outliers, the ones who get bullied, the ones who feel like they may not quite fit in. This community is exceptional in its ability to bond all types together, and I am not exaggerating when I say it saves lives. Our audience is intelligent and kind, discriminating only in regards to which sound they like best. Our audience is unprecedented in their drive to proactively support each other.

At the beginning of my career, I saw an opportunity to forge new ground and focus on songwriting. Not many people were doing that at the time. Pretty much nobody. I thought I could write some really cool songs that would rise above all these dozens of genres that exist within dance music. I'd make it more about the songs. For the last 20 years, I've been sharing stories of my life through music. I've been writing songs about my life.

I think rap music has made more money on dance music than dance music has made on dance music. Just a thought.

A lot of people see electronic music as a flavor of the week, but it can be more than that - has to be more than that.

With that explosion of dance music thing, there have been some downsides. We're lacking a little bit of connection right now. Pop music is so massive. It's everywhere. Today, there's less of discovery. There's less "I'm going to drive two hours and go see him at this dirty night club." We're missing a little bit of that. It's still there, and I feel like those connections are still made.

I knew it straight away when Twitter first came around, and also Facebook, where it was so easy to post, that this was another way to speak directly with people listening to my music. If they found my music and they like it, most likely they want to hear more from me and hear what I'm about. I've put an enormous amount of time into that and it's played out well for me.