Dubstep.

The Genre Dubstep was born in London in the early 2000’s. It originated from the UK garage scene. Characteristics of the genre include emphasis on bass, synthesized sounds and samples of other songs or vocals. Dubstep tracks usually have a 140BPM pace, which allows various tracks to be mixed together much more easily. Although drums are an important part of dubstep, it is usually the bass line which governs the rhythm of the sound.

Track conventions. Tracks in this genre usually start with an intro, which progress to a drop, which is where the bass usually kicks in. Tracks often have a second drop throughout the song where the bass and drums ease of and then kick back in dramatically. Drops are usually used to get the crowd going as it is often the most dramatic and well known part of the song.

History and modern day The genre has expanded rapidly since its birth, and may prove to be the latest trend in youth music. It already gets a lot of play time at various raves and in radio programmes, as well as many websites having been set up specifically for dubstep. Many mainstream artists have also put their sounds in the hands of various dubstep artists to remix them. Examples of this are La Roux’ in for the kill, and The Prodigy’s Omen. Hip Hop artists like Xzibit and Snoop Dogg have also recorded onto dubstep instrumentals, helping to further expand the scene. Well known Artists in the genre include Plastician, Rusko, Skream, Benga, Coki, Burial and Kode 9.

Audience The core audience is aged between with a faithful fanbase in the bracket. Males generally listen to it more but raves tend to be half and half male/female split. The audience within the UK tend to live in or around the larger cities such as London, Leeds and Bristol. Audiences abroad are also generally in the larger cities around the world. Europe has a large following mainly in Germany and Norway, which all produce a lot of dubstep. America also has a large dubstep following in cities such as San Francisco. Dubstep’s communities generally circle around regular events such as FWD” in London's 02, however due to the accessibility of dubstep peoples location isnt a limiting factor.

Mood Dubstep can heighten the mood you are in, and artists tend to have a style which is either uplifting or dark. There are other artists that produce more party-focused dubstep with the emphasis of the track on getting people to dance.

Record labels Dubstep has a huge range of labels, some of the largest are: The majority of the labels have names that would appeal to Dubstep's main audience, and they tend to use just black and white in their logos. A lot of the labels exclusively deal with the dubstep genre.

The competition. As far as other dubstep orientated magazines go, there are very few, but the genre often gets publicity and regular pages in magazines such as “The wire”, and the genre has been reviewed by various magazines and newspapers such as The Sunday Times and the New York Times. There are various dedicated online magazines such as “Get Darker”. Printed magazines for the genre are limited, many feature atricles about dubstep but none cover dubstep exclusively an example of this is “Woofah”.