Another way to think about it is that the contemporary dance sound is determined by whatever the hot gear is, and not by the artists using it(because they are d

Another way to think about it is that the contemporary dance sound is determined by whatever the hot gear is, and not by the artists using it(because they are disposable figureheads). And the gear market itself, well, it's also looking out for number one here. Most of what one needs for any traditional music style - and hence, caters to all the session players that provide the real technical skills - is covered by the big manufacturers with a workstation keyboard or equivalent multi-gigabyte sample library. The remainder has to exist on being a "cool toy", and there are a lot of ways to be a cool toy, but most of them involve providing a lot of presets so that DJs that do not know what a "major chord" or a "filter cutoff" is can still sound like heroes. Alternately, the cool toy can replicate a grody 40-year-old analog signal path so that anyone who lusts after yesteryear's gear can have the same sound without the space or costs involved in having the real equipment. Among those three markets, space for defining really new sounds and styles in the form of a product is limited, but it does keep happening year-over-year.