Electronica includes a wide range of contemporary electronic music designed for a wide range of uses, including foreground listening, some forms of dancing, and background music for other activities. Unlike electronic dance music not all examples of electronica are necessarily made for dancing. In the United States genres such as techno, downtempo, and ambient are among those encompassed by the umbrella term, entering the American mainstream from "alternative" or "underground" venues during the late 1990s.
Allmusic categorises electronica as a top-level genre on their main page, where they state that electronica includes danceable grooves to music for headphones and chillout areas.
Electronica has grown to influence mainstream crossover recordings. Electronic sounds began to form the basis of a wide array of popular music in the late 1970s, and became key to the mainstream pop and rock sounds of the 1980s. Since the adoption of "electronica" in the 1990s to refer to more underground music with an electronic aesthetic, elements of modern electronica have been adopted by many popular artists in mainstream music.
Read more about Electronica: A Wave of Diverse Acts, Global Patterns of Popularity, Effect On Mainstream Popular Music, Hip Hop Fusion, Post-hardcore Fusion, Included in Popular Media