I called it pop because pop is a word similar to progressive. While progressive in most cases refers to innovative tracks in the genre, pop refers to the most popular tracks of that genre. The artists you named were 80s and 90s pop. Now, in the big 00s, pop music, as it always does, is picking up elements from the underground, namely Trance.
It's happened before, and it will happen again. Guess what was big in the 90s? Hiphop. Hiphop was pop music in the 90s. Guess where it came from? Small, underground artists in the 80s experimenting with drum machines. It wasn't pop music then, but it is now.
Guess where Cascada came from? Underground dance music in the 90s! It wasn't pop then, but it is now.
However, non-pop styles still exist. You rarely hear turntablism in pop-hiphop, and you rarely hear extended tracks, DJ trickery, and mixing in pop-dance. In other words, when a genre becomes popular, it loses the original aspects of the genre, and contorts it to cater to the tastes of the general public.
That's EXACTLY what artists like Cascada and Basshunter are doing! Even Daft Punk, to an extent. I have friends who say they hear kids talking about Basshunter, and I live in AMERICA, the PURVEYOR of pop music!
You can't deny it. Cascada has lost what originally made electronic music unique, IE experimentation with sounds, and friendlyness to DJs. They've turned it into 3 minute radio edits which simply copy their own and other peoples' tracks. It is truly a charade of what electronic music used to be.
Enjoy your radio edits. I'll be listening to "old skool" hardcore, hard house, and progressive trance, from back when set genre limits didn't exist.
Remember: Disco was pop music in the 70s. It fell. As did synthpop after the 80s. Hiphop from the 90s didn't fall, so much as it became even more convoluted and terrible. Electronic-pop is destined to do the same.
