From Beyonce's $50 million Pepsi deal to Taylor Swift's dances with Walgreens, it's clear that American pop music has cozied up quite comfortably with big business. From rap to country to gospel, music fans can rest assured that if it's popular, it's probably already earned a corporate sponsorship.

But what happens when a genre bubbles quietly for decades before exploding in popularity over a few years? Electronic dance music has existed in American nightclubs for 30 years now, but its expansion into the popular consciousness came so swiftly that large-scale business interests -- from record labels to event planners and merchandisers -- have been caught playing catch-up.

Still, that investors have their eyes set on monetizing the dance music scene is hardly news at this point. Since its June 2012 coming out party in the New York Times, Robert F.X. Sillerman's rapidly growing Edm empire has led the charge: With a series of banner acquisitions (DayGlow,...