apart from the artificial intelligence series, which pretty much coined it, i think the term IDM was a really big millstone for anything/anyone that happened to get stuck with it and that they were fairly keen to get away from it as soon as possible (i can think of a bunch of interviews where i used the term "intelligent" while talking to people and the reaction was pretty bad — occasionally i did do it on purpose, though.) after all, who's going to stand up and say; "well, actually dear boy, i like intelligent music, don't you know..."
i'm not so sure whether this was true in the states, but it's definitely the case in england. aside from the IDM list and certain journalistic pieces, i've never yet encountered anyone using the term IDM to describe what they were into, even if pretty much everything they listened to fell into that category — and, believe me, there were and still are plenty of them.
it was a hell of a broad and unweildy non-category, too, with plenty of crossover between different strands of music — what i mean is that slightly later in the day, at no particular point in time, it was entirely natural for people to love autechre, anti-pop consortium, el-p and the stuff on good-looking records, morr music, force tracks, perlon and kompakt equally. you're really looking at a way of listening and a certain set of aesthetic/cultural demands and expectations than a distinct genre. it's also interesting that 99 per cent of the things we're talking about here fit very neatly into that prog list that you put together a few years, ago simon.
the breakcore strand really is the exception that proves the rule here and i think throws us quite a way off the real issue of progressiveness, taste and all those other hoary old motors that are unfortunately actually pretty applicable here. it's also important to recognise the whiteness of IDM, too and the problematic nature of the term in relation to issues off class and race. Not something people would really want to be assocaited with for too long after this became obvious...
this one's to the other simon... you totally beat me to the dubstep issue! dubstep is definitely an IDM genre. it wasn't always, but it's certainly become that way. this actually happened more or less overnight, with the release of those rather funnily named rephlex grime compilations a few years back. if you were going to fwd pretty frequently at that point, as i was, you saw things shift dramatically within the space of a couple of months. at one point it was still a relatively mixed and recognisable offshoot of 2step - as well as hearing it in the music, you could see this in the crowd and the way they were dressed etc — then the music changed slightly, became breakier, more linear etc (i seem to remember warp courting oris jay and talking about a one-man style called "bleep and bass", am i hallucinating here marcus, or is that true?) and all of a sudden the audience underwent a pretty big shift, with a huge amount of what you can call IDM folks coming in. as it turned out, this was pivotal to dubstep's success. without this attention, i honestly don't think it would still be around and it certainly wouldn't be what it is today. also worth noting the whole discussion we were having about minimal/dubstep crossover a while ago. if this doesn't show that IDM is still with us, i don't know what will.