Were there any artificial flowers left in New Jersey after the weekend? Thousands of people arrived garlanded and festooned with plastic blossoms to match the name of the new electronic dance music festival in town, Electric Daisy Carnival New York. Well, not quite in town; it took place Friday through Sunday at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.


But what’s a mere state line in pop-branding cyberspace? Music from the festival was broadcast on satellite radio and Webcast worldwide. On Saturday I took in portions of all 31 sets, which were running continuously on four stages for 11 hours. It was computerized bliss for a crowd of 45,000, many dressed in fluorescent clothes, tutus, fake-fur leggings and hair colors not found in nature. They shimmied and quick-stepped, screamed for familiar tunes and waved their hands in the air on cue, as larger-than-life LED video displays dwarfed the D.J.’s.


Dance events like Electric Daisy are challenging rock festivals as the summer music marathons of choice. Down on the Jersey Shore at the Bamboozle Festival, flesh-and-blood rockers and rappers were toiling over guitars and microphones to vent angst and excitement. At Electric Daisy, machines generated an artificial paradise; flesh and blood was for dancing, and even the most tormented love song quickly resolved into triumphal chords and a booming beat.


As the simple four-on-the-floor thump of club music has conquered mainstream pop, D.J.’s like David Guetta — who wasn’t at Electric Daisy, although his tracks were — and Avicii, the 22-year-old Swedish D.J. who was one of Saturday’s headliners, are no longer simply spinning, producing and remixing other people’s material but also making hits of their own. Avicii, whose euphoric international hit “Levels” has Etta James singing about a “good feeling,” is heading for the same anthemic arena pop as Coldplay, without the intellectual distractions.


With pop’s rewards beckoning and a pop audience to serve, D.J. music has shrunk its ambitions. Dance clubs and D.J. culture have long offered alternatives to pop’s obvious hooks and instant gratification, an anti-jukebox approach to music: a chance to layer and linger over musical ideas, to forge unexpected connections, to surprise the mind while the body keeps dancing. One of Electric Daisy’s four stages, booked on Saturday by the techno pioneer Carl Cox, offered reminders of that, with kinetic, abstract, rhythm-stacking sets from longtimers like Danny Tenaglia and John Digweed and the considerably younger Cassy.


Yet now, amid the infinitude of available sounds, rhythms and songs, D.J.s aspiring to work the international circuit of megaclubs and arena-scale gigs have converged on a handful of musical elements served up again and again. Like so many Chicken McNuggets, they punch certain physiological hot buttons while excluding a world of other, subtler delight. On the three larger stages, the bookings were more narrow that those at a New York City counterpart of Electric Daisy, Electric Zoo, which at least dips into hip-hop, electro and other dance subgenres. Electric Daisy was short on the up-and-coming D.J. flavor of the year, dubstep, although Bassnectar was due on Sunday.


The overwhelming majority of Saturday’s acts, along with the rest of the festival’s lineup, were house and trance D.J.’s. Much of the time it seemed their greatest ambition was to make themselves interchangeable — perhaps to qualify as fill-ins for the D.J. who headlined the trance stage, Armin Van Buuren, or for other market leaders like Steve Angello and Sebastian Ingrosso of Swedish House Mafia, who both appeared on Saturday night.


The formula included the vocal from a pop hit: like “Titanium” by David Guetta featuring Sia, or “Coming Home” by Diddy-Dirty Money featuring Skylar Grey, or Adele’s “Set Fire to the Rain,” all heard multiple times on Saturday. That led to a four-on-the-floor beat, a distortion-edged bassline, keyboard chords syncopated one particular way, a quasi-classical keyboard interlude, a big drumroll crescendo back to four-on-the-floor and a synthesizer ditty on the way to the next pop hook. The D.J.’s slap the same smiley face on whatever track they start with.


Acts like Alesso, Cazzette (a duo wearing cassette-shaped masks) and Calvin Harris showcased themselves more as pop remixers than club D.J.’s. The D.J.’s do know one rock song: Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” toyed with by Junior Sanchez and later, shamelessly, exploited as a full-length singalong by the German D.J. ATB.


Still, there were potential surprises behind the trance routines. Erick Morillo diverged from the house thump for a stretch of dancehall-tinged Caribbean rhythm. And Mr. Angello, who has plenty of head-bobbing synthesizer tunes with Swedish House Mafia, set aside the trance recipes for a stretch of angular, accretive, rhythm-happy dance music beholden to no recipe.


During an early, sparsely attended, minimalistic set by the techno-rooted disc jockey tiNI, she dropped in a voice saying, “Whatever happened to the real D.J.’s? Whatever happened to the creators of something new?” Maybe they’ll resurface when pop turns to a different beat.