WHEN Courtney Pollack first heard that the Electric Daisy Carnival and the Bamboozle music festival would both be held this weekend in New Jersey, she experienced a moment of conflicted loyalties. It was a question not just of taste, but of identity, she said, as her love of electronic dance music faced off against a deeper, almost maternal tug of straight-up rock.


“My friends are torn between the two, a lot of us are,” said Ms. Pollack, 24, of West Long Branch, N.J. “I may like the music better at Electric Daisy Carnival, but I don’t want to pass up a festival on the beach. I’m a huge electronic dance music fan, but I’m also a Jersey girl, so I love Bon Jovi and Gaslight Anthem.”


She chose Bamboozle, but many of her friends went the other direction. The simultaneous three-day festivals being held only 60 miles apart have given many young people in the New York area a reason to decide where they stand musically. Are they fans of dubstep, trance, house and the other synthesizer-and-drum-machine sounds that have become a national rage over the last two years? Or do they still want to hear a punk-pop headbanger screaming his angst above distorted guitars?


For fans of electronic music, the arrival of the Electric Daisy Carnival on the East Coast is a major event. Electric Daisy started in Los Angeles 15 years ago and has since moved to Las Vegas, growing into one of the country’s largest festivals of electronic artists. Last year more than 230,000 people attended in Las Vegas. Smaller versions have been mounted in Dallas and Orlando, Fla.


Now the company behind the festival, Insomniac Inc., is bringing the show to the MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. More than 80 D.J.’s will perform on four stages inside the stadium and in the parking lot. Nearly every flavor of electronic music is on the bill. The headliners include Armin van Buuren, Avicii, Afrojack and Bassnectar. It’s a giant, unapologetic rave.


By contrast, the Bamboozle festival, returning to Asbury Park, N.J., for its 10th year, offers a smorgasbord — 80 bands on seven stages — most of it strains of rock, but some hip-hop acts and a few dance D.J.’s as well. Performers include the rappers Mac Miller and ASAP Rocky, and mainstream rockers like Foo Fighters, Incubus and My Chemical Romance. Bon Jovi — those Jersey rock stalwarts — are anchoring Sunday’s performances, along with Gaslight Anthem and the emo pop-punk band Brand New. Live Nation, which promotes the event, has also tried to tap into the dance-music wave: the big draw on Friday night is Skrillex, a wildly popular dubstep D.J.


“Electronic dance music is huge, there is no doubt about it,” said Ben Weeden, the Live Nation executive overseeing Bamboozle. “I just look at it as another tributary into this big river of music. I don’t find that it’s taking away from anything. The other genres out there are as strong as ever.”


While Bamboozle will be a standard rock festival on the strand, the promoters of Electric Daisy promise a more surreal spectacle. Carnival rides, theatrical performances, fireworks and outlandish art installations will lend a dreamy air to the event. The D.J.’s provide a pulsating, mechanized sound that fans say creates a communal experience. Concertgoers often dress up in neon-bright colors and skimpy costumes; some women wear only decorated bras as tops. The fashions are reminiscent of circus acts or of Mardi Gras in New Orleans.


“It’s a cross between a music festival, a Cirque du Soleil show, a carnival and a Halloween party,” said Pasquale Rotella, Insomniac’s chief executive. “It’s the best people-watching in the world.”


Mr. Rotella’s festivals have not been without controversy. Two years ago a 15-year-old died of a drug overdose after attending the Electric Daisy Carnival in Los Angeles, provoking intense criticism that effectively banished the event from that city. In response, the company banned minors from its shows. Last year a 19-year-old man died at the show in Dallas and more than two dozen were hospitalized for drugs, alcohol and heat-related illnesses.


This year Mr. Rotella was charged with bribery and embezzlement in a corruption scandal involving officials at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, where the Electric Daisy Carnival had been held every year before its move to Las Vegas in 2011. The indictment charges that Mr. Rotella and another promoter, Reza Gerami, bribed the manager of the Coliseum in return for lower costs. Mr. Rotella, who is 37, has denied the charges as “completely baseless and flat-out wrong.”


Mr. Rotella’s legal troubles have not slowed ticket sales, and more than 100,000 people are expected to attend Electric Daisy this weekend. For New York fans of club music, the only comparable festival has been Electric Zoo, a three-day event on Randalls Island on Labor Day weekend. Last year that event drew 85,000 people.


Christian Hernandez, 23, a hard-core trance music fan from Jersey City, said he scraped together about $280 for a three-day pass to Electric Daisy, even though he recently lost his job. For him the festival is a rare chance to see Armin van Buuren, a well-known D.J. from the Netherlands. Beyond the music, he said, he is looking for an escape in the spectacle at the stadium — the lights, the rides, the costumes. “You have to be a little open to getting weird,” he said. “It brings a kind of fairy-tale feeling to the whole thing. You feel like you are in a whole different world.”