^I was a club DJ back in those days. Worked way too many years in a few clubs trying to work some of that kind of techno in a college town wasn't impossible, but it wasn't exactly easy either when half the audience wanted to hear "Friends in Low Places" by Garth Brooks or "You Shook Me All Night Long" by ACDC. I have played those songs so many times that I can tell you what chord is played if you name a random time stamp. Which by the way, is horrible useless information cluttering my brain, but there is no way to erase it.
Many of my friends were into techno\trance\D&B etc back in the day. That whole scene, the drugs, the raves, all of it. I was into it to a lesser extent, I bought the music, and I still own all of it today, and I dabbled in the drugs for a while, but really for me it was just grass and the music and beer.
Incidentally, I have huge collections of the stuff from that time period, some of it I've repurchased on vinyl that I have on CD. For example, I have every United DJ of America mix CD ever made, most of the Global Underground double mixes from back then, and full collections of all kinds of region specific and sub genre specific DJs. The trance scene is still alive apparently, and Techno is doing just fine but house music waned quite a bit I've noticed. Anyways, this is a huge diversity of electronic music we are talking about, and to be a completionist of any kind is pretty impossible.
Regarding what killed it, I think it waned significantly in some respects and the underground scenes kept it's heart pumping. And you mentioned the software, true, the tools for making the music are simple to use but you really have to have an ear to make it sound memorable. There is an ocean of mediocre homemade techno for free online that all sounds carbon copy. Finding the good stuff is hard because you have to push aside all the shit to find the good stuff and that takes a lot of patience.
Recently I have been borrowing records from my local record store that are all drum and bass from the first few years of drum and bass and Jungle and it's a privilege to get borrowing rights so I can try before I buy on a collection that basically doesn't exist for sale anywhere online. But I'm finding out a lot of it back in the day was very samey and it can be a chore putting on 10 records in a row that sound like cookie cutter remixes of the last song I played. On the 11th record, I get to the one guy that stood out and made something interesting, and I put that in my buy pile, that's what makes it worth the time.
Likewise finding this stuff online is a chore, constantly opening up Youtube and hearing that same 4 on the floor beat can quickly get tired. Yet when you land on the beat that grabs you, that's when it pays off.
Sorry, long speech.
TLDR: I hear you on "that period" of electronic music.
“Lesser artists borrow... great artists steal.” - Igor Stravinsky
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