What's the difference between darkwave and industrial music?

Question

i know that these are similar music styles, but what makes them different?

Answer 1

Darkwave, also written as dark wave, is an umbrella term which refers to a movement that began in the late 1970s, coinciding with the popularity of new wave. Building upon the basic principles of new wave, darkwave evolved through the addition of dark, thoughtful lyrics and an undertone of sorrow.

Darkwave is inseparably connected with the stylistic developments of the late 1970s and the 1980s. In the 1980s a versatile subculture developed within the darkwave movement, whose members were called wavers.

Since the early 90s, darkwave has been used in a narrower sense for music that mixes elements of gothic rock with electronic music (such as synthpop and industrial) or folklore (neofolk, medieval).

Industrial music is a loose term for a number of different styles of electronic and experimental music. First used in the mid-1970s to describe the then-unique sound of Industrial Records artists, a wide variety of labels and artists have since come to be called "Industrial". This definition may include avant-garde performance artists such as Throbbing Gristle, Einstürzende Neubauten, Coil and Laibach; noise projects like Merzbow or Whitehouse; electronic body music/elektro acts such as DAF, Front 242, Front Line Assembly, and Nitzer Ebb; Industrial rock acts like KMFDM, Nine Inch Nails or industrial metal acts like Ministry or Godflesh or Strapping Young Lad; or writers like William S. Burroughs and J.G. Ballard.

The term was meant by its creators to evoke the idea of music created for a new generation of people, previous music being more "agricultural". Specifically, it might have referred to the streamlined process by which the music was being made, although many people now interpret the word as a poetic reference to an "industrial" aesthetic, recalling factories and inhuman machinery. On this topic, Peter Christopherson of Industrial Records once remarked, "the original idea of Industrial Records was to reject what the growing industry was telling you at the time what music was supposed to be."

Answer 2

This is an oversimplification of it, but I would consider darkwave basically electronic goth.
And industrial is a much more overall term, and I guess darkwave could be considered a subgenre to an extent.