Just bullshit Dj Top 100;( DJ Mag’s List of Top 100 DJs is About to Drop—and it’s Bullshit Oct 17 2014 | Michelle Lhooq Share on Tumblrsubmit Every system has its own power hierarchy. For better or worse, in its nearly two decades, DJ Mag’s annual Top 100 DJs poll has become the go-to ranking of DJs. Published each fall, this list allows agents to increase their artists’ asking prices, its stats litter press releases for a year, and the industry outside of dance music’s inner sanctum are often misled into believing that electronic music’s massive and unwieldy fanbase has spoken with a single voice. This year’s results will be announced on Sunday, October 18 at Amsterdam Dance Event and the winners featured both on the magazine’s website and November issue. Without fail, the top spots provide a solid impression of today’s biggest acts. Armin van Buuren, Tiësto, and David Guetta are mainstays, with tour stats and record sales to back up their placement. Nicky Romero and Steve Aoki are more recent additions to the upper echelons, but equally expected to rank. Hardwell Last year’s surprise No. 1, Hardwell, came after a string of successful singles and arduous touring, though it was widely understood that his team had mounted an aggressive social media campaign to dethrone fellow Dutch DJ van Buuren from the top spot. Even more successful at gaming socials for voting were Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike, whose surge from the 30s into the Top 10—and above Skrillex, Deadmau5, Nervo, and Calvin Harris —was more than slightly suspicious. Further down the list, the cracks in the system really start to show. Small-fry DJs place higher than veteran names. Mid-level artists with Facebook likes disproportionate to their gig audiences rank above icons. Accordingly, each year’s poll results are met with deafening boos as both fans and industry accuse DJ Mag of unfair treatment and vote manipulation. Yet, year after year, the poll comes back to life like a stubborn phoenix. So what gives? It’s a pay-to-play system. The winners of 2012s poll There’s no two ways about it: DJ Mag’s Top 100 DJs poll is a well-oiled machine for the magazine. Because the poll is based on a simple American Idol-style public vote, DJs dump enormous amounts of money into marketing campaigns engineered to get them higher rankings, and a good deal of that money is channeled to the magazine itself. As evidenced in emails obtained by THUMP (and replicated on this public thread), DJ Mag’s salespeople actively encourage DJs to buy a competitive advantage through banner ads strategically plastered all over the voting page. “The advertisements will be flashing in front of voters as they tick off boxes. If that doesn’t work, nothing will,” DJ Mag promises. The ad packages also require full pages in the print magazine. Essentially, the playing field (the magazine and its website) is skewed in favor of artists who purchase ads at rates from around $18,000 to $40,000. While advertisements are a part of any publication’s business operations, this particular practice would not be accepted in any other voting system. In politics, such proximity to a polling place is illegal; it’s called electioneering. DJ Mag is constantly playing whack-a-mole with cheaters. Since its inception, the poll has struggled to play catch-up with cheaters. Introduced in the mid 90s, it started as a fun way for the magazine to organize the (then, relatively small) scene of DJs for its growing readership. The first year’s 800 votes were mailed in by postcards, which were tallied by the magazine’s staff. The poll was hardly a bellwether for the industry, but it was already wide open to cheats: someone could theoretically vote multiple times. All they had to do is pay for extra stamps. Winners of 1999s poll When the poll moved to an online vote, the magazine still struggled to prevent fraud. According to Terry Church, director of Ibiza Uncut and former editor at DJ Mag from 2003 to 2007, there was no security, which meant people could submit multiple votes simply by pressing their browser’s back button and voting again. The magazine subsequently introduced cookies, but smart users just cleared their browsers’ caches. Finally, email registration was required. Those too burdened by creating multiple email addresses just hired professional hackers. In 2011, the magazine was forced to extend the voting window due to a hacking attempt in the eleventh hour. Earlier this week, a Russian website posted this year’s rankings prematurely, claiming the results were obtained by a hacker.
Posted on: Sun, 19 Oct 2014 01:14:37 +0000
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