Vote HARD! Over-marketing and the importance of voting in this years’ DJ Mag Top 100.

It’s the time of the year again! Yep, that dreaded time when your Facebook news feed is no less than a serious overload of DJ’s begging for your votes. That’s right, I’m indeed talking about the fact that a couple of weeks ago the annual DJ Mag top 100 voting began.

For those who live on a planet far, far away, the DJ Mag Top 100 is a list of the world’s most ‘eminent’ artists in dance music, which is published on yearly basis. The DJ scoring him or herself the most votes is subsequently crowned as the world’s #1 DJ. Pretty cool title right? Well, additionally a lot of promoters (especially in Asia) book certain artists based on this list, so it can be classed as pretty important for some as basically it’s every artists dream to be placed as high as possible on this list.

On the other hand, many fans and other DJ’s alike agree that this list is absolute bullshit and doesn’t accurately showcase one’s abilities; for example, one of the biggest deliberations about the DJ Mag Top 100 is the notion of ghost-production. I won’t go too far into it because this topic is over-spoken and if you ask me, getting rather boring. One (more interesting) trend I have noticed is that the poll heavily circulates around general popularity and an artist’s marketing techniques; you’ve probably seen a plethora of promotional videos circling the net in aim to convince the broader mass to vote for any given artist. Mind you, many of these posts are sponsored, so you can’t exactly ‘un-see’ them until they start bothering the hell out of you.

Many artists change their profile or banner picture on regular basis to promote certain events they’ll play at, new releases or other interesting stuff that’s about to happen (or happened) in their DJ life. However at this time, right when voting starts, it’s a no-brainer that all the artists seem to suddenly change the face of their social media as these ‘cries’ for attention appear and re-appear like there’s nothing else going on in the world. And I’m not specifically talking about the Hard Dance scene; even the most famed artists do the exact same thing as upper spot guys like Armin van Buuren, Tiësto and Martin Garrix clearly don’t want to be evicted from their throne. It comes to a certain point where this ‘over-marketing’ causes real aggravation and actually results in the opposite outcome. For a second your vote seems more important than the music they produce, as if it’s the only thing that counts.

Despite the chit-chat amongst fans and general online hate, one particular artist saw a great opportunity to spread the word amongst his large fan-base and unfortunately, Deadmau5 shot fire at the Hard Dance scene… Again. Already crowned as one of the most disliked artists outside of the genre, it’s not the first time Deadmau5 has taken his frustrations out on us; in early 2014, he accused Wildstylez of stealing the chord progression from “Some Chords,” as used in “Straightforward.” The whole scene was thrown into frenzy as the war was practically between Deadmau5 and the entire Hardstyle scene. Most recently, he’s taken those keyboard warrior fingers to Twitter and with Miss K8 in the firing line and in my mind he’s chosen a pretty unnecessary target – there were artists begging A LOT harder than K8.

 *Source – EDM Machine*

Now he’s not the most appreciated producer, however this time he might have a point. Is this whole begging for votes thing getting a little bit out of hand? If there’s one thing, it’s that Hard Dance artists definitely deserve these votes.

Many can agree that DJ Mag’s charts should be based on one’s production skills, not popularity; however this is a difficult thing to rate seeing as those two elements go hand in hand. With that being said, there’s still a bunch of exceptional producers who deserve a place on this list, producers who are rather unknown to the mainstream EDM crowd.

Specifically looking at Hard Dance, it’s a rather small scene compared to others and is niche and devoted in its nature. In this scene there are so many talented producers, who deserve a spot on this list, due to their level of skills and the complexity in their tracks. As Sander van Doorn stated during an interview with AAN, (referring to Noisecontrollers) “I realised how easily he could write a House hit I he wanted to.” This clearly suggests that producing Hardstyle is like playing a higher level of a game.

If there’s one thing that the Hard Dance scene boasts, it’s that we thrive on integrity and the majority of the fans believe that good productions outshine marketing and popularity. In most instances, ravers care about the quality of the music rather than image, which is a reason many of us don’t bother voting or better yet, vote 5x “Darude.” However, is not voting the way to get Hard Dance music more globally recognised? We need to step up our game and show the broader public what style rules them all.

In the last couple of years, Hard Dance music has rapidly expanded across borders like raging fire, captivating the hearts of prospective fans each day. Look at the several festivals in and outside of Europe, new hostings and even a brand new Defqon.1 in Chile. I know I’m touching a very well-bespoken subject here, but the globalisation and commercialisation of the scene could actually be a good thing, despite all the hate on social media.

If we all stand behind our beloved music and vote our favourite artists into this ‘prestigious’ list, we can show the EDM scene that Hard Dance is a force to be reckoned with and even boost our own credibility to the outside world.

As more and more events are sprouting, the biggest names in the hard dance scene are flying across the entire globe to perform on the biggest stages and of course these heroes can only be one place at a time, thus creating opportunities for the next gen. On top of that, this growth can also open up a lot of new doors for the professional sphere and expand Hard Dance’s entertainment industry. The more attention our scene gets, the more visible these things will become.

Hard dance is bigger than ever, and deserves to be in the spotlights. It’s a beautiful thing yet to be discovered by many. Time to step up and dominate this year’s top 100, making a statement that hard dance is not to be messed with. Vote your favourite artist in, because besides all the endless craving for votes, they do deserve it.

GET VOTING: https://top100djsvote.djmag.com/