EDM Artists Who Weren’t in the DJ Mag Top 100

In case you haven't heard, DJ Mag announced it's top 100 DJs. 2014 results saw huge gains for up and coming artists like Oliver Heldens and Martin Garrix. But where there are winners, there are also losers…. and we'd like to talk about some of the artists who were left off the rankings or who were generally screwed over by DJ Mag Top 100.

Bassnectar
Not on the list. With over 1 million likes on facebook, Bassnectar is more popular than all the DJs who are #50 and below. He also makes incredible, genre-setting music, and is an insanely chill dude. It's hard to believe his legions of Bassheads wouldn't be out there supporting him. Harder still to believe that he's not more popular than Merk and Kremont.

Tritonal
I had to read the list several times to assure myself that I wasn't in a nightmare. How could one of the most talked about acts of 2014 NOT be there? There are no words other than W.T.F.

Adventure Club
Ditto for this talented bass duo. Mysteriously absent from this years rankings, Adventure Club continues to put out beatport topping tracks.

Mat Zo & Kill the Noise
After an epic tour with Kill the Noise (Kill the Zo!), it was very surprising to see neither Kill the Noise or Mat Zo on this ranking. I'm sure KTN didn't give a damn and I will nevertheless be insulted on his behalf. As one of the only djs who live mixes his sets regularly, he deserved to be on the rankings. As for Zo, he played at Madison Square Garden yesterday – something that more than 90% of this Top 100 have never done, nor would ever be invited to do, because they aren't popular enough.

Any Drum n Bass Producer
There were no drum n bass producers on the list whatsoever, which seems strange given that it remains the top genre in the UK, and I assume UK music lovers were allowed to vote.

There are others of course, Flume? Disclosure? Wolfgang Gartner? ATrak? Feed Me? Cazzette? Cedric Gervais? Tommy Trash? Kygo, the exploding tropical house producer? All missing. The absence of Disclosure and Flume is particularly strange, since among the top 20 EDM songs on soundcloud, tracks from these artists take #3, #5, and #11. (Adventure Club, Cedric Gervais, and Kygo also have tracks on the top 20 most played tracks of soundcloud, just FYI). We don't take these seriously and hope our readers won't either. Great music speaks for itself.

But to be honest, I don't really expect these rankings to be representative of the truth. The best producers this year were busy making music and touring rather than running a votes campaign. And they generally have more ethical marketing teams. The competition itself, via “audience voting” is easy to manipulate via fake votes. Consider:

DJ BL3ND
This year the DJ soared up the charts past producers like TJR and Madeon. This is interesting, since other producers vocally tear down the DJ for purchasing fake followers on twitter and facebook – some even refuse to work with him or perform at gigs with him.

DVBBS
Newcomer DVBBS blasted onto the charts at spot #20. And no doubt, they are talented producers. But better than Above and Beyond? Steve Angello? Better than R3Hab? There is no possible way (not even if you paid me, or put a gun to my head) that I would believe these numbers are representative of true popularity. Sure there are some people out there who believe Hootie and the Blowfish was the best band ever, but those twelve people wouldn't win you a worldwide voting competition.

Vinai
Another new entrant, posted up at #62, above Carnage, UMEK, and Gareth Emery. Nicely done. This is great News considering all the bad press Vinai received earlier this year for taking their song and renaming it 3x and then releasing it as “3 brand new tracks!” ? It's hard to believe that anyone would consider them to be worthy of top 100.

If DJ Mag hopes to keep these rankings anything near legitimate, they should have better analytics and better policing of voting. Some of the above are just too bad, and too good, to be true.