Bingo Players

Bingo Players is a Dutch electro house institution built on friendship, big room energy, and one of the genre’s more bittersweet stories. The project started in 2006 as a duo, Maarten Hoogstraten and Paul Bäumer, releasing music through their own imprint, Hysteria Records, which they also used to put out tracks from other electro house producers coming up alongside them.

Their breakthrough arrived with “Cry (Just a Little)” in May 2011, a track that pushed into the top 40 across the Netherlands, Belgium, the UK, and beyond, putting Bingo Players on the international radar. They followed it with “Rattle” later that year, another top 40 hit across multiple European markets, before landing their biggest crossover smash: “Get Up (Rattle)” hit number one in the UK in 2013 and cracked the top 10 in Germany, Austria, France, and Australia. In 2014, “Knock You Out” became their first number one on the US dance chart, cementing them as a genuine global act.

Then came the hardest chapter. Paul Bäumer was diagnosed with cancer in July 2013 and passed away that December after a hard-fought battle. It was a gutting loss for the Dutch dance community. In early 2014, Hoogstraten made the decision to carry Bingo Players forward as a solo act, honoring what Bäumer would have wanted — the project’s name staying plural as a tribute to where it started.

Hoogstraten has kept Bingo Players moving in the years since, releasing collaborations with artists like Oomloud and Zookëper and returning to Perfect Havoc with “Phone A Friend” in 2022. The sound has evolved with the times, but the DNA — big, feel-good electro house built for festival crowds — has stayed intact. Bingo Players remains one of the defining names to come out of the Dutch house scene’s early-2010s explosion, a project that turned personal tragedy into a reason to keep the music going rather than let it end.