Plenty of rankings have tried to create the most objective list of “best” producers, but no matter where you start, there’s an issue of bias. The DJ Mag Top 100 is heavily influenced by how much money producers put into it for advertising purposes, the Billboard Top 100 is perhaps too objective, taking into account only hard numbers, and entirely fan-run polls like the Reddit Top 100 just don’t have a big enough group of people for any statistical significance.
All that being said, EDM Sauce took another crack at the objective route, looking into a variety of criteria, assigning each a point value, and then ranking DJs in that way. In their report, they admitted that they placed certain limitations on each ranking, and also admitted that not every criteria was able to be explored in the most in-depth fashion due to lack of resources. Below are the criteria they evaluated (all data is for the period of January 1, 2018, until October 21, 2018):
- Total Soundcloud Streams
- Total Revenue (as provided by the Forbes Top Earning DJs list)
- Total YouTube Views For Videos Uploaded
- Total Shows Played
- Total Unique DJ Spins (based off the 1001tracklists Top 100)
- Most Googled Artists
- Total Weeks At #1 On Billboard EDM/Dance Charts (data was pulled from 4 different Billboard charts to compile weeks at #1, hence Zedd’s 86 weeks).
A full breakdown of the explanations and limitations can be found in their report here. Below are the top 20 DJs from their report.
20. Kaskade
19. Afrojack
18. Skrillex
17. Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike
16. Axwell Ingrosso
15. Alan Walker
14. Hardwell
13. Armin van Buuren
12. Don Diablo
11. Steve Aoki
10. Kygo
9. DJ Snake
8. Diplo
7. Tiesto
6. Martin Garrix
5. Zedd
3. Calvin Harris (Tied)
3. The Chainsmokers (Tied)
2. David Guetta
1. Marshmello
Photo via Rukes.com