Resident Advisor drops Top 100 DJ list-and the comparison with DJ Mag is incredible

Over the past number of years DJ lists have caused a storm in the electronic music community and with good reason. The main culprit at question here of course, is the DJ Mag Top 100 DJs list which is released yearly and every time the new list emerges, there is even more controversy surrounding the questionable placings.

This year seemed to caused the biggest storm yet, with DJ Mag revealing that Dimitri Vegas and Like Mike are the “number 1 DJs in the world.” However, their somewhat questionable voting tactics such as the infamous Tomorrowland girls and even going as far as making a video to promote themselves for the poll, have raised serious doubts in the dance music community regarding the polls legitimacy, and also how serious we can take not only this list, but DJ lists as a whole.

One such list which definitely has a little bit more credibility is Resident Advisor’s. The website which features more techno and house artists shows how just how much an audience matters when it comes to a DJ list, which are really just glorified popularity contests. Aimed at the “underground” audience, this list definitely shows a range of excellent techno and house DJs, but sadly doesn’t really go any further than that as we don’t see any DnB or Trance for example on the list.  However this list does feature more actual DJs it has to be said. And the comparison between this and DJ Mag’s list is simply ridiculous. The entire top half of the DJ Mag poll don’t feature at all on the RA list, and the first person to feature is entry number 51:  Richie Hawtin, who comes in at 21 in the RA list.

Reading through the comments on the RA Facebook page show some unhappiness as is to be expected, and even some artists went out of their way to joke about the list such as Scuba, who offered people a certain substance in exchange for votes but of course was joking.

Hopefully next year we can all either stop voting or just forget about DJ lists entirely, and focus instead on what really matters-the music, the clubs, the experience.

Check out a link for the Resident Advisor list below and also one of our favourite cuts of the year from number 17 on the list, Bicep:

Click here for the full list of DJ’s!