Partying like it’s 1999? Trance and progressive house were again big winners in DJ Mag’s controversial reader’s poll.
For a sixth year running, the top spot went to a trance jock – this time 30-year-old Dutchman Armin Van Buuren, who took the number one spot from last year’s winner Paul Van Dyk. The undeniably huge Tiesto (who has 307,887 friends on MySpace) nabbed second place, while progressive house stalwarts John Digweed and Sasha rounded out the top five.
“It’s a really big honour, I’m kind of stunned, y’know?” Van Buuren told DJ Mag. “It’s basically a dream come true!”
Hard techno also made a traditionally big showing with Umek, Carl Cox, Valentino Kanzyani, Marco Bailey all making the list, while DJ Mag’s strong UK focus snagged places for local radio names such as Pete Tong, Judge Jules and Lisa Lashes. Psychedelic trance also proved popular with the likes of Infected Mushroom, Astrix and Yahel all placing highly.
Curiously, plenty of votes came in for acts not really known for their DJing, including The Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk, Trentemoller, BT and Booka Shade.
This year’s poll was steeped in controversy, with a number of DJs, including Christopher Lawrence and DJ Dan, being disqualified amid accusations of vote-rigging. This year DJ Mag collated the 345,000 cast votes in-house for the first time, and also instituted new rules to cut down on multiple-voting, a persistent problem with Internet polls. “This year, I made a decision to investigate votes where the same IP address appeared over 50 times for the same person,” explains publisher James Robertson on the DJ Mag website.
DJ Mag Top 100 2007:
1. Armin Van Buuren
2. Tiësto
3. John Digweed
4. Paul Van Dyk
5. Sasha
6. Above & Beyond
7. Carl Cox
8. Ferry Corsten
9. Infected Mushroom
10. David Guetta
11. Deep Dish
12. Paul Oakenfold
13. Markus Schulz
14. Hernan Cattaneo
15. Sander Van Doorn
16. Eddie Halliwell
17. James Zabiela
18. Astrix
19. Richie Hawtin
20. Marco V
