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Late last month, Forbes published its list of the world’s top-earning D.J.s.
Calvin Harris, 31, who less than a decade ago was stocking groceries in
a Scottish supermarket, came in first place, earning $66 million over a
12-month period beginning in June last year through club fees,
endorsement deals and music royalties. That’s more than what Jay Z ($56
million) or Kim Kardashian ($52.5 million) grossed in the same period,
and it’s one of many recent indications that EDM, or electronic dance
music — once the commercially marginal soundtrack to underground parties
— has reached an impressive new level of mainstream success.
Kevin Watson, an analyst
in London for the International Music Summit (an electronic music
industry trade event held yearly on the Spanish island of Ibiza) now
estimates the global value of EDM to be $6.9 billion — about a 50
percent jump since 2013. “Here in the U.K., we’ve had peaks of interest
before but we have seen nothing like the global cultural exposure and
move into the mainstream as we have in the last two years,” he said.
“It’s been absolutely phenomenal.”
Mr.
Watson noted that as recently as 2010, EDM’s audience was so marginal
that Nielsen didn’t even list it as a separate genre in its annual
SoundScan report. But last year, Nielsen said that EDM was the fourth
most popular streaming genre in the United States, ahead of country
music. And electronic artists continue to rack up new hits. Last month,
Spotify announced that a track by Mr. Harris (“How Deep Is Your Love”)
was the summer’s most-streamed song in Britain, while another electronic
artist, Major Lazer, had the service’s most-streamed track globally
(“Lean On”).
That
kind of reach has only raised the lavish fees that the world’s top
D.J.s can command from festivals and nightclubs in Las Vegas and Ibiza,
where they often have long-term residencies. Forbes only began tracking
D.J. pay in 2012 and, since then, the total earnings of the Top 10 have
grown by about 120 percent, from $125 million in 2012 to $274 million
last year. Meanwhile, the D.J.s themselves — an entirely male group
whose youngest member, Martin Garrix, is 19 — have become celebrity
personalities, garnering recording and even endorsement deals. David
Guetta, the French D.J. and producer, is a model for the luxury watch
brand Tag Heuer, while Mr. Harris is the new face — or, rather, body — of Emporio Armani’s spring underwear campaign. This is the third year in a row that Mr. Harris,
who can earn more than $300,000 a night for a club appearance, has
topped Forbes’s list. “The rise of dance music has been astronomical in
the last three years,” he told the magazine. “I happened to be in the
right place at the right time.”
Turning Beats Into Billions
Worldwide revenue from electronic dance music, 12 months through May 2015, estimate
$1.7 billion
Calvin Harris
David Guetta
Tiësto
Skrillex
Steve Aoki
Avicii
Kaskade
Martin Garrix
Zedd
Afrojack
Still,
one should be careful not to overstate the mass appeal of electronic
music — at least as a source of cinematic adaptation. The film “We Are
Your Friends,” with Zac Efron, about the life of a D.J., bombed at the
American box office after opening in August. It earned $1.8 million in
2,333 theaters — the worst debut for a major studio release on record,
according to the Hollywood Reporter.
