Vote for Pedro – the hipocrisy of DJ polls

Social media, it’s a funny old thing. We can use it to look at pictures of animals in hats, stalk your ex, get up to the minute news on your fav artists and conversely those artists (and DJs of course) can use it to pimp their wares. They can tell us about forthcoming tracks, new tours and if you’re really (un)lucky they can canvas for votes for DJ Top100 lists – whilst retweeting anyone that has shown they have voted already – but what is acceptable behaviour when gunning for these votes and what can be deemed as cringeworthy?

If you follow an array of DJs, as many of us will do, it can seem like a bit of an onslaught (depending on who you follow of course). First you get the DJ Mag Top100 canvassers and the cool cats start going on about how crass and desperate it is begging your fans for votes. A few months later you end up being down wind of the Resident Advisor Top 100 and funnily enough you end up seeing quite a few DJs taking a rather hypocritical approach and doing the same thing as the DJs they had lambasted previously.

One of the things I’ve read a LOT over the past few years is that the DJ Mag Top100 is no longer relevant, with a whole host of DJs in the list that many haven’t heard of. I hadn’t heard of nearly half this year, but I’m not naïve enough to think it’s not relevant. Visit other countries around the world and if one of those DJs is booked to spin, they’ll end up having their position in the Top100 after their name most of the time. That may not be deemed to be cool by some, but it does have substance across the globe for many a club goer and club promoter alike.

What I take particular umbrage to, is the often delusional efforts or the over the top efforts. A few years back a certain fringe member of the Swedish House Mafia, who has a penchant for wearing caps, was literally everywhere I looked, even though I didn’t follow him personally. Email-shots, Facebook paid adverts and not just a picture saying ‘vote for me’, nope, a whole video put together showing how ‘awesome’ he was. Is it savvy business acumen or ego that drives this process?

Industry stalwarts Copyright, took a rather blunt, but fair approach to it all by tweeting “Dear Fellow DJs. Don’t canvas for best DJ votes. It’s a bit shit”. Berlin’s Till von Sein amusingly wrote “Shout out to all those DJs who surprise me with their begging for RA poll votes”. If you’re going to do it, maybe go down the subtle route with some reverse psychology like Eats Everything posting up a picture of Steven Seagal saying that he would get his vote for the Resident Advisor poll. Possibly the light hearted approach is better like Huxley posing in a picture with his dog with a makeshift hat on with ‘Vote Huxley RA Top 100’ on it? Personally, if you’re canvassing for votes for anything, it’s best to take the Napoleon Dynamite approach!

by Grant Richards

• Share
• Tweet
• Pin it
• Share
• Email
• More