Steve Aoki – record producer, label owner, and master entertainer. However, is he worthy of the title “America’s Best DJ”? According to DJ Times magazine, the answer is yes. The long-established publication revealed the winner of its annual America’s Best DJ poll and Aoki came out on top.
No doubt, Aoki has had arguably the most productive year of his career, by dropping albums Neon Future I and Neon Future II within a span of seven months. But did he truly do enough to catapult himself to the number one spot? Based on the transcendent work of other American DJ’s over the past year such as GRiZ, Bassnectar, Diplo and Pretty Lights to name a few, it’s quite questionable whether he deserves this designation.
In addition, to address the elephant in the room, most people are aware that Aoki rarely performs the act of DJ’ing to the full extent. His shows have high entertainment value, but there are long stretches of time where songs continue to play and he is not near the booth.
While the credibility of the poll has declined over the past few years, this now moves it into the same class as DJ Mag’s “Top 100 DJ’s” poll, where it’s a popularity contest rather than of measurement of skill.
By taking a look at the overall results from the past few years, it also seems that the polling process and metrics gathering may need to be re-evaluated. For example, it’s extremely odd that Markus Schulz could win the award in 2012 and 2014, but couldn’t place in the top 50 in 2013 or the top 10 in 2015.
If we’ve learned anything, it’s that DJ rankings based on fan voting must be viewed with the tiniest grain of salt.
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