Where Have All the DJs Gone?
Oh, the plans we had; oh, the plans we made; oh, the plans that got cancelled by COVID-19. The seriousness of the novel coronavirus merited - and still merits - the cancellation of a lot of social and familial activities. Perhaps least among these events were all the concerts, festivals, and club nights where I might have heard some of my favorite electronic dance music and seen some friends that, otherwise, I would just not see. Once I accept the social part of the music must be abandoned for now, I still maintain the need to seek release from my favorite tunes. So, where have all the DJs gone now that they’re not playing their songs in nightclubs, or on stage for the masses? The answer is, they’ve moved online, and that in-and-of itself isn’t so fancy in the year 2020. The advances in technology that enable this ever-growing landscape of virtual DJ concerts, however, are pretty cool.
Through the lockdowns these past months (and likely moving ahead into future lockdowns), people’s affinity for electronic dance music (EDM) and DJ culture remains strong. One source chronicling the who’s, what’s, when’s, where’s, and why’s of the EDM scene is DJ Mag, who just concluded voting and published the results of their annual Top 100 DJs poll. Now, almost a decade after his first #1 spotting, one of my personal favorites, David Guetta, has made the #1 slot again in DJ Mag’s Top 100. One of the things that made this win different was not only the virtual awards ceremony held out of Amsterdam, Netherlands, but the Top 100 DJs Virtual Festival series fundraiser where Guetta and 95 others broke records in viewership and helped raise thousands for UNICEF, with approximately 8 million viewers just while voting was open.
But that wasn’t the only fundraising virtual concert series Guetta and his colleagues participated in. United At Home also live streamed events to over 50 million viewers, raising $1.5 million for COVID-19 relief. Guetta also headlined Tomorrowland’s “Around the World” digital festival. He hasn’t stopped there either. Shortly after winning his top spot, Guetta and DJ Mag partnered with Snapchat to launch an augmented reality concert featuring the DJ superimposed atop Amsterdam’s Royal Palace via two exclusive Snapchat Lenses. One Lens, only available on-site, turns the Palace into a speaker-covered stage, and the other globally available Lens projects David Guetta into the sky above.
Concert purveyors around the world have tapped pools of DJ talent in this pandemic, taking advantage of booking agreements made in 2019 for concerts in 2020, to showcase the spirit-lifting and morale-boosting power of EDM. Not only have they succeeded on that front, but they’re also leveraging the latest and greatest in music and video production to raise funds for those in need. A shout out to the social media giant YouTube feels merited at this juncture, as their streaming platform has delivered countless hours of virtual entertainment directly into millions of living rooms globally, be they digital DJs or baby sharks (do do, do-do, do-do).
