In case you were wondering what the state of EDM was according to a mainstream media company or how the people with money are looking at EDM, Forbes does a great job in the piece below. As we've reported before DJs are the new Rock Stars
(forbes) Even from the back wall at a recent Skrillex concert in Austin, Tex., the DJ’s sound clatters and bangs on the brain, an all-out aural assault. Every thump of the bass feels like a punch to the throat, from the inside. Yet the thousands of revelers writhing in unison enjoy the experience with a dreamy fervor generally reserved for religious awakenings, undulating every time Skrillex twists a knob on his elaborate soundboard, with nary a person leaving until the show wraps up a little after 2 a.m.
Electronic dance music, or EDM, is an ascendant genre that is in equal measure a creed, with Skrillex emerging as the high priest. He’s credited with popularizing dubstep, a particularly thumpy variation, and snagged three Grammys for his efforts this year. Over the past 12 months the 24-year-old pulled in an estimated $15 million, the second most of any DJ over that period. And it’s not just pill-popping teenagers fueling his popularity.
That lawyer has a lot of company. Over the last year Skrillex has performed in front...
of at least 250,000 people, playing his own tunes in over 150 live shows across 19 countries--a formula that means millions for him and for his DJ peers who follow a similar schedule.
Rock and pop stars are hurting: Music sales are down, album creation is time-intensive, and elaborate live setups generally result in just one-third of gross ticket sales for the artist while also crimping the number of performances in any given year. DJs don’t need to create their own music--their art is curation and mixing. While Skrillex and his peers have gained popularity by producing their own music, they generally release it free, rendering piracy, the bane of traditional artists, irrelevant.
Instead, they make their money from the road, and because even the best DJs travel light--often toting nothing more than a thumb drive--they take home the bulk of their gross pay, sometimes more than $100,000 for a few hours’ work, repeated nightly if they choose. It’s a volume business and a big one: The ten top-earning DJs pulled in a combined $125 million last year (see chart, p. 99).
“This is the hottest segment of the music industry right now,” says Jonathan Shecter, who books DJs for Wynn Resorts in Las Vegas. “It’s so hot because it’s so cost-effective.”
As soon as I step out of the elevator on the second floor of Austin’s cowboy-chic Driskill Hotel, I can hear bass booming from Skrillex’s presidential suite. I find him spinning from a makeshift DJ booth in the corner, looking--in a black V-neck, dark jeans and a pair of Adidas ( ADDDY.PK - news - people ) Sambas--more like a gaffer than a rock star. Assorted containers of caffeinated and alcoholic beverages are scattered around him in various states of emptiness.
The room’s other inhabitants--publicists, a manager and a half-dozen DJ pals--don’t seem to be paying much attention. Making music, it seems, is Skrillex’s natural state. Upon noticing a new face in the room, though, he shuffles over and offers me a beer, fixing himself a gin-and-Red Bull at the minibar along the way--fuel for the long night ahead of him.
I’ve got a USB stick and [turntables], and there’s no production cost,” he says. “But you throw a great party and people have the best time.”
Born Sonny Moore in Los Angeles, Skrillex (he picked up his moniker as a teen while he and his friends were making up AOL Instant Messenger screen names) fully appreciates the difference between a star DJ’s life and that of a rocker. At 16 Skrillex caught on as lead singer of From First to Last, a band that practiced a hybrid of punk and emo music known as “screamo.” The group’s first two albums sold 500,000 copies through indie label Epitaph, earning the young rockers a $3.5 million record deal from EMI’s Capitol Records. But after two years of touring the band members were at one another’s throats.
No longer happy as part of a group, Skrillex left the surefire payday in 2007 to focus on his own, electronic, music. Scrounging up solo gigs, he soon found himself living off his credit card, with $1,500 to his name. To save cash he and ten friends rented 10,000 square feet in a crumbling warehouse in downtown Los Angeles. “I don’t care about having money,” he now says, while lighting his second cigarette. “It’s about being happy, man.”
Like most entrepreneurs, though, Skrillex found that, long term, the latter leads to the former. He started spinning at clubs in Los Angeles in 2008; two years later he recorded an EP called My Name Is Skrillex on his laptop and released it as a free download on MySpace. Music critics weren’t particularly enamored with his work, likening it to everything from “a modem with indigestion” to “Satan belching,” but kids who dance loved it.
As his buzz grew Skrillex sent a track to Deadmau5 (pronounced “deadmouse”), who FORBES estimates made $11.5 million last year spinning in a giant red mouse costume. He in turn quickly signed Skrillex to Mau5trap, his Atlantic-backed label.
In October 2010 Skrillex released an EP called Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites, the rare hit for an electronic artist, peaking at No. 49 on the Billboard charts and selling over 1 million copies. His live paychecks surged in lockstep. In 2010 he was pulling in about $5,000 per show--quite a good living. A year later his typical take had increased by a factor of ten, and in 2012, armed with the three Grammys--for Best Dance Recording, Best Dance/Electronica Album and Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical--it has doubled again. Skrillex recently played in front of 5,000 people in Budapest at a superclub with a pyrotechnic-equipped DJ booth; in Oslo he crammed in two shows on the same day at a 6,000-capacity club and then decided to spin at the afterparty as well. The most he’s ever picked up for a gig? “Couple hundred thousand,” he says, after a deep cigarette drag, in a conspiratorial hush.
It’s not lost even on these new rock stars that they’re making huge money largely by playing prerecorded music. Predictably, sniping across this nascent industry has ensued. Deadmau5, the sixth-highest-earning DJ, recently disparaged David Guetta, the fourth-highest earner, telling Rolling Stone, “He just plays tracks,” and generally deriding “button-pushers.” A member of DJ trio Swedish House Mafia, the third-highest-earning act, responded in kind: “That’s exactly what [Deadmau5] does.”
Deadmau5 then countered on his blog with an indictment of the entire genre: “We all hit play. It’s no secret. … It’s not about performance art, it’s not about talent, either.” He also tweaked his protégé, saying that “even Skrillex isn’t doing anything too technical.”
Skrillex couldn’t help but add his two cents. “It’s not about validating skill or not skill,” he tweeted. “It’s about the effect it has on people and if you enjoy doing it, that’s all.”
Skrillex has an effect on so many people that he’s encountering the problem that most who earn eight figures in any music form encounter--cries from aficionados that he’s taken their underground subgenre and sold it out to the mainstream. Many now deride his music as “bro-step,” invoking the favorite frat-boy term of endearment. Even Skrillex’s compatriots aren’t above a playful jab--in the middle of our interview they surprise him with a bottle of Smirnoff Ice, playing off a sophomoric college ritual known as “Bros Icing Bros,” which requires an empty-handed recipient to immediately chug the exceedingly sweet alcoholic beverage.
Yet Skrillex just shrugs. “It’s different when you look at [my music] through someone else’s eyes,” he says, dutifully sipping his Smirnoff. “It’s good to be in the place we’re at now, because we know what our hearts really tell us really works.”
Meanwhile, he’s pursuing other methods of moneymaking that won’t undermine his brand. Though his retail music is distributed through Atlantic Records, he launched an independent label, OWSLA, in September 2011, with 12 electronic artists already signed. Last year he composed music for a videogame, Mortal Kombat, and this year for a film, Wreck-It Ralph. Skrillex says scoring games and movies could become a bigger part of his career--as long as the conditions are right.
“All we gotta do is keep the music and keep the vibes,” he says. “To continue to make good experiences, man, that’s why we live.”
One thing he hasn’t done yet: a product endorsement. It’s not for lack of opportunity. (One top DJ, Diplo, is now a ubiquitous television presence shilling BlackBerry.) “We turn s--t down every day,” says Tim Smith, Skrillex’s manager since his screamo days.
Indeed, keeping those $15 million takes coming ultimately means protecting the brand. “I don’t care if someone offers me half a million dollars,” says Skrillex. “I’m not going to do a cellphone thing.”
Spinning Profits
Holland’s Tijs Michiel Verwest is a man of firsts. Better known as Tiësto, the 43-year-old DJ was the first to play the Olympics, performing in Athens in 2004; seven years later he filled a 26,000-seat arena in California, the biggest crowd for a solo electronic act in U.S. history. Now he’s the first to top FORBES’ inaugural ranking of the world’s highest-paid DJs.
Tiësto pulled in an estimated $22 million over the past 12 months, playing more than 100 shows--a big raise from his beginnings, when he charged $50 a night. “Whenever I made money I invested in myself. … I bought whatever I needed to make my career better,” he says. “I never really spent money on other stuff, like buying expensive cars.”
He’s now reaping what he sowed. Electronic dance music (EDM) has exploded, as evidenced by this year’s Las Vegas Electric Daisy Carnival ( CCL - news - people ), which attracted 320,000 attendees over three days, most of whom paid $215 for a pass (Tiësto headlined, though high winds canceled his show). And entertainment moguls are ponying up, from Steve Wynn, who’s signed Tiësto and a host of others to residencies at his Las Vegas resorts, to fellow Forbes 400 member Ron Burkle, who’s been sniffing around the festival business, to Robert F.X. Sillerman, who made his fortune from rock and pop via SFX (a precursor to Live Nation ( LYV - news - people )) and is now trying to repeat the trick with EDM.
.png)
.png)
