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.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.”
Now he’s reaping what he sowed.
Tiësto is one of many being rapidly expanding subculture that’s turning the ears of rainbow bracelet-donning teenagers and deep-pocketed Wall Street types alike. Once isolated and splintered, electronic dance music (EDM) has exploded in an age of social media, cheap music technology and mega-festivals, lining the pockets of performers and promoters alike. The ten artists on FORBES DJ list pulled in a combined $125 million over a year-long period.
“They are… the stars of today and it is going to continue that way,” says Shelly Finkel, a music industry veteran, whose 1973 Summer Jam At Watkins Glen was the largest music festival ever. Back then headliners included The Grateful Dead and The Allman Brothers.
Rather than traditional rock bands, the names highest on festival bills are more likely to be DJs whose appearance fees are easily in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Organizers at this year’s Las Vegas Electric Daisy Carnival spent well over $20 million on production and talent, says promoter Pasquale Rotella, the festival’s creator. According to organizers, this year’s sold-out event attracted 320,000 attendees over three days, most of whom paid $215 for a pass.
“This is the biggest I’ve ever seen [dance music] and I’ve been in it since the beginning,” says Rotella, who first started producing dance shows out of Los Angeles warehouses in the early 90s. Rotella remains coy on how much his production company, Insomniac Events, is making, but notes that they are “steadily growing.”
While those who have been in the dance music scene for decades scoff at the generic, all-encompassing label of EDM, few can deny its rapid progression into the mainstream. Danny Whittle, brand director for one of the world’s biggest dance clubs, Pacha, places EDM’s rise on the genre’s coexistence with the Web. DJs were some of the first to truly give their music for free and adopt social media, making money off of gigs and appearances rather than album sales.by ryan mac
