Unless you’ve been at ADE this week, you have to have noticed the flurry of activity on The FPIA’s page on Twitter about the DJMag Top 100 being announced and denounced. Add to that a new partnership which arose from the cries of the latest Top 100 being more about money than about skill and reality. Enter a UK company called SweatBox Events and a new website which claim the old Top 100 is broken and completely unfixable which to most diehard fans know to be true. These guys have got together to try and make a more positive approach to a popularity poll in that it will be fairer and more reflective of what is actual. In the CEO’s own words we let Dominic Lipscombe tell you what their hopes and aspirations are for this Award and how with the help of you the Fans can make this a bigger event than what we have now. A true reflection of talent.
Tell Us About SweatBox Events
SweatBox Events began in May 2015 and for our first event we had Dimitri Vangelis & Wyman grace the DJ Booth, which was a near sell-out show and an absolutely fantastic start to what I hope is a continued success – especially given that before that event I had absolutely no experience running one and I had very little help, although both my girlfriend and my business advisor at University did help a lot.
Since that event we’ve played host to other names such as DubVision, Julian Jordan, D.O.D, to name but a few. We’ve also hosted a room at DLDK in Manchester (Victoria Warehouse)!
We have a lot of exciting stuff in the pipeline for the next few months, and it’ll be great to share it.
Where did The DJ Awards come into this?
Even though we’ve been running events for a fairly short while, me and my team have all been interested (or you could say involved if you count attending the events!) in the industry for many, many years.
This year was a bit different though. After seeing a certain Top 100 get announced once again, we were bemused at the way it was all announced, and the positioning of artists.
Eric Prydz for example – although we are predominately EDM events, I personally love Prydz and seeing his place was shocking. Another funny one was seeing Bassjackers end up with Blasterjaxx’s press picture. We’re talking about a company that literally changes prices of artists overnight, getting very simple things such as press pictures wrong. It’s mad.
To be honest, this is something I’ve wanted to do for a while but not really been able to due to lack of industry contacts.
We’ve now got the leverage to change the game and not just be another drop in the ocean, so we thought it’s time to put our feet on the ground and get it going.
The actual voting system went from non-existent to testing in less than a day – I’m currently in my Second Year at Liverpool John Moore University’s studying Software Engineering so that probably helped a bit!
How did the partnership with The FPIA come about?
We approached The FPIA as we know they have a great following for this sort of thing and would be great to have on board. We weren’t wrong either, we’ve been mentioned by some of the biggest EDM Blogs in the World and we’ve only got a coming soon page publicly available!
How is this a fair poll?
Well, for a start – the website is coded in such a way that all small mobile devices undergo a bit more verification than say, a computer or a laptop.
We also have many different things coded in so that when the artist’s votes to Facebook Likes ratio starts getting a bit uneven, it flags up to us and then we can manually check over all votes.
In addition to manual checks, when other things happen (which we can’t mention to protect it), the voters will start having to answer questions about the people they’re voting for – fairly simple questions, but if you’re there because you’ve just been told to do it for no reason, you’re stuck.
Finally, votes have to be confirmed on a separate page, the link for which is emailed to you. You are required to then complete the Google reCaptcha service that the majority of websites use (such as Google & Dropbox) before you are able to fully confirm your vote. Once you’ve finally clicked confirm, your vote counts!
The results of the poll can be viewed by: Genre (default), Country & Overall. We believe after much discussion this is the best avenue and will allow the results to be fair.
We were originally looking at a live score board, but have decided against it so that the results are actually a surprise.
What is the end plan for this?
Well we’re already in talks with agencies about bookings for the results night. While it may not yet possible to book the number #1 DJ – we do hope to in the future. We’re hoping this is a brand with longevity and that ends up being the definitive DJ Top List. We can all say that but we will work as hard as we can to get it to where we want to it to be. The Top!
Even if it doesn’t get thousands and thousands of votes the first time round, it’s something to work on as a base – we won’t give up.
Where do we see this going in the future – and the state of Dance Music?
We’re hoping to tie The DJ Awards in with our events brand, SweatBox Events. We’d like to see The DJ Awards be the Top List you think of when you say “Eric Prydz is at number one”.
Dance Music – people says that “EDM is dying” – but is it really? It’s more to do with people’s tastes changing over time. We still have a ridiculously great crowd that works really well. There is a local festival called Reminisce Festival which caters towards all the true classics, featuring names such as Black Box with their great tune, Ride on Time. That’s only been going a few years, has been getting bigger each time and still selling out.
After this I am certainly excited for the chance to have another rival poll that tries to extract the true reflection of fans rather than bots and click farms and promotional monies paid for the fame. I wish them well and encourage all to go here http://www.thedjawards.com and sign up to participate in the vote. It’s an ambitious project but one that will succeed if we as true music fans support it.