Hardwell, Tiesto, Avicii, Aoki — some of you big boys may be skating on thin ice. Now, obviously electronic music itself owes equal amounts to technology and the actions of flesh-and-blood humans, but according to a new report that analyzes the results of DJ Mag’s Top 100 DJ’s of 2014 list, the status of some of the most celebrated electronic music makers may have some technological “help” as well.
Apparently inspired by a paper entitled Tomorrowland: Followed by Humans or Robots?, the intrepid investigator took it upon himself to dig into the data and try to uncover the true facts. Could some of the top DJ’s on the DJ Mag list have an artificially enhanced popularity score thanks to online robot followers instead of actual human fans? Some of the evidence suggesting that certain DJ’s pumped up their Facebook stats by purchasing fake followers seems pretty convincing. Okay, the big names listed above may not actually be among those brought into question, but come on, how funny would it be if they were?
You can see Denis Doeland’s original article in Dutch here. Or you find an English translation of his analysis right here.
And remember, watch out for robots!