Editor’s Notice: EDM.com proudly publishes 4 installments of annual year-end protection: Business Leaders, Performances & DJ Units, Music Producers and Songs.
Most of the time, year-end protection printed by the music trade’s huge pool of media shops is proscribed to its artists and performers.
To honor the extraordinary work of the trade’s unsung individuals and types, EDM.com yearly acknowledges a bunch of leaders whose contributions redefined dancefloors and helped form the way forward for digital dance music.
File Label: Specialists Solely
Solid within the crucible of a late-2023 rebrand, John Summit’s Experts Only imprint emerged with a readability of imaginative and prescient that few may match this yr.
From releases like Max Styler’s “Lights Out” and Chris Avantgarde and Kevin de Vries’ “Killa,” the label was a major driver of the dialog in regards to the ever-evolving boundaries of tech home music. Summit’s personal debut album, Consolation In Chaos, arrived mid-year as a tour de drive of emotion and experimentation, bolstered by standout remixes like Cassian’s gorgeous tackle “Shiver” and YDG’s transformative remix of “Go Again.”
The label’s ambitions additionally prolonged far past its music, with the Specialists Solely Ski Weekender in Vail curating a groundbreaking fusion of slope-side adventures and dancefloors. Impressed by Summit’s personal ardour for snowboarding, the occasion introduced the label’s ethos to life: daring, unflinching and deeply related to its viewers.
In a single quick yr, Specialists Solely emerged as a inventive drive that respects the roots of home music whereas fearlessly carving out its personal future, setting a excessive bar for what it means to guide with imaginative and prescient and goal.
Phrases by Cameron Sunkel.
Honorable Mentions: Memory Palace | HypnoVizion | Defected Records
Specialists Solely
Membership: Membership Area
A cornerstone of world membership tradition, Miami’s Membership Area is not an odd venue—it is a ceremony of passage.
In 2024, the venue’s ethos of “the get together by no means ends” was examined and confirmed when it closed for 3 months of structural renovations. Even in its absence, the Area legacy loomed giant as Manufacturing facility City held down the scene whereas followers restlessly waited. When the autumn lastly arrived, Area’s reopening get together, headlined by Peggy Gou, reminded us why this 2,000-capacity spot holds an outsized affect within the dance music neighborhood.
From a marathon 36-hour Miami Music Week closing get together that includes Carlita, Marco Carola and extra to a 24-hour Artwork Basel closing get together with 23 DJs from 13 nations, Area was a seedbed of membership tradition. The venue is not nearly main pageant weekends—it snaps into motion for cultural occasions like Formulation One Race Week, when Black Espresso and MEDUZA dazzled behind the decks. Now, Tiësto is primed for a uncommon “Dawn” set in January 2025.
Membership Area’s significance transcends its measurement, incomes its place as a vacation spot the place DJs from across the globe collect to create one thing extraordinary. And in 2024, its organizers continued to stay as much as their prevailing tenet: whether or not it is 3am, dawn or mid-morning, they have your again.
Phrases by Cameron Sunkel.
Honorable Mentions: Cloud 9 Fiji | Ushuaïa Ibiza | Drumsheds
Music Firm: Vita Motus
For the idealistic minds behind the producers of music festivals, one query typically gnaws like a spider within the mind: can a stage be greater than only a platform? For Vita Motus, the design studio behind Coachella’s groundbreaking Quasar stage, it is a resounding “sure.”
Led by its bold founder and CEO, Heather Shaw, Vita Motus has executed phantasmagoric phases for EDC, Electrical Forest and Lightning in a Bottle, amongst different main festivals. However she discovered herself in a three-month stress cooker forward of Coachella, the place the studio was tasked with constructing a universe unto itself.
The stage’s monolithic LED partitions, Shaw advised EDM.com again in April, had been designed “to push the boundaries of what is attainable at music festivals.” Her group in the end delivered, establishing a bastion of iconoclastic pageant design inside Coachella’s hallowed desert metropolis.
The stage grew to become the epicenter of EDM on the nation’s most iconic music pageant, which in 2024 teemed with unforgettable rave moments. Followers willingly plunged into the rabbit holes of modern three-hour DJ units by RÜFÜS DU SOL and a cancer-free Michael Bibi, amongst different influential digital acts. Eric Prydz and Anyma, two of the trade’s most subversive creators of visible shows, additionally carried out collectively for the primary time because the solar set.
To that finish, Quasar dissolved the boundaries between digital music and performative spectacle, reimagining the inert live performance stage as a residing, respiration organism.
Phrases by Jason Heffler.
Honorable Mentions: End Overdose | Playtime Engineering | WavMaker
Music Govt: Cindy Charles
Cindy Charles didn’t simply change how we hear digital dance music this yr. She modified how we really feel it—each collectively and aside.
Charles tragically died in October following a site visitors accident throughout the Amsterdam Dance Occasion, the world’s main digital music summit. However earlier than we misplaced Twitch’s trailblazing Head of Music, she led the event of the platform’s pioneering DJ class, a breakthrough that established it as the primary to supply a long-term dwelling for DJs to legally livestream.
Charles, a visionary agent of change within the intersection of music and know-how, redefined how artists and creators interact with audiences on-line. She stays revered for main Twitch’s label relations and music licensing operations, fostering an ecosystem that allows DJs to construct fanbases and obtain monetary freedom on the platform.
Along with fiercely championing rave tradition, Charles was additionally an unshakeable advocate for ladies within the music trade. She co-founded the San Francisco chapter of She Is The Music in addition to Ladies In Digital, a neighborhood of over 1,500 members with a mission “to assist ladies outline a limitless future for all by shining a lightweight on careers in digital and know-how.”
Phrases by Jason Heffler.
Honorable Mentions: Christine Thomas (Dolby) | Adam Russakoff (Ultra Worldwide) | Jeff Abel (Excision Presents)
Twitch
Occasion Organizer: Breakaway Music Competition
Breakaway did not simply host music festivals in 2024—it created locations at scale.
Breakaway lived as much as its identify in 2024, leaving rivals in its mud because it grew to become the nation’s preeminent touring EDM pageant. The occasion’s organizers are actually poised to increase to a bevy of latest markets in 2025, swelling to a staggering 12 cities.
That type of progress was a white whale for impartial festivals in 2024, a time when inflationary pressures hiked working prices to prohibitive ranges. Nonetheless, Breakaway managed to turn out to be the fastest-growing music pageant model within the nation, due partly to their knack for mixing high-profile headliners with undiscovered expertise in lineups that felt each elite and accessible, a uncommon feat in a crowded market.
Breakaway’s affect, nonetheless, is bigger than the sum of its dozen elements. The model supercharged its sustainability efforts by partnering with Zero Waste Occasion Productions, a number one supplier of recycling, composting and waste administration companies, to divert from landfills over 25,000 kilos of recyclable supplies, together with dangerous plastics.
Breakaway’s proprietors additionally not too long ago introduced that each one of their 2025 festivals will settle for cryptocurrency as fee, mirroring its ethos of progress and inclusivity to foster a brand new type of freedom on and off the dancefloor. “Because the music trade continues to evolve, we’re dedicated to adapting to the wants of our followers and staying forward of the curve,” stated co-founder and CEO Adam Lynn.
Phrases by Jason Heffler.
Honorable Mentions: DEF | House Calls | FIVE Music
Visible Artist: Tobias Gremmler
Tobias Gremmler’s larger-than-life artistry was unimaginable to disregard in 2024, imbued with an nearly intangible high quality that related deeply with Afterlife’s broadening world viewers.
His work with Anyma on the celebrity DJ’s tour and sophomore album, Genesys II, reworked towering LED screens into portals, immersing followers in haunting areas the place the boundaries between performer and participant disintegrated. Mixing Afterlife’s iconic twin themes of robotics and nature, Gremmler’s awe-inspiring visible ideas captivated audiences in high-profile venues from Los Angeles to Miami to Amsterdam, threading an ineffable emotional connection amidst the grandeur of stadium-scale productions.
Anticipation is now constructing for Anyma’s historic Las Vegas Sphere New 12 months’s Eve present and residency, “The Finish of Genesys,” which can see Gremmler’s transhumanist visible designs envelop the record-breaking venue for its first-ever digital music exhibits. His inventive path is bold by all accounts, and it is reshaping how we expertise and interact with EDM’s most transcendent performances.
Phrases by Cameron Sunkel.
Honorable Mentions: DR01D VISUALS | Wesley So | Neurite
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YouTube Channel: E-book Membership Radio
What do butterfly homes, Y2K vampires, frat events, robotic uprisings, Florida males, homicide mysteries and 2010s EDM all have in frequent? They’re all themes for E-book Membership Radio’s epic events—err, “conferences”—in 2024.
Every theme is really immersive: the DJs curate mixes to suit every, the crowds gown up for the half and the backdrops are stuffed with madcap props typically hand-built by the E-book Membership Radio crew. The feverish fandom round their YouTube channel is a testomony to the contemporary perspective that the Brooklyn-based collective, based by the inimitable Jojo Lorenzo, is bringing to dancefloors.
Phrases by Saad Masood.
Honorable Mentions: Flavour Trip | Tracklib | putyouon. by Steve Cardigan
Audio Engineer: A. G. Cook dinner
When Charli xcx recorded her world hit “360” and stated, “You gon’ bounce if A. G. made it,” she was sending a message.
One in all hyperpop’s most influential producers, A. G. Cook dinner has made a reputation for himself crafting music for worldwide superstars like Beyoncé, Hikaru Utada and Caroline Polachek. Whereas that pedigree is spectacular in its personal proper, his sensible work on Charli’s viral sensation, Brat, could go down as his most interesting.
Serving as an government producer of Brat and vocal engineer of most of its tracks, Cook dinner propelled his longtime collaborator’s newest album not solely to the highest of the charts, but in addition to the lime green-colored pinnacle of popular culture. There can be no “brat summer season” with out him.
Cook dinner’s work on Brat led the album to a staggering seven Grammy nominations, together with Album Of The 12 months, Greatest Dance/Digital Album, File Of The 12 months (“360”) and Greatest Pop Solo Efficiency (“Apple”).
Phrases by Nick Yopko.
Honorable Mentions: Cassian Stewart-Kasimba | Emily Lazar | Sonny Moore
c/o Press
Artist Administration: Metatone
In a powerful seven-year interval, Metatone founders Holt Harmon and Parker Cohen have constructed an impartial administration powerhouse. And in 2024, the agency set new requirements for driving success in the home music world.
Their secret? A results-driven, holistic strategy and wealth of sources that assist DJs attain new audiences. Since bringing John Summit aboard throughout the firm’s youth, Metatone has cultivated a formidable roster of producers that features Max Styler, Ranger Trucco, Deeper Function and Layton Giordani.
Its dedication to fostering each the wellness and inventive freedom of its roster stays on the coronary heart of its philosophy. Via the growth of Metatone Media, the corporate supplied its artists with tailor-made assist in branding, touring logistics and content material creation, empowering them to give attention to crafting groundbreaking home music.
And that they did. From Summit’s stratospheric debut album Consolation in Chaos to Giordani’s uncommon official remix of deadmau5’s “Strobe” to Max Styler’s prolific run of tech home hits, Metatone broke out this yr. Its proprietors additionally labored diligently to place their artists on the cutting-edge, like when Summit bought out Madison Sq. Backyard.
Phrases by Mikala Lugen and Rachel Freeman.
Honorable Mentions: 2+2 Management | Club Class | Kompass Music Group
Music PR: Falcon Publicity
In simply 5 years, Falcon Publicity has managed to turn out to be one of many main forces in media relations throughout the mercurial world of digital dance music. It is the brainchild of PR vet Alexandra Greenberg, whose a long time of experience have led her to amass a exceptional roster of artists, manufacturers and occasions in that quick time.
Influential digital artists like deadmau5, Kraftwerk, Jean-Michel Jarre and Subtronics all name Falcon dwelling. The agency had its talons on the heartbeat of dance music in 2024, executing a slew of modern, high-profile campaigns that propelled it to the trade’s corps d’elite.
One was HAYLA, whose stentorian vocals dominated playlists and music festivals all yr. After collaborating with John Summit, Kx5, Kygo and MEDUZA, the surging singer-songwriter broke out as a solo artist with the assistance of Greenberg, who ran press for her scintillating debut album, DUSK.
After which there’s techno celebrity Anyma, who in 2024 introduced he’d be the primary digital music artist to carry out contained in the record-breaking Las Vegas Sphere. What began out as a single New 12 months’s Eve efficiency rapidly snowballed right into a historic DJ residency with sufficient audiovisual specs to alter the material of Sin Metropolis raving—and Falcon is shaping the narrative.
Phrases by Ulises Vargas.
Honorable Mentions: Bampire | MP3 PR | JSloane Creative
