It’s time we all come to terms with the fact that Steve Aoki has risen to international stardom in a way few electronic music entertainers have in the past. While the artist has been heavily criticized for his focus on creating a wild party rather than an immersive and emotional musical experience during his live performances, there is no question that the Dim Mak head honcho has been wildly successful in building one of EDM’s strongest brands.

When the announcement came that Steve Aoki would be splitting his highly anticipated Neon Future album into two parts, an even stronger case for Aoki’s fame was made. The ability to release two albums within less than a year of each other, each packed to the brim with intense electro-heavy vocal cuts, is unquestionably impressive. It seems that Relativity Media agrees, as they have recently officially acquired the rights to Steve Aoki’s upcoming documentary, I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, which will launch exclusively this week at the Cannes International Film Festival.

The documentary will follow Steve Aoki’s journey through the anticipation and lead-up to one of the artist’s biggest shows ever. The film will also cover other complex and taboo topics for Aoki, including a special focus on his family’s famous “Benihana” business.

While many DJs have recently tried their hand at creating an engaging story for their brand through documentary films, Steve Aoki’s venture into the new media arena is accompanied by film moguls to help take the project to the next level. Matthew Weaver and David Gelb, the film’s producers, happen to be the same duo that recently worked on the Jiro Dreams Of Sushi documentary. Aoki surely isn’t messing around, and hope remains that this ambitious venture will actually raise the bar for future projects of similar stature.

While publicly available details of the film are still scarce, keep your eyes peeled for the true and full Aoki story – one we’ve been waiting on for a while.\

Posted by Eric Zwilling (via DancingAstronaut)

DJ/Producer Mister Gray returns with a great set from Miami! He is a resident DJ @ Hyde Beach Club in South Beach & E11even in Miami. Check out his full track list after the jump! Continue reading →

Just two years ago, Electric Zoo was the Northeast’s premiere EDM festival, drawing 150,000 fans to New York’s Randall’s Island during Labor Day weekend with some of the biggest DJs in the world, including Avicii, Tiesto and Bassnectar, on two massive main stages. But after two attendees died from drug overdoses, escalating an already alarmed public reaction to the EDM festival scene, the 2014 edition consequently felt borderline Orwellian: Organizers required attendees to watch drug PSAs before ordering tickets, security checks (complete with mandatory shoe removal) resulted in three-hour-long waits for entry while police and drug-sniffing dogs patrolled the grounds, and on the final day, a severe thunderstorm caused organizers to shut down the festival six hours early.

A source tells Billboard that ticket sales dropped 30 percent from 2013.​ So how does the festival bounce back? “You start over,” says Jeff Wright, creative director for Made Event, which has produced the festival for seven years and was bought by SFX in November 2013. “We stumbled in 2014, admittedly, so we said, ‘Let’s rebuild this from the ground up.'”

For the 2015 Electric Zoo — again taking place Labor Day weekend — Made partnered with Dutch promoter ID&T, which produces some of the world’s biggest EDM festivals, including Tomorrowland, the decade-old fest that draws more than 400,000 fans to a Disney theme park in Belgium. After SFX’s chief ­executive Robert Sillerman bought ID&T in 2013 for an ­estimated $130 million, the brand’s longtime creative director, Jeroen Jansen, moved to New York to launch TomorrowWorld near Atlanta, Mysteryland in upstate New York and the white-wardrobe-themed Sensation in Brooklyn.

“You can’t just put a DJ in front of an LED screen,” says Jansen. “You need storytelling — from the minute you start your ticketing campaign to the grounds themselves.”

Electric Zoo is arguably his biggest undertaking to date. Now renamed Electric Zoo: Transformed, the festival resembles other ID&T events — immersive and otherworldy, with a zoo theme, naturally enough — without simply repeating the Tomorrowland formula. Many of the suggested ­improvements came from Zoo attendees who participated in surveys issued after the 2014 event. “We got essays,” says Made ­marketing chief Michael Julian. In addition to a themed experience, fans asked for more restrooms (which will be increased by 30 percent) and faster entry lines (the entrance will be expanded).

Wright’s designs for the festival, viewed by Billboard in March, resemble a pop-up theme park: a main stage inspired by a winged phoenix, elephant-shaped topiaries and an octopus-like circular stage. While the designs were not final and many budget-related questions remain, at press time, ticket sales were up 30 percent ahead of 2014, according to Jacob Smid, SFX’s managing director in North America.

“Europeans have always done festivals right,” says Wright. “But this isn’t our first rodeo.”

Posted by Megan Buerger (via Billboard)

In an interview with Los Angeles radio station KIIS 102.7 (skip to about 4:20 in video), Justin Bieber spoke about everything from Mayweather vs Pacquaio to his future music, from performing Ultra to his current state of mind; “Overall I’m just really happy with the place I’m at, creatively.”

The recently-Roasted Bieber spoke about his new album, which is in is final stages as he’s working with Kanye West, Skrillex, and Rick Rubin. The album should come out “soon,” according to JB, a vague timeline which he prefers not to reference.

On his new album, Justin says the music will be different. “Uplifting music that people are going to dance to.” And while that tidbit of a peek into the new project may indicate some electronic twang, Bieber tells an untold tale of “Where Are Ü Now,” and explains how it was never meant to be the current EDM-pop crossover hit that it’s become, and that it was never meant for Skrillex and Diplo in the first place.

“Something you don’t know… the song was just me and piano. Skrillex just came in and did his stuff. Him and Diplo messed up the beat. It was fun working with those guys, they’re very talented.”

When asked if the Jack Ü tandem would appear on his upcoming album, Bieber said “Possibly. I was just in the studio with Skrillex the other night. Diplo was working, but we’re going to be getting it back in.”

Posted by Dylan Farella (via DancingAstronaut)

Shazam knows the hits before they happen, according to a recent talk given by the company’s VP of product Cait O’Riordan.

Using the data Shazam gathers from its 100 million active users, O’Riordan said that based on previous pop hits, Jamaican singer OMI’s quickly rising “Cheerleader” is going to be the next ruler of the Hot 100. In two weeks on the chart, “Cheerleader” has already gone from No. 95 to No. 63 — so they might just be on to something.

One of the examples used to show Shazam’s predictive powers was U.K. group Clean Bandit, whose hit “Rather Be” peaked on Shazam charts prior to taking over European and eventually U.S. radio. “Thirty-three days out, we can predict Billboard No. 1 hits,” O’Riordan insists, explaining that the correlation between radio airplay and the initiative people have to take to use Shazam to identify the song — it’s unlikely they’ll make the effort if it’s not something they like — can effectively test just how catchy it really is.

The data is powerful enough to predict hits within even a few hours — comparing Katy Perry’s “Roar” and Lady Gaga’s “Applause” (released at roughly the same time, with a similar amount of radio play) shows that Perry was far ahead in the number of Shazams “Roar” evoked from the start, and went on to be a much bigger hit. The increasing number of surprise releases also provokes people to pull out their phones as they try to figure out what’s playing. Rihanna’s “B—- Better Have My Money,” for example, was Shazamed over 60,000 times in the first 24 hours after its release.

Another interesting variable is seeing exactly when people try to identify the song. Most pop hits get Shazamed within the first minute, demonstrating the importance of a solid hook — for others, like O.T. Genasis’ “CoCo,” the most interesting parts are in the middle of the song (“Baking soda, I got baking soda”). Using that statistic (which part of a song is most Shazamed), Nicki Minaj has the best verse on Kanye West’s “Monster” (which most of us knew already), with substantially more people trying to identify the track during her verse.

Posted by Natalie Weiner (via Billboard)

Fan favorite DJ Scene returns with an exciting open format mix. Make sure you check him out this Friday & Friday afternoon at his new summer residency @ Daylight Pool inside the Mandalay in Las Vegas. Check out his full track list after the jump! Continue reading →

What up CK family! It’s Alex Dreamz. Just back from a great trip to Dubai to huge news here @ the Club Killers headquarters in Las Vegas! We are very proud to announce that our “Hey Mama” remix is now released worldwide on David Guetta’s label What A Music. The remix is currently available on Beatport & iTunes.

This is our first label remix that will be officially released worldwide, our previous official remixes were only released in the USA. We are very excited for the great opportunity, we even got a shout out from David Guetta himself on twitter! Great way to start off the week! Thank you all for your continued support.

Support Hey Mama on Beatport
Check out some of my pics from our Dubai & NYC trip here: instagram.com/alexdreamz

Posted by Alex Dreamz

Reports of a massive injection of funding for Spotify have been bubbling up since January, the latest in a report from CNBC Friday night (the second of its kind) saying that the company had closed on a large round from Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street firm that has reportedly been leading the fundraising.

CNBC reports that last week’s deal was a “first close,” leaving open the possibility of a series of smaller investments, possibly from UK-based invest firm Lansdowne, Scottish firm Bailie Gifford, New York’s D.E. Shaw Group, Connecticut-based Discovery Capital Management, Halcyon Asset Management (offices in New York and London), P. Schoenfeld Asset Management (the concern responsible for precipitating Vivendi’s recent $1 billion dividend payout), London’s Rinkelberg Capital and Montreal-based Senvest Capitol.

Spotify refused Billboard’s request for comment on the report.

Previous reports pinned the round at $400 million at an $8.4 billion valuation; in a report from early this year, the privately held company was seen to be worth $5.74 billion.

The market is growing, if not at the pace industry leaders would wish. Subscription streaming service revenues were up 39 percent last year, with subscription services now accounting for 23 percent of global digital revenues across the market’s 41 million customers. Last week, Spotify reintroduced a promotional offer intended to jolt those numbers, offering new customers three months of its premium service — which offers mobile and ad-free listening — for $0.99.

There has been a steady drumbeat in favor of limiting ‘freemium’ listening in order to drive fans towards paying monthly subscription fees, something Spotify founder Daniel Ek has defended repeatedly. To wit: In a report published this morning (May 4) from The Verge, Apple has reportedly come under investigation by the U.S. Dept. of Justice for its dealings with the recorded music industry, allegedly trying to rally labels to cut off support of freemium streaming, something the company is said to not be offering with its upcoming service. Apple did not respond to a request for comment at press time.

The company is also looking to weigh in on the legal structures behind its payments to rights holders and the frameworks around copyright, hiring four lobbying firms in D.C. and at least two in the European Union, presumably to make its voice heard more acutely in ongoing discussions around copyright and digital royalties.

To say the streaming market is a work in progress is an undersell; the world’s two largest tech companies, Google and Apple, have yet to fully introduce their respective offers (Google’s YouTube Music Key was quietly introduced in November, but remains in beta with limited functionality on Apple’s iOS, while Apple’s streaming service is expected to launch next month), both of which, when fully available, will have an outsize impact.

Posted by Andrew Flanagan (via Billboard)

Surrender Nightclub resident DJ & Club Killers bad boy JD Live returns with a smashing new mix. Nothing best non stop hard hitting anthems. If you’re looking for some hot new tracks you’ve never heard before this mix is perfect for you, check out the track list here: Continue reading →

It comes as little surprise that following two Coachella weekends, several electronic artists have topped the most Shazamed tracks of the event this year. DJ Snake dominates both the first and third most Shazamed of Coachella, firstly with his remix of the Alunageorge original “You Know You Like It,” followed closely behind by his collaboration with Major Lazer and MØ, “Lean On.” A surprising “Where Are Ü Now” from Jack Ü and Justin Bieber comes in fourth, despite the fact that none of the three artists of the song were on the Coachella line up. “Hey Mama” from David Guetta and Afrojack rounds the top five, followed by an eclectic array of genres ranging from Deorro’s “Five Hours” to “Firestone” by Kygo and finally, “Runaway (U & I)” from Galantis.

Check out the entire top 10 list below.

Posted by Valerie Lee (via DancingAstronaut)

By far this track right here has been my personal favorite song of the year. Love the entire feel of it & I really believe the song has some legs on it to go pretty far in radio.

We just had to do our very own Club Killers take on it so we can play in our sets. Hope it works for you too!

Posted by Alex Dreamz

It should come as no surprise that the North American electronic music industry is highly lucrative. But a new report showcased at IMS Engage discovered that its worth is much higher than many might expect: a whopping $1.9 billion. On a worldwide scale, the dance music industry is valued at just over $6 billion.

London-based strategy specialist Kevin Watson breaks down North America’s sources of revenue into three categories: music, DJs and live acts and clubs and festivals. In using Nielsen’s Music U.S. report as concrete data, Watson found that dance music’s share of digital track sales is now 1.5x the level it was in 2011. Though album shares have dropped, streaming more than makes up for this loss with a 6.8% high in 2014.

Watson also notes that New York comprises the highest track sales (13%), with Los Angeles coming in at a close second (about 9%). Furthermore, electronic music is the 4th most popular genre for streams, following R&B/Hip-Hop, Rock and Pop.

The author uses a number of other sources to prove just how valuable the industry is, such as Forbes, DJ Mag and Eventbrite. For example, Forbes’ roster of highest earning DJs earn a bulk of their funds in North America, regardless of their home nation. And if we were to consider the festival boom over the last few years, North America is now home to some of the largest festivals in the world, with music fans in the US 13% more likely to attend one of the countless multi-day events.

Posted by Lizzie Renck (via DancingAstronaut)