Now celebrating a decade of existence, Beatport's finally rolling back the curtain to showcase facts and figures about top selling artists and tracks at the EDM scene's best-respected downloading portal and iconic community hub. In taking a look at the numbers, it's entirely possible to use Beatport as a tool for understanding the how and why of why certain artists have risen, and note the spike in growth of dance music overall over the decade.
Foremost, with Beatport's top selling track (Burufunk & Carbon Community's "Community Funk (Deadmau5 Remix)"), most number-one hits (13) and positioned as the top selling artist in the portal's history, deadmau5's rise can now unquestionably be linked to Beatport. The producer's ability to bridge live performance with online engagement was an unquestioned asset in his growth, and clearly early adaption to Beatport's importance and adoption of the portal into his marketing strategy were important.
Also of note is just how explosive Beatport's sales growth has been in the past three years, as all of the top 10 sales singles were released between 2011-2014. Intriguing to note in that list is that for as pop-major as tracks like Martin Garrix's "Animals" were, it is only #3 all-time on Beatport's chart behind deadmau5's aforementioned Burufunk and Carbon Community remix and a Pleasurekraft edit of Bontan's remix of Josh Butler's "Got A Feelin'."
Intriguing of note regarding the American-led global boom in EDM is the fact that there's only one American DJ/producer represented in any of the charts, that being Kaveh Soroush, 1/2 of Pleasurekraft. It is also worth noting that relative chart newcomer Hardwell has ten number one singles in eight years, with his popularity only truly rising on a global level in the past three. By comparison, Deadmau5 has just over twice as many years of chart-topping popularity, with only three more top 10 singles. Also, given that the online seller's charts are trending tech house and big room, note that top-40 tastes are trending deeper, just as Beatport and Pete Tong plan a radio chart show expansion into Clear Channel's radio offerings. Expecting a correlation between pop radio and Beatport's most popular tracks isn't necessarily a given, but it would be unwise to be shocked by such an occurrence.
Moreso than showcasing any one particular trend, the combination of this data does show just how quickly EDM has exploded globally, and also likely gives us a great idea of where mainstream music is likely to head. Insofar as the future can we expect to see more of rap's twerk and trap influence, or the inclusion of American (and globally) popular club and R&B vibes also reflected on Beatport's charts? As seen from Martin Garrix storming to the top of the charts as if out of nowhere, anything is indeed possible.
