Rolling Stone - one of the world's leading authorities on rock and roll for years. You put them up there with the NME of old (not the newest version, which is nonsense) in terms of quality of output and opinion. More recently though you will have started to notice that they seem to be passing judgement on a scene that frankly they know little about. This is the same company, albeit a different international branch (Rolling Stone Italy), that released the 'Rocker vs DJ' video which basically labelled anyone who was into dance music a pill-popping idiot.
So, I'm unsure as to why they feel they have the knowledge and experience in the dance music scene to educate us on what is good, what is bad, and now - the 50 most 'important' people in EDM. Rolling Stone is as new to the dance music game as most kids and they should stop preaching to us with their penultimate list like they know what they are talking about.
This is the equivalent of Resident Advisor or Mixmag suddenly opening a Punk Rock section within their website or magazine - I'm pretty sure a band with any form of self respect would frown at that. More to the point, a proper dance music media outlet would never dream of trying of passing judgement on a scene they are not, or never have been, involved in in such a matter of fact way. I haven't seen a single 'Top 50 Most Important People In Rock and Roll' list in any of the top dance music websites or magazines. Stick to what you know and don't be a sheep blindly following the flock. It isn't cool, and you'd think they'd understood cool.
ARTICLE | Rolling Stone - 50 Most Important People In EDM
Taking a look through the list, there are certainly many names whom deserve to be there. Jason Huvaere and Sam Fotias who are the dudes behind Detroit's Movement Festival - a true champion of the techno sound. Carl Cox, because he has been living the scene his entire life, and is still smiling. Nile Rogers on account of the amount of dance music he has worked on or directly or indirectly influenced throughout his life. Patrick Moxey, the owner of Ultra Music and President of Sony's Dance music branch and a figure who appeared at the Ibiza International Music Summit with good things to say. James Barton, scouser (that means he is from Liverpool), Cream/Creamfields founder and dance music pioneer from the 90s who now heads up Live Nation's dance music frontier. These are people who deserve to be on the list.
Then we have Afrojack, Steve Aoki and collectives using ugly company names such as the 'Miami Marketing Group'. To be fair to the first two, they helped to break dance music in America, made some tracks people loved (and some people didn't), they enjoy a good party like the rest of us and they 'get' the scene in some way... having experienced it for years. But I would suggest even they would be surprised to make the list. Put Richie Hawtin and Afrojack next to each other and start talking to them about dance music culture and we all know who we would pay more attention to.
All this list does is highlight the problem of America's Capitalist culture that is going to ruin the dance music scene by turning it purely into a business. Ibiza is not exempt from this worry, there is money to be made and there is nothing wrong with that, so long as we don't lose sight of why we fell in love dance music in the first place. The dollar does not have to be the deciding factor in everything being successful or important, as it seems Rolling Stone judge something to be 'important' based on the amount of money they make.
I'm a relative newcomer to dance music, having been a part of it in some way for 10 or so years, and this worries me. I can only imagine how some of the original pioneers of the scene might feel looking at this list. Things were better when everyone was saying dance music was dead.
