It’s that time of year when electronic music industry-leading download platform Beatport announces its Best of Beatport frontrunners. While last week saw a peculiar dichotomy in the Top Selling Tracks category, this week they’ve revealed the leading breakthrough artists and labels of 2015.
As far as breakout artists are concerned, Curbi, Joe Stone, Marshmello, Alison Wonderland and Ephwurd topped the list with the labels OWSLA and Spinnin’ both seeing the most representation. In the category of breakout labels, Don Diablo’s Hexagon imprint claimed first place with Magic Trooper, Darklight Recordings, Playbox and Heldeep Recordings following.
As we’ve mentioned before, Beatport downloads do not necessarily reflect the overall popularity of an artist or label. Most music fans discover new music from streaming services like SoundCloud or Spotify, and as far as electronic music is concerned, the market for live events still towers over the whole of the recording industry – so Beatport’s data reflects the download habits of DJs and producers more than anything else.
Nonetheless, the Best of Beatport still makes for a data pool from which insightful inferences can be drawn.