Waiting For The Drop: Rise of the Superstar DJs (2024)

[bunniefuu]

[film reels]

[bright music]

[crowd cheers]

[electronic music: mysterious, downbeat]

[music: "Aural Psynapse" by deadmau5]

- [Narrator] They say that

a DJ is a puppet master,

a shaman.

All I know is that this world,

electronic music

[fireworks boom]

can be a magical place.

A change has been coming.

Today, it's all about candy

ravers, bottle poppers,

and 30-second explosions.

It's different somehow.

The era of EDM, the rise of superstar DJs

had many of us

waiting... for the drop.

[expl*si*n]

[electronic music]

[crowd cheers]

[electronic music continues]

[electronic music continues]

[crowd cheers]

[music: "Stream" by Stanley

Gurvich. Gentle, downbeat]

The whole night was a journey.

- [Speaker] There was no money in this.

It was pure underground.

And really raw and it was special.

[gentle music]

- [Speaker] What it was about

was you started the music

at 10 in the evening

and it would go until six in the morning

and the whole night would

be a progression of sound.

So you get this movement of sound

it kinda locked you into the dance floor.

It hypnotized you, really.

[electronic music]

- [Speaker] You know,

watching those guys mix,

I would just stand in

the DJ booth behind them,

completely mesmerized

by their every movement

of their hands, their arms.

You could hear in the way they mixed

what they were putting into it physically.

It was the art of DJing.

- [Speaker] The ability to

hold a room, read a crowd,

is a f*cking art form.

[crowd cheers]

[electronic music]

- [Narrator] Electronic music took off

in the underground clubs

of Chicago and Detroit, but it

was in the UK where the music

and the DJ would rise to

their greatest heights.

[electronic music]

[record needle scratching]

Together

[music: "DC Together" by

DSK CHK. Funky, downbeat]

Together

[electronic music]

Together

- We used to kind of

go late night clubbing

and then the next day go to school.

So we were going out when

we were 14, 15 years old,

going out and experiencing

night clubbing before we was 18.

- Now I remember when the

DJ would bring the decks in

and they had the red

light, the amber light

and the green light and

that was the light show.

- I got into this as a kid.

I grew up in Chicago. Going

into high school in 1985

and house music was, it was

on a few radio stations.

[electronic music]

- There was elements of disco music

that was really creating the club scene

in and around the UK,

but then disco started

to become a dirty word

and the house music movement

that was happening in the US,

we were able to latch onto something,

which would be exciting.

All the music that was coming

from New York, from Chicago,

Detroit, they're all making

this underground basement

kind of garage house music

and we just lapped it up.

We couldn't get enough of that music.

Now, I think a lot of

people from South London,

we'd never really had a lot of money.

- I came from a poor background,

a working class background,

but at 15, I thought

I could rule the world

and my mom said, "What

you gonna go and do?"

And I was like, "Well this is it.

We're in a band, we're going out.

The rest is history."

And she's like, "No you're not.

"You're gonna go and get a career."

So I end up going away

for four years studying.

I was a fully qualified chef,

the band we were still doing

on the side, it fell away.

I started becoming a bedroom DJ.

I'd come home and I'd have my decks

and I'd be learning.

- He wanted to get into the music business

and I said, if you want to, the only way

to get into it is really

to go to New York.

- [DJ] Yo party people, we

gotta keep this thing going.

You know, like the way we used to do it

in the Paradise Garage.

[music: "Larry Levan The Final Night

[of Paradise Garage 1987." downbeat, retro]

- The king of DJs was

playing, Larry Levan.

That was the moment that inspired me

to wanna play music as a DJ.

DJs were all going there and

trying to live the experience.

- He was trying to blag to

get into Studio 54 one night

Paul was absolutely

thwatted, drunk, thwatted.

So me and my cousin, we held him up.

The guy let us through.

We forgot about him

and he just f*cking

hit the floor. [laughs]

He hit the floor

and we went, oh sh*t, and then

we got thrown out. [laughs]

- And they thought it was funny

to push me in the rubbish.

[bag of bottles clanks]

I would've done the same thing.

I would've pushed them.

- He was just a cheeky young guy

pretending to be a big music executive

and the dream kind of came true. [laughs]

- I always looked to my

proper job as working

for a record company,

trying to sign a band

going in the studio.

I suppose because DJing was

never seen as a proper job.

You couldn't make a living.

But then realized that

I was born to be a DJ.

[gentle, melancholy trance music]

[music: "Lonely" by Ferry Corsten]

- Ibiza is raw.

You can track Roman

hedonism back to Ibiza.

There's ruins of an old Roman disco there.

[melancholy music continues]

- [Narrator] In his early 20s,

Oakenfold was still

discovering the power of a DJ.

Then one summer, he went to Ibiza

and experienced Argentine

DJ Alfredo Fiorito.

Alfredo took him on a musical

journey from around the world.

- The DJs, Pepe, Cesar,

Alfredo, were playing

all kinds of music together

and you didn't have that in the UK.

You didn't have that in anywhere else

in the world realistically.

And then you had ecstasy

and ecstasy was underground.

It was the drug of the moment.

It played an important

part of it along with music

that you'd never heard anywhere else.

Paul came out in the early

summer of '87. Took him out

to Amnesia and give him a little friend

and that little friend was ecstasy.

That was it. [laughs]

I've never seen grown

men so stupid skipping

around clubs and stuff,

I'm telling you. [laughs]

- They were mixing sort

of electronic music

with sort of indie music and rock music

all mixing together to make

the sort of Balearic sound.

- Every kind of music

together was the creation

of the Balearic beat.

I never think I've been creating a sound.

For me, the essential thing was to make

that dance floor work.

- [Narrator] Oakenfold

and his friends captured

the eclectic style of the Ibiza DJs

and brought it back to London

they gave it a name, Balearic Beat.

- When we brought in Alfredo,

Alfredo played at the

project club in South London.

Then we opened a club called The Future.

Then the main club

that changed everything was Monday night

at Spectrum at Heaven.

- [Speaker] The early

Balearic music that everyone

brought back to the UK was

based on Alfredo's record box.

- We knew something that no one else knew.

As soon as you come down, you was hooked

'cause it was a revolution.

It was so different, fresh,

and exciting with a different mentality.

You didn't have to dress up.

You could wear sneakers and baggy jeans

and you was there to dance.

- It gave other people an

opportunity to be entrepreneurial.

So if you had a bit of money

and a bit of nuance, you

could take the scene out

of the clubs and put it in a field.

- You could almost drive around the M25

and just listen out

for the sound of techno

or see like the convoys of cars

of people dressed in psychedelic clothes

and you could follow them

that would lead you to a party.

- This was an age where

no one had cell phones.

You would go to a phone box,

you would dial a number,

it would tell you the

address of where it was.

It was in the sort of abandoned

jewelry districts of Birmingham.

You'd throw some tie dye

sheets up a disgusting wall.

You would try and make

a toilet outta a bucket.

The decks were on a table,

the lights were just

strobes, just flashing.

[pulsing, high bpm electronic music]

[music: "Reflections" by Stanley Gurvich]

- Ecstasy makes you very

susceptible to the effects of music

and you're having these

intense blissful experiences

and you can feel like

the DJ is controlling you

in this sort of benign way

and is kind of basically

giving you this experience.

And so it bred this kind of feeling

of worship towards the DJs.

- We wanted to have the

freedom to right to party

and all this sort of stuff.

It was quite a democracy

at the end of the day

by what we caused in a sense

of a fuss all over the country.

[electronic music continues]

[electronic music continues]

- It is just like stuff

make you wanna dance.

- [Speaker] You lose control.

- Yeah, you lose control.

And I don't know, you feel free.

- [Narrator] By the

early 1990s rave culture

was spreading in the UK.

Kids were looking for an escape

from the ailing British economy.

Ragtag groups of DJs

and hippie travelers organized

free parties in public spaces

playing a game of cat and

mouse with the police.

- The invasion which took

place at Castlemorton Common

on Friday the 22nd of May.

On that day, new age travelers, ravers,

and racketeers in drugs

arrived in the strength of

two motorized army divisions.

The numbers, speed, and

efficiency with which they arrived

Massing probably at one time

to as many as 30,000 people

combined to terrorize the local community

to the extent that some residents

had to undergo psychiatric treatment

in the days that followed.

[sheep bleating]

- The normally tranquil

common near Malvern had become

a traveler's shanty town.

Tents had gone up.

The 700-acre site normally

home to grazing sheep

had become a giant car park

for a motley array of vehicles.

Local people were angered

that the police had apparently been unable

to prevent the invasion.

- We got a phone call

from Bedlam Sound System

who were just over here

at Castlemorton Common, saying

there's this huge convoy,

36 miles of it coming down from Somerset.

- By Monday morning,

more than 20,000 travelers had turned up.

A large marquee had been erected

and the camp became a giant rave party.

From the air, the sheer

scale of the invasion

of the common could be seen,

achieving the dubious record

of being Britain's largest

ever ill*gal rave party.

[electronic music]

- Boom, boom, boom.

It never stopped for over a week.

I got in the back room

and kept the radio on all night

so I couldn't hear their

bloody music. [laughs]

- The dealers were the thing,

they were sitting there

with the prices of things,

prices of different kinds of drugs,

written in lipstick on the car windows.

I saw one child with a

thing on his head saying,

"My dad sells the best acid."

- [Speaker] There was

a huge public outcry.

They were all terrified

that this was gonna

happen on their doorstep.

And so there was a huge amount

of pressure on the government

to do something about it.

- If we wanna have a gathering, why not?

- Why can't we party?

- It's not hurting anybody.

I mean we clear up the mess

after the legislate, all

the mess was cleared up.

- [Narrator] After the

week-long rave ended,

British authorities began a crackdown.

They accused members of Spiral

tribe of organizing the rave.

- We tried to make our

escape down this direction,

but we were jumped on.

These undercover police guys

just jumped out the hedge.

We had no idea of course, that

we were being stitched up.

There was plans in the background

going on for Spiral Tribe

to be made an example of.

- [Narrator] Parliament pushed through

a criminal justice bill

that included anti rave legislation,

but they couldn't even agree

on how to define rave music.

- I agree with him entirely

that some of this loud music

is deeply offensive.

We might like to draft a clause

which would catch a rave party

but which would not catch

also a Pavarotti concert.

- I hope the noble lord

is not accusing Pavarotti

of emitting sounds wholly

or predominantly

characterized by the omission

of a succession of repetitive beats.

- I hope also we'll do our best

to avoid sending Pavarotti

to prison for three months.

- What happened at Castlemorton

crushed the British rave scene.

- The crushing of that free party movement

kind of encouraged that

shift towards the superclub.

[electronic music: urgent, high bpm]

- The electronic scene in a

nutshell saved nightclubs.

Nightclubs were dying

without a shadow of a doubt.

You know, the DJ was the nerd

who got $20 a night who

nobody cared about, you know,

and he could be facing a wall or whatever.

But the DJ in the rave tent was a god.

- The big change

that rave brought was

it made DJs into stars

and a crowd of people all

staring in the same direction.

- This was something that

we really wanted to sell.

The concept of a DJ,

no more important,

no lesser important than

Bono or Mick Jagger.

- He's got it.

He's got everyone listening to him.

Once he gets everyone listening to him

he can do whatever he wants.

- Every DJ is one song

away from being massive.

That's what it's all about.

One song away from being

massive and then that's it.

- [Narrator] Back in the UK,

Paul Oakenfold kept pushing

the envelope of what a DJ could be.

- Paul did a remix for U2

of "Even Better Than the Real Thing,"

which was an interesting title

because at one point, the remix

that he did actually was higher up

in the charts than the original.

- They were about to go on a world tour.

They came to me and asked me

if I would be the opening act.

"I'd love to, this is

an amazing opportunity."

- U2 were prepared to

tear up the rule books.

Paul went on that journey with us.

I had to think, adapt,

and prepare to play to

a rock and roll crowd.

I'd take a classic Rolling Stones record

or a big current pop record

and I would get the vocals

and I would do a house mix to it.

- Paul Oakenfold was the

very first superstar DJ

in the world.

Paul was always ahead

of everyone, you know,

sometimes too far.

He said in 2002 dance music

is gonna be big in America

and no one really believed him.

- I love Oakenfold's story

'cause I heard that he went

into his agent's office

and like threw a dart at America

and it landed like in Idaho

and he is like, "I wanna

play a show there."

He was like, "I wanna bring

this music to Middle America."

He was a visionary this way.

- [Narrator] In 1997,

Oakenfold signed with Cream

a club in Liverpool to be their

resident DJ every Saturday.

Back then, it was the biggest

contract ever for a DJ.

[bright electronic music]

- The biggest thing that

Cream did was we put

the DJ center stage.

We built a 20-foot gilt-edged frame.

So we framed the DJ

and that's when the DJ became the god.

[music: "Soliel" by Stanley

Gurvich. Dark, moderate pace]

By '94, somebody out there

coined the phrase "superstar DJ"

and it was, you know, Paul

Oakenfold commits to Cream.

It was in our world that

was like signing Ronaldo.

We were signing the best gold scorer

in the business.

We were gonna rival Ministry of Sound,

but we were gonna be a

lot more cutting edge.

I was trying to find new records.

I was in the studio making new records

The artists were making records for us.

Record companies were giving

us six months exclusives.

We were telling this

incredible story through music,

taking people on a journey.

We would just pull it apart,

learn how to break records.

You'd never hear a record

outside of that room.

It lived in this space for nine months

before I released it as a single.

So people were freaking out.

- Paul knew the rock

and roll sensibilities,

he saw it as a performance.

You know, some DJs would

never get eye contact

with the crowd but with his

limited amount of assets,

you know, he didn't have a guitar,

he didn't have a microphone,

Paul knew how to be a showman

and he knew the buttons to

press with the audience.

The first performance

of Paul's second year,

I remember it very well because

there was huge anticipation.

The lights went down.

And then Paul played this

like sort of intro track.

The crowd was getting whipped up

into like you know, a frenzy.

Then out of nowhere he sprung up

and he went straight into his first track.

The expl*si*n of the

crowd was just insane.

I just remember getting

this rush through my body

and I remember standing

there looking at David Levy

and we both just looked at each other

and we're like, "What have we done?"

[electronic music continues]

[crowd cheers]

[music: "Lucky 7" by

Yanivi. Funky, upbeat]

- I think the difference

between a rock star

and a superstar DJ is not as

big anymore as it used to be.

Nowadays, DJs are the

superstars of the world.

[upbeat music continues]

- Tisto was just very fresh faced

and on a very different mission.

This guy to me came from

nowhere almost, you know,

and next thing he's the biggest thing

this scene's ever had.

[bicycle riding on street]

- Growing up there, it was pretty intense.

Our street was like borderline

against ghetto, burglaries

and wasn't a great area to grow up in.

- We live here in Breda

in the Laurierstraat.

He lived always on number 42.

[speaker speaks in foreign language]

[electronic music: trancy,

heavy synth topline]

[music: "Theme From Norefjell" by Tisto]

[speaker speaks in foreign language]

- I was four years old when

my parents got divorced.

I grew up with my mom.

I never really knew my dad.

Yeah, I saw him a couple times a year.

He died when I was still pretty young.

Basically my mom raised me

and she was crazy about music too.

So every night she was listening

to music on the couch.

We were listening to Abba and stuff.

When I was like 16.

I was playing for her.

She was dancing in my room.

She never complained me

playing loud music, either.

I would open my windows

and play really loud music

so the whole street could

enjoy my music. [laughs]

[electronic music continues]

The Spock in Breda was my

first regular paying gig

every week, three nights a week.

I was 19, got the equivalent of like $25.

I played from 10 till four. Six hours.

Different times back then.

- Back then we were playing Belgium Beat

and it was very depressing music.

We needed a new sound.

He started playing and I

still get goosebumps of it

when I think of that moment,

he was playing his music

on the wall actually

where it was very shabby.

He started playing and okay,

yeah, that's something new,

that's something, that's interesting.

Let's keep the guy.

- It was basically an experimental room,

which helped me a lot actually

because I can just really

experiment with sounds

and learn myself how to DJ.

Before the shift I helped

at the bar, you know,

making drinks for everybody

and after the shift, I had

to clean the restrooms.

Keeps you humble.

I also told him look at the audience

and see what's happening.

And after a while he started,

okay, they're bouncing.

[electronic music]

Look, they're really bouncing now, yeah.

They were always wondering

where is he taking us,

what's the story tonight?

I can feel it in my

body still the adventure

of the evenings when Tijs was playing.

I mean he had three turntables,

one of the first guys I think that played

with three turntables.

We had to build a special set up for it.

[electronic music]

Tijs had a plan in his head.

He wanted to be famous, he wanted

to be the best in his music

and that was I think his drive

and that was the drive that I

needed behind the turntables.

[music: "Underwater" by Joel

Freck. High energy, upbeat]

- In Belgium, you had like

the super clubs, Boccaccio

and Confetti's, and they

all played like experimental

new beats music and acid house.

For me, it was great to

discover those sounds

and this was the first time

I heard DJ Sven Vath play.

He was a legend from Germany

and he would play six hours

and you would don't recognize any records.

[electronic music continues]

Everybody in Holland

back then had a DJ name.

You know DJ Tijs didn't

sound very sexy. [laughs]

And it's very hard to

pronounce for foreign people.

Apparently.

I wanted to make [it] sound more Italian.

[electronic music]

- [Emcee]: Mr. Tisto!

- Rotterdam has always

been a pretty rough city.

There was this one street in Rotterdam,

the Binnenweg, it was a

street with record store

after record store after record store.

- There was this one particular

store called Basic Beat.

I was already looking for

the more trancy side of music

and not too many stores

over there were, you know,

were specialized in it.

Until I got to Basic Beat

and there was a certain

gentleman named Tijs Verwest

working there.

- I was very lucky to get that job.

The owner of a record store

in Breda was also the owner

of the record store in Rotterdam.

I said, "Look, if you ever

have a job for me, let me know.

"It's my dream job to

work in a record store.

"It's like a kid in a candy store."

- A bunch of DJs that are

international right now,

they all hang out in that

store on a Friday night

when the latest shipment came in.

We're all looking for the one track

and there were only like

two copies in the shipment.

- That's when it really

started happening for me

because in that record store in Rotterdam,

Every DJ had his own mailbox.

I had the first pick of

all the trance tracks,

so I always had better

vinyl than everybody else

on trance music.

Paul Oakenfold actually called

me to ask me for tracks,

"How do you get these records?"

I said, "Well, I can send you some stuff."

And I start mailing him records

and he gave me his old acetates.

So it was a win-win situation.

- Tijs was, you know,

looked up to him a lot

at that particular time in his career

and Paul was a big advocate of Tisto.

- I remember him was telling me

how he was doing six one-hour

gigs a night in Holland

and he'd drive himself

around and I respected that.

[electronic music: dark,

pulsing, medium tempo]

- It was like 1999, a very

important gig in Amsterdam

during an ID&T event called Innercity.

And that was the time

just before the big

breakthrough of trance music.

And he did a remix for

a track from Delerium

with Sarah McLaughlin,

"The Silence," which

became a trance anthem.

- I was just signing CDs there

and I was only huge in Norway

and in Israel.

So not even Holland.

But one DJ got sick.

I got the opening slot on that night.

It was 30,000 people.

- Tijs was in tears. There

was a lot of emotion going on.

There was the big breakthrough

of trance music in the Netherlands.

1999, after Innercity

everybody knew Tisto

and that was the next big thing.

- I feel like I'm getting somewhere

finally after all these

years of hard work.

[electronic music: mysterious, pensive]

[music: "Breeze" by

Yanivi. Lively, bright]

- I started DJing when I was 11,

around 11 years old. I saw DJs like Tisto

and Armin van Buuren on TV

and I just started to download

programs from the internet

and started to, yeah, work on

my own beats and my own songs

and before I knew like one

radio station in Holland picked

one of my records up

and started playing it

and I was 14 years old when I

signed my first record deal.

[people converse in foreign language]

It's like a little boy with a dream.

And it's getting bigger and bigger now.

[lively music]

- I grew up in Germany,

I was always into music.

When I was around 20,

I went out and bought some

turntables and a mixer.

Becoming proficient at beat matching

took me like two years.

You know and I would literally

like listen to a record

for like a minute and count the beats

and then write on the back

of the record, the BPM.

'Cause I couldn't figure

out which one was faster,

which one was slower.

It was all very confusing, you know?

I DJ'ed at Ministry of Sound,

I had a residency at a

club called Leisure Lounge.

It's funny, it took me so

long to learn how to DJ.

It's just crazy to think

of how long it took me

and how long it took

Kai to learn how to DJ.

- You can't just be a DJ,

you have to make music.

Like if you don't really

make music, you won't be able

to play your songs when you perform.

But also like other DJs

won't be playing your song.

- Kai released his first mix album

when he was eight years old.

It came out on Ultra Records.

So they posted this

little compilation video

of Kai's mix album on their

YouTube channel and a third

or maybe even half of the comments

were complaining about the fact

that he was only a DJ and not a producer.

Kai was eight.

That blew our mind.

Yeah, the pressure is there, no question,

there's really no big name DJ out there

that's not also a producer.

- I've taken music production classes

for like a couple years now.

- Like it drops with this one too.

You see after one, it goes up?

Look.

[upbeat music]

Cool, no?

- I don't really know

where it's going, you know.

He's only 11, you know, who knows

what he's into when

he's 18 or when he's 20.

But for now, that's what he wants to do.

He wants to be a DJ.

You know, if you ask him

what are you gonna do in your 20s?

I'm gonna be a professional

DJ, I wanna be like Tisto.

- [Narrator] Back in the UK,

by the late '90s, something had changed.

DJs fell off in popularity

as British fans revolted

against the rising cost of admission.

They turned away from music that seemed

to get harder and faster

with each passing season.

- The craft of DJing changed.

Instead of taking the

crowd on this long journey

and playing more varied music,

[It] became much more like every DJ

trying to blow the other

DJ off stage, you know.

- The whole business had become bloated.

DJ fees were out of control.

- [Speaker] Agents would

just whack a zero on the end.

There were several committees

that got together that tried

to regulate it but it didn't work.

- The values in dance music are more akin

to values in the hippie vibe, right?

Of togetherness, unity,

love, peace, respect.

And it just felt like

by the end of the '90s,

that the values in dance music

had been replaced by money.

- Kids don't wanna go to a business,

they wanna go to a rave.

And if they start feeling

like, "Oh this is a brand,

"there's logos everywhere, you know."

It loses its cool, it loses its rawness.

Woodstock didn't have Woodstock

logos hanging everywhere.

- By the end of '99

there was so much negativity around that.

Nearly every event that took place

that night suffered.

We lost a lot of money.

- The production companies

r*ped us, the venues r*ped us,

the DJs r*ped us and we r*ped the kids.

And they went, "No, I'm not paying that."

- And it felt like collectively,

thousands and thousands

of kids woke up that day

and they weren't in love with dance music

as much as they was a month before.

It was crazy.

- Greed, just greed.

- [Narrator] After the millennium,

electronic music lost its way for a while.

September 11th sent

shutters through the world.

In the US, anti-rave laws

designed to control drugs

kept the scene mostly underground.

It wasn't like in Europe.

In America, most DJs

still weren't dreaming

about how to become rich pop stars.

- There was definitely a whole new era

of artists which gave us a new foundation

in which to build upon.

Swedish House Mafia,

deadmau5, David Guetta.

Tisto was big but then became huge.

- It was that second generation

of kids like the Swedish House Mafia.

And it was those guys that

were able to wrap it up

and market it to an

audience here in America.

[music: "Summer Nights" by

Jhojan Pardo. Bright, upbeat]

- Born and raised in Sweden.

Italian father, Swedish mother,

I was the very annoying ADHD kid in class

that never listened.

I lived in my own world. [laughs]

I stopped school when I

was 14 years old, actually.

My father said, son you have two choices,

go make music or go back to school.

So I said, "I'm gonna make music."

And then my father

started a record label '89

with like techno and trance

and so I kinda fell in

love with that pretty early

and look up to all the DJs

and producers that he signed to his label

and wanted to be like them.

I met Steve Angello first time, actually,

I went to disco where I grew up.

We were about eight, 10 years old.

One day we went to my father's office

and we heard the Daft Punk

album together, "Homework."

And he was like, "What is this?"

And then we met Axwell at

a release party in Sweden.

- Next time, I'm just going

to drench my T-shirt in water

to start with and people

won't think it's weird

that I sweat this much.

I do this for you people,

I do this for you.

- We were like just a couple of guys

making dance music in Sweden.

You know, one day we said

we should just go out

and DJ together and drink beer for free.

And that's how it started

very organically. [laughs]

We were super drunk in every gig,

so there were people around us

that said, "You guys smashed it."

We were like, "Did we?"

You you have something magical going on.

There's something going on when

you play all three together.

We were like, really?

We just going bananas behind the decks.

Then we went into the

studio with Laidback Luke

and made "Leave the World

Behind" and something happened.

Leave this world behind

[electronic music: bright, upbeat]

[music: "Leave the World Behind"

[by Swedish House Mafia and

Laidback Luke ft. Deborah Cox]

We were kind of the first

house music band, you know.

People were like, "Whoa

they are a band now."

There was a forum in

Sweden called The Tribe

with some dance music lovers and haters.

And on this forum, we said something like,

"How could they give us cold pizza

and beer and a sh*t hotel room."

And people start to hate at us like,

"Who the f*ck do you think you are?

"The Swedish House Mafia?"

And we said, "That's exactly what we are."

- We wanna thank everybody

coming down tonight.

Some of you are ending

your summer here and now

with us today and we hope

that you will remember us

when you are at your home

in this mother f*cking cold winter

we have in Europe. Remember

yourself here tonight.

How you looked, what you were drinking,

what you were listening to.

And remember that the Swedish

House Mafia loves you.

[crowd cheers]

And see you next summer.

[crowd cheers]

[bright music]

- I mean, the fact that they're

the Swedish House Mafia.

I mean, guys from Chicago

just hit their knee

and buckled over laughing.

We thought that was the

funniest thing we'd ever heard.

I mean this is a uniquely Chicago term,

- But Sweden are famous for Abba and Ikea

and Swedish House Mafia. Avicii.

- And meatballs.

- And meatballs. [laughs]

Yeah, of course.

The Swedish meatballs, yeah.

- For me, music is my life.

Music is my fuel, music is

my blood, music is my soul,

music is my air, music

is everything for me.

If I don't listen or make music

or trying to make music,

I get very depressed.

And you know, I don't see

the purpose of living.

- [Narrator] It wasn't only the Swedes

who were busy invading America.

In California, a new generation of DJs

fueled a fresh movement

in electronic music.

[music: "Atrio - Id4" by

DSK CHK. Dark and wistful]

- I had always heard about

these massives on the West Coast

and that these candy kids,

they all wore like Mickey Mouse gloves

and bracelets up to their elbows

and they listened to like

hard style and happy hardcore.

It was a very different

thing than what we were into.

So when I started to work with Kaskade,

you'd come home from a gig

and be like, "You don't understand.

"These festivals are massive.

"There are so many kids

"and they're young,

everybody knows the songs."

- The moment that it changed for me,

that's the first time I

played the main stage at EDC.

And I just remember

standing in the Coliseum

and watching the people pour in.

I had never seen anything like it.

And that next day, I called

up Ultra Records, the label

that I was signed to at the time

and I'm like, "You guys

have to see this firsthand.

"You have to come out."

- The energy was that this

thing was at like critical mass.

- [Announcer] The party will be stopped.

Stop now.

[excited music]

[people clamoring and shouting]

[bloodied girl sobbing]

- At the end of the

weekend when it came out

that a young girl had passed away,

the government, the city, it was too much.

It was to the point

where they had to move.

- [Narrator] After the

death of Sasha Rodriguez,

Electric Daisy Carnival

moved to Las Vegas. The

first year in its new home,

the festival drew 230,000

people over three days.

Death and scandal were not

enough to slow the EDM movement.

- We played New York. We loved it.

And then we did a rave on a beach in Miami

called the Masquerade Motel.

It sold out.

And then I remember saying

to our agent at the time,

I wanna do Madison Square Garden.

It wasn't because it was an ego play,

it was because, okay,

where would the fans wanna go

that was just once in a f*cking lifetime.

- She had a plan.

And you know, we went out

on sale, I was so nervous

and it sold out and we didn't believe it.

We were like, "Wow, this is crazy."

[gentle electronic music]

[music: "The Computer" by Niv Ben Eli]

- And Madison Square Garden

sold out in nine minutes

with 250,000 people in a

holding pattern to buy tickets.

And we crashed Ticketmaster

and it was history.

- When we played Madison Square Garden

really stamped dance music.

- It was the best moment

ever, Madison Square Garden.

But it came with its baggage afterwards.

It attracted the wrong kind of people.

I regretted it in so many ways

because it attracted

these guys that were like,

"What do you mean this sound

"sold out Madison Square Garden?

"What do you mean there were

250,000 people in the queue?

"That must mean there's a

hundred of these artists.

"That must mean there's 100

Madison Square Gardens a year."

It was in that much demand

because it was one Madison Square Garden.

So all of a sudden,

these like billionaire,

zillionaire, trillionaire, whatevers

were like circling around

trying to buy, "oh, quick,

"we must understand, what is this?

"Let's call this EDM."

And you're just like, whoa, really?

- EDM sounds like a disease for me.

It's like I have EDM, you know. [laughs]

- I felt bad afterwards

that I used a venue

that the name was so recognizable

to some people that I now

wish were not a part of rave.

- I think one of the biggest headlines

for dance music in the last 12 months

has been the enormous

amount of consolidation

that's started to go on.

A lot of companies are getting bought

and put together and one of the men

with the biggest purses

and done the most shopping is here

with us today, so Shelly Finkel.

- [Narrator] The rise of EDM had caught

the attention of Wall Street.

After the Swedes rocked

Madison Square Garden,

businessman Robert Sillerman set out

to conquer the EDM world

with SFX Entertainment.

He hired Sheldon Finkel,

a former rock music

and boxing promoter

to help him transform the EDM

movement into big business.

- Bob Sillerman was on the cover

of Billboard famously in September

with holding a glitter ball

with like a billion dollars

and he decided to go shopping.

It was like supermarket sweep

and every everyone seems to have

got the Shelly Finkel calls.

[electronic music: urgent,

dangerous, high bpm]

- What our basic strategy

is to acquire certain major brands

and to acquire promoters in

different parts of the world,

which can expand these

brands into those markets

that they probably never

would've got to do otherwise.

So we have someone we just

bought in South America,

probably a dozen different

companies in the United States.

We bought the largest promoter in Germany.

- Is there any money left?

- There's plenty of money left.

- I have to sell you something.

- [Narrator] In October

of 2013, Bob Sillerman

and the DJ Afrojack rang

the opening bell at Nasdaq.

SFX Entertainment,

after buying more than

a dozen EDM properties

in just over a year, was

now a public company.

[cymbal crash]

[bright, excited music]

["OCT ID" by DSK CHK]

- [Narrator] As Wall Street

was investing in a scene

it didn't understand, dance

promoters were finding new ways

to reach out to a global audience.

[bright music]

- What I love about dance

music is that, you know,

we all come here with the same vibe.

You know, it's all about PLUR,

peace, love, unity, respect.

You know, we enjoy the music, we enjoy

the company of each other

and just, you know, having a good time.

There's no judgment here.

You don't have to worry about you know,

what you are gonna do tomorrow

or your finances, it's just

kind of like an escape.

[excited music]

- All of us rushed a fraternity together

last semester. We saw this

video online about Ultra

a couple hours away from our school

and we got tickets and

decided to come down.

[electronic music continues]

- What happened in 2010

made it so that everyone had

to look at their business

and treat it more like

a live concert event.

- Television and radio

weren't paying attention

to dance music.

So they just found their own way.

- [Narrator] Festivals

like Ultra and Tomorrowland

turned the after movie into high art.

Sprawling video teams

filmed dreamy recaps that

celebrated the major moments

of each party, which helped

sell tickets to the next one.

- The after movies and the

pre-movies and the teasers,

it just allowed the culture

and the festival experience

to be like bottled up and packaged.

After movies are fun

'cause you're like, damn

I missed out on that.

Like, that was awesome.

But then you just think like,

if last year was awesome,

this year's gonna be awesome

so let's go.

- What's nice about it,

everybody's looking at it now

and comparing the after movie

from Ultra with Tomorrowland

and EDC and which one is better.

- You need to sell the experience.

For any of these festivals, you need,

it's all about, let me put it this way,

goosebumps never lie.

Forever in my mind

Only you

[gentle and bright music]

[music: "Lullabies" by

Adventure Club and Yuna.]

The pieces in my life

run away with you.

When you get those feelings

on the on the arms,

there's nothing like that.

And even if you see it in a video,

a video can bring out those goosebumps

and you say I need to be there.

[music: "Homeward" by Ferry

Corsten. Upbeat, trancy]

- I think it's a beautiful reality

as a filmmaker, that is my passion.

[electronic music]

50,000 people at the festival

but a million people that are able

to watch it at their homes

or if this grows even more, you know,

maybe 100 million people in the future.

[music: "Eugina" by Salt

Tank. Dreamy, trancy]

[crowd whistling and cheering]

[electronic music continues]

With dance music and the artists

within the new digital age

and internet has made it possible for them

to just show themselves.

- I think that why young

guys, DJs, producers,

whatever it is, blow up so

fast is because the internet.

- I'm doing my social media myself

with one of my friends so that's my focus

and well my financial managers

will take care of that part.

I don't want to be involved with that part

and I just take care of my social media.

I think it's really

important, you know like,

social media is everything.

People are living on Facebook.

- That's my hobby.

I love making little videos.

It's what, I used to

read. Once upon a time

I used to read all the time.

Then Twitter came along and Instagram.

I don't read anymore.

Damn, did you see the London video?

Come on.

I got deep in the new

iMovie. It's so sick.

- Did you do it all on the phone?

- [Kaskade] Yeah.

- Impressive, man. I thought you would've

- All on the phone.

- Everything goes so fast.

Today, you're not even

number one for four days.

You know, if you're lucky.

- I think today, DJing

has really become a popularity contest.

It's all about how many

Facebook followers do you have

or how many Twitter followers do you have

and that's almost like how

your worthiness is defined.

It's really not so much

about what your skillset is

and how much time you've

put in, and to a degree

it's ruined the scene.

I make a new single and two weeks after

they ask me, "Where's your new single?"

The new generation just

wanna be first on everything.

They don't care about

the quality of your song,

they just wanna have

your song on the phone.

They want run back to school and say,

"Look, I have the Avicii

song and you don't."

The new generation is pretty damaged

by the internet, I guess.

[electronic music]

- Okay. Hello, everyone.

Welcome to the Electric Canteen.

My name is DJ Kai Song

and I've been DJing for

seven years right now.

I was just on my first

tour called Camplified

and we went from like

camp to camp to camp.

17 dates

The tour, I definitely,

it was totally worth it.

It definitely boosted my

fan base on Instagram.

[music: "Run" by Tristan

Barton. uplifting, upbeat]

[uplifting music continues]

- We were on an RV

and we drove from New

York, we went as far west

as Wisconsin and Michigan.

- [Kai] I was like signing

people's arms and foreheads

and business cards and posters.

- They heard about him

and they were like, "Oh really, he's a DJ

"and he's this young and

is that really possible?"

- I might have a tour better than that

but I always will remember

that as my first tour.

[kids chanting "DJ Kai Song"]

[electronic music]

[music: "Dlirio" By Bonzai

Classics. Dark, pensive]

- We've definitely felt the push

from America, haven't we Liv?

- The love from America, the energy there.

Our fans there are crazy.

They're so involved in

the whole EDM movement

from what they wear to the candy they make

just the peace and love vibe.

I just, I love it.

- Just the togetherness of everyone,

Everyone like vibing in a crowd together.

It's what I live for, man.

[electronic music]

- People look back at Woodstock

and say it was a crazy event

where they wish they could be there

and I think people will

look back at this era

and say that they wish

they could have seen this.

[electronic music]

- There isn't really anything

counter-cultural about these events.

They're fun and full of color

and escape and celebration,

but there's not really a sense

that youth is standing up

against the establishment

or represents change.

[electronic music]

It's much more like the idea

of leaving reality for a while.

It's escape from a world

where things are not looking

that great for young people,

you know, a lot of them are

leaving college with debts

and there aren't jobs waiting for them

that would ever give them a

chance to pay off those debts.

- I show my friends EDM

and they're like, "I can't listen to this

"unless I'm high, drunk

or something like that."

But these are also friends

that aren't like chill like me.

Like every group has that one

Like weird different kid, that's me.

I got my gloves and everything.

- [Narrator] One reason why

the festivals grew so popular,

they gave the crowd what

they craved: release

Every 30 seconds

the music would surge

like a rush of dopamine,

sending bodies leaping into the air.

The drop, as it was known,

came to define the EDM era.

- Dance music is really simple.

It's a four by four kick drum

that actually make a track.

So for me the drop is actually the bar,

the transition between the break

and when the kick drum is kicking back in.

[electronic music drop example]

That's the drop.

[electronic music]

- Certainly, at this point in time,

it's become about

something else, for sure.

I mean I'd be an idiot to argue

that it's just about the music.

It's not. It's about carnival

rides and food and concessions

and everything that's happening

around this. Going

together with your friends.

It's kinda a rite of passage

for a lot of young kids.

Went to my first big party

- Ultra tickets are about $500

each that we come out to do.

So I mean we're all

putting money into the DJs

- In a sense, they have something

that is a much bigger draw

than the drawing power

of the specific DJs.

They have the biggest DJs

but they have created something

that is kinda like a unique atmosphere

and they have these dedicated fans

that come dressed in fairy wings

and crazy outfits and costumes.

There is this sense

where it's the brand name

Electric Daisy Carnival

and the crowd itself that is the star.

[crowd cheers]

- [ATB, DJ] Ladies! Gentlemen!

Make some noise!

[music: "9pm Till I Come Home"

by ATB. Excited, celebratory]

- [Narrator] The success

of Electric Daisy Carnival

and Ultra Music Festival

fueled the movement

and bred an expl*si*n of EDM festivals.

The modern version of rave

spread around the globe

and became a multi-billion

dollar business.

- There's a festival

in like every city now.

It's a little excessive.

The festivals are absolutely,

they're taking it a little bit too far.

There's only so many kids to go around.

I don't know if any of them

are pushing us further.

- It seems as though we're

heading down this road

to where things were

going in the late '90s

where it's like cannibalizing

itself a little bit.

Where less people are traveling to some

of these really big events

because oh man, I don't

need to go to Nevada

to see some big show.

They're doing it here in New York.

You know, the people that

are trying to make the most

and get the dollars out of this thing

and squeeze it for everything

that it's worth will not know

when to say stop. What's too many?

[music: "Eternity" by Ferry

Corsten. Dreamy, trancy]

- [Narrator] The rise of

the DJ faced another threat,

one that was all too familiar.

MDMA, known as Molly in its

purest form, became the drug

of choice once again for

ravers in the EDM era

and kids were dying of overdoses.

- Molly had sort of became

like this casual thing

and it was all about like

PLUR, you know, peace,

love, unity, respect.

So it was kind of seen as like

this mind opening, you know,

not addictive drug.

- All these people are

dying 'cause they're eating

whole handfuls and so they

don't know what they're doing.

- It's horrible that people

will OD. Kids don't know the consequences.

I saw a girl take six mollies at once.

It's mind boggling but I

don't think you can say it

just because it's dance

music that makes people die.

- [Interviewer] Does Molly

make the experience better?

- No...

- Of course, f*ck yeah it does.

Molly's dope. But you gotta

know what you're doing.

A lot of people will push

it into their bodies,

and have no idea what they're doing.

That's an individual responsibility.

- You can't be like that

well versed in the culture

and not realize that like

Molly's that prevalent.

They sell those binky light-up things

that I guess you're

supposed to suck on like

while you're raving so

your teeth don't clench.

The festival knows like

how lucrative that is.

They're not gonna stop just

because people are dying.

It's just they're making

way too much money to think

that it's even an option to

stop having these festivals.

Way too much money.

[music: "Thoughts in Motion"

by Tristan Barton. Gentle, sad]

[crowd cheers]

[cars gunning engines]

[vehicles whooshing by]

[birds chirping]

- It was Rock Hudson's

house I think in the '40s.

It's a very traditional early bungalow.

But yeah, Marlon Brando also came here

for barbecues, which is

quite frightening. [laughs]

And now I have as many friends

here as I have at home.

Everyone's here but I still love London

so I haven't moved here full time.

[electronic music: mysterious, mournful]

I think some DJs very much

like young reality TV stars

have had it too fast too soon.

I do worry for them

because I think that

struggle was so joyous

and I can sit here with you

or I can sit by my campfire outside

and we can have talks

for hours about years

of working towards this.

And those memories are so precious.

I don't know that those

guys are then equipped

to handle fame at the top

but that's not their fault.

They're getting this opportunity now.

The demand is high.

We need immediate superstars.

No one wants a tragedy in this scene.

- [Speaker] So how you

liking Vegas so far?

- Oh I like it. [laughs]

- I know

two people who have really suffered

in the last year with

alcohol and drug addiction.

One's young and one's not so young.

And it is tragic.

[music: "Thoughts in Motion"

by Tristan Barton. Somber]

- EDM, I'm just so happy

to be kind a part of it

and you know,

we're like right in the

middle of it at this time.

'Cause I do think it's

the most interesting time

for electronic music right now

'cause it's never been this big before.

[rumbling of sports cars approaching]

[music: "Melodic House" by

Descent. Bouncy, upbeat]

[indistinct chatter while walking]

- Hey.

- What's up, Ian?

- Hey.

- Did Costa Rica get sorted or no?

- The whole Diplo thing?

- We're working on it.

They basically have me

being their private jet coordinator.

- You should ride in the jet, then.

- [Speaker] $200,000

for a private jet, huh?

[upbeat music]

- It's a young company.

You know, it's actually probably the

youngest company in SFX.

I would say everybody's

in the mid to late 20s

and early 30s.

I think it's really cool.

And we're doing it just

as big as a, you know,

25-year-old company that's

been throwing parties.

We're so connected with

this millennial crowd

that's growing throughout the world.

I mean we're part of that.

- Then we all met working at restaurants

then we used to watch "Entourage."

So we're like one day we just want to live

that lifestyle.

- We were all in college

so we didn't have money.

[upbeat music]

We grew so fast. A year and a half

of just touring in Florida,

next thing you know we did a

national tour of like 20 cities

and then the following tour was 60 cities.

You know, literally 60 shows

in a matter of three months.

- I just knew it was gonna

be a lot of hard work

and a lot of restless

hours, a lot of Adderall.

- [Speaker] Do you think

the fees are getting...?

- Ridiculous

- Because I feel like in Central America

what Diplo's asking for

is somewhat reasonable.

- I don't think it's reasonable.

I mean we had the offer in for 45 days

and then he comes back

the day that he's supposed to confirm,

"Oh, I need a private jet."

- Yeah.

- That changes everything.

- I started doing events

about six years ago

at the beginning of

the EDM scene in the US

and I was paying some of

these now-superstar DJs

$5,000 to come play.

Now these guys are

getting $500,000 to play.

Today, I got a phone call for a DJ

who's gonna be touring South America

around the same time that we are

and he wants $1 million a night.

- It's kinda like a battle

that's been going on

for the past few years,

but now it's been getting

kind of out of control

where it's time to draw the line.

- [Narrator] But drawing the

line wasn't always so easy

because as EDM DJs became more popular,

they made millionaires

out of nightclub owners

like David Grutman.

[music: "Beach House" By

Marcos Bolanos. Bouncy, upbeat]

- How I wound up in the club business

was after I graduated

college, I said I'd go bartend

for a year in South Beach.

I'm from Naples, Florida.

I was gonna go home

and do title insurance,

couldn't get hired on the beach anywhere

because I'm a chubby Jewish guy.

So the only place I could get

a job was at the Aventura Mall

at the Biz Bistro, which is a restaurant.

This is a bucket made out of like Legos.

Walk with me.

Alex Turco did my fireplace,

which is kind of crazy.

These are Legos in the wall.

[groovy house music]

Am I a competitive guy?

People ask me if I have hobbies

and my hobby is to dominate.

That's literally my own hobby.

I don't play tennis, I'm

not climbing some mountain.

I'm not collecting stamps.

I'm dominating the club business.

You know, people like to

say that DJs just push

the button play and then walk away.

I would've thought that from

David Guetta out of all people.

But you know, he train wrecked

a couple weeks ago with me

and I was like, "What?

What just happened?"

He's like, "It happens every two years

"and see, I do really play David."

And so I get surprised

here and there, you know?

It's great.

And you can see how these DJs

before their show want to

like go do new edits and cuts

and stuff like that and

literally I laugh at them

and say, nobody cares about the music.

Just stop it already.

Just get up there and

play your f*cking hits.

[upbeat music]

[upbeat music continues]

[upbeat music continues]

We really track these guys

around, these table customers.

It's a constant thing,

especially in the club business

because that one guy can change

the whole outcome of a night or not.

It just depends.

You have certain guys that are, you know,

the arms dealer from, you know,

arms dealing is not ill*gal

in every country, so.

I've seen a 350 table, which is pretty,

It's a crazy table.

- [Interviewer] 300?

- $350,000.

I mean, there's one guy

that spent 3 million

with us in two months

and he was just buying the

$150,000, you know, Ace of Spade.

He sadly, is gone.

Meaning his parents saw,

cut off his trust fund

and that's what happens.

So a big whale like that, what happens

either they get a girlfriend,

they run outta money or they go to jail.

It's one of the three.

Right now, I feel my only competition

is not other clubs in

Miami, but it's Vegas.

Is that big whale,

is that big bottle spender gonna go spend

the weekend in Vegas?

Or is he gonna go spend

it with me in Miami?

Miami, Miami.

[no audio]

[music: "Rafaelson Groove" by

Descent. Dark and throbbing]

- There was the crash.

2007 the wheels fell off Las Vegas.

[electronic music]

Now that was really what

changed everything here

because without that, there's

no way would the industry

that we have today exist.

Because what Vegas had to do

is change how it operated,

changed how it attracted people.

Because people didn't want

to necessarily just throw money at gaming.

Whatever residual cash they had,

they wanted to spend

on their own enjoyment.

And nightclubs for some

reason seemed to be something

that they were willing to spend money on.

- Las Vegas can be kind of stiff,

they're not necessarily known

for embracing electronic music.

At that time, it was all hip hop.

I mean you were going to see Celine

or you were gonna go listen

to like mashup hip hop.

- Electronic music for a while,

its home was essentially

Ibiza and London, Berlin.

Europeans never took this

market very seriously.

- [Narrator] Paul Oakenfold

saw the potential in Las Vegas

for a DJ invasion.

In 2008, he brought Planet

Perfecto to Rain Nightclub.

- And I stopped with the DJing

stopped writing on for my album

and realized I'd lost my balance

and had to get back to

finding the balance.

And finding my balance was

my residency in Las Vegas.

[electronic music]

[crowd cheers]

- Every Saturday, I would go to one place,

play for three hours.

There was 5,000 people.

We had 50 performers.

Every hour, the music style would change,

start off very commercial

and it would go into more melodic,

then it would end on trance.

We would take you to this

planet that didn't exist.

And I would make special

tracks for scenes.

There was 12 screens behind me.

There was fire, there was artificial snow,

people trapezing and it

was electric grinders.

Yeah, it was good.

[music: "Atrio - id4" by

DSK CHK. Dark and uptempo]

- Oakenfold's residency at Rain, the first

of its kind in Las Vegas,

lasted for three years.

It opened the door for other

clubs to ride the EDM wave.

[electronic music]

[jet plane whooshing by]

- My dream was always to

go to Las Vegas, you know,

to be there as a resident.

And I've been in Ibiza for over 10 years

and I think in Ibiza I've done everything.

I've seen everything.

All of a sudden, Ibiza

couldn't buy the talent they wanted to

because nightclubs in Las

Vegas wanted the same talent.

It went from London and Ibiza to whoop,

I'm sorry you guys are no longer important

and don't really matter

much in this music.

It's now LA and Las Vegas.

[music: "City Lights" by

Kai Song. Bouncy, upbeat]

[crowd cheers]

[music continues]

[champagne spraying]

[pool Splashing]

[music continues]

- What's been really a game

changer club has been Hakkasan.

- [Narrator] In 2013, the MGM

Grand paid millions of dollars

to hire Tisto, Calvin Harris

and Hardwell for its summer parties.

- Neil came up to me, we

started this, building

a whole new club, the biggest

club in the world, fresh, new.

"I want you to be part of it.

"How do you want the DJ booth?

"How do you want the layout?

"and what can we do to make it your home?"

I don't wanna be in the

spotlight all the time

because the challenge

is that it's so bright

in the club already.

Sometimes, you have to

make it more darker.

Like this, like that, yeah

[music: "Maximal Crazy" by

Tisto. Intense, high bpm]

- Our venue cost over

$100 million to build.

- The money that's being

put into these new clubs

and these new nights

and these new concepts,

is astronomical.

And these guys don't care

about electronic music.

- A lot of people have

talked about Hakkasan

and you know, we pay this and we paid that

and we overpaid for this

and we overpaid for that.

It's like spoiled

children in a sweet shop.

Stop. Right?

It's it's it's it's silly.

Until DJs wanna build $100 million venues.

I decide when it opens and when it closes.

[electronic music]

- You know what, I forgot mine.

Like you're in trouble.

- Yeah, you're really in trouble.

You forgot your earplugs?

- Yeah.

- You're f*cking in real trouble.

- Well the good thing is I

never put monitor to that.

[Unintelligible chatter backstage

from girls and DJ Group]

[music [in background]:

"Leo" By Norman Doray.]

Why I chose for Hakkasan

is because I really loved

the club in the first place

and they offered me my own

night with my own visuals

and like everything was like customized

the way I wanted to be.

That's Vegas.

Vegas is all about that.

Like you should give the people experience

and play, instead of playing

like a normal DJ gig.

[crowd cheering]

[electronic music]

[crowd cheers]

[music: "Heaven" by DSK

CHK. Bright, up tempo]

- What a lot of promoters

are saying is Vegas

is pushing everybody's fee up.

- All I know is that Vegas

pays more than anywhere else in the world.

- The grand opening of

Hakkasan, they had a customer

that spent $600,000 in just champagne.

One customer.

- We're also one of

the few venues that has

what we call our Dynastie package.

A half a million dollar package

for some of our top clients.

And very quickly, we went from three

or four nightclubs to several.

[loud boom effect]

[bright up tempo

electronic music continues]

[cars riding by]

- Yeah, everything in

Vegas is a bubble, I guess.

There's tigers disappearing

on a show one day,

there's a girl singing about love

for four hours one day,

there's Tisto and there's me

and Calvin Harris one day,

and there's P Diddy the other day.

So of course, it's a bubble.

[electronic music]

[crowd cheers]

- It's a little bit silly at this point.

It's like dance music by numbers

or night clubbing by numbers.

Okay, here's the flashing

batons, here's the dancers,

here's the confetti, here's the cryo.

And it's like American excess on blast.

[music: "After All" By Niv

Ben Eli. Pensive, downbeat]

- [Speaker] What happened in the UK

was that when the DJ fee started

to be very publicly known,

resentment started to kick in.

- I mean, I can remember the

first year that I made $80,000.

I was like, "This is so much money.

"I cannot believe I'm going

to be able to do this.

"This is what I'm going to

be able to do as a career.

I'm gonna make records

and go out and play shows.

"That's what I'm gonna do."

It was like this watershed moment.

[upbeat music]

And it was huge for me.

I mean now, dude, I'm making

twice that tonight at the club.

As my fee.

It's like ridiculous, it's like.

- The most I've ever paid a DJ

besides New Year's Eve,

obviously, is 200 [thousand].

The year that the DJ fee turning point

happened was 2009, 2010,

when the world was falling

apart, that's when DJs

decided to make big fees.

I would love to be paying

Tisto 1,000 bucks.

It's not happening anymore.

That ship has sailed.

- [Interviewer] Forbes said

you guys made 25 million

as a group last year.

Is that true?

- Did we? Where's the money? [laughs]

- [laughing] Do we deserve

this kind of money? Umm...

If I didn't feel like I deserved

this money, I wouldn't take it.

I mean, there's been a lot of work

and effort that's gotten me to this point.

I've sacrificed, I don't

know, countless holidays,

birthdays, anniversaries,

you know. [laughs]

Right now, it just seems

that the nightclubs

and the festivals, they

can't make them big enough.

- Where are we?

- The first stage when

you go...[Unintelligible]

[electronic music]

- I'm about to get painted.

[bright electronic music continues]

- Alright, only a few more nights

to make some memories here in 2014.

C'mon, Miami!

[crowd cheers]

[music: "Rain" by Arty. Dreamy, upbeat]

The rain is falling down

Oh oh, oh

What a life

The rain is falling down

Falling down, falling down

Falling down

[electronic music continues]

[electronic music continues]

- [Announcer] Make some

noise for the one and only

Kas-kade!

[crowd cheers]

Make some noise for your

Life in Color performers.

[crowd cheers]

[unintelligible]

- Good times, thank you

very much for having me.

[upbeat music]

- People talk about it today, you know,

with all the paraphernalia

that goes on around DJs

and all the money involved

and the private jets.

People are like, you know,

these guys are like rock stars.

I think DJs are going past that point.

I still see rock stars traveling on buses

and DJs in different level now.

- So we got a jet with Hardwell

'cause we were both coming

from the same place.

We had to go to another festival together

and then Robbert ended up playing the gig.

We played straight after him.

And he ended up getting a

chopper to the private jet

that was waiting there to

then go fly somewhere else.

- It's insane.

So it is insane.

But the transfers and

the hotels, you know,

we do get treated a

little too well, I think.

- yeah

But you know, we're not gonna say no

when they offer [laughing]

to give us a jet.

- yeah.

[music: "Relentless" by

K Solis. Bright, upbeat]

- With EDM, it becomes a brand.

It's no longer just the music.

I mean, that's always gonna be the core,

but then from that you extend,

you extend to the merchandise.

We have Avicii ice cream,

we have everything Avicii.

You know, it's useful stuff.

It's flip flops, it's water

bottles, it's earphones,

things that you would buy normally.

And it's even better now

because it's Avicii branded.

That's pretty much it.

- [Interviewer] Wow.

- Oh and Avicii condoms and

tattoos and sunglasses. [laughs]

[upbeat music continues]

- Some of the branding

that goes on right now.

It's almost becoming a

little bit clownesque.

It has nothing to do anymore with the core

of what we're doing, which

is great dance music.

It's not something that I find

myself doing eventually, no.

I just can't do it.

I come from a different era, I guess

and you know, there's a

limit to things for me. Yeah.

[music: "Organized Chaos"

by Descent. Upbeat, intense]

- All you do really is just press play

and you know, pull in a show.

If you're a DJ, it's simple.

- You could jump up on stage,

play Tisto songs and no one would know

it's not Tisto.

- But I would say it is

cooler if they're mixing live.

But I'm not gonna just leave.

I'm gonna say, "Oh, you know what?

"They're not mixing live."

I still enjoy the music.

You know, I still have

the sound of the speakers.

You're not gonna get that in your car.

- For sure.

- So that's also something too,

to hear it live is like whoa.

[bright electronic music continues]

- Some people argue that

some of this software

that's come out, whether

it's Ableton or Traktor

or any of the products that

are out there, even Pioneer

that now sync your music for you,

that it's making lazier DJs.

And you do see some professional DJs

that actually are not

doing very much up there.

I remember seeing a very

popular pop EDM group

that was playing prerecorded

synced tracks at a concert.

And everybody that had

a visual point of seeing

what their players were doing knew

that nothing was in those players.

- I think they're just

pressing play and looking busy.

- Do you? [laughing]

Yeah. [laughing]

- [Crowd] Davincii,

Davincii, Davincii, Davincii.

[music: "When Will The Bass

Drop" ft. Lil Jon and Sam F]

[chaotic, ominous, upbeat]

- The guys that are trying to

confuse people, like, no, no,

I'm this guy who's just like pressing play

and standing up there cheerleading

in front of a prerecorded set.

A lot of those guys try and masquerade

as somebody who's really

doing this incredible thing.

And that's when it damages the scene

[electronic music]

Get turned up to death

[electronic music

[head exploding]

- Technology has destroyed

the art of DJing.

I mean, let's be honest.

What do you actually need to do now?

Everything's done for you.

Where's the art?

But hey, that's the way it is.

And it's very important

to embrace technology.

It really is.

But as an art form in

terms of DJing, it's gone.

You can do tricks, you

can move things around.

But that feeling of going

through records, of playing live

of it being very difficult

to keep everything in time

'cause the drums are not locked.

And moving things around

and building the

arrangement, the structure

and then going to CDs and

looking through your wallet.

All that's gone.

It's just literally you scroll,

you find your track, you can quantize it,

you can just sync it in.

It's locked. You press play.

- I think the opposite. Or

you have more opportunities

than ever before.

You can loop real time. If you want

you can play like eight

records at the same time

like synced and stuff.

You can just use drum loops everywhere

with all the effects like

the delays, the reverbs.

You can actually produce a whole new song

just while you're DJing.

- The technology hasn't

k*lled the art of DJing.

Some of the people in

the other generations

they couldn't keep up

because they wasn't that good

on the music programs.

The art of DJing, you can never do that

on a festival with 55,000 people.

It's too big. When you're on a lineup

with 15 other mega acts that's

been preparing for this show.

It's like the Olympic

Games, you know what I mean?

You cannot go to Olympic

Games and just wing it.

- I don't see the

difference, me personally,

between a DJ giving a show,

embracing the audience

and Britney Spears lip

syncing at a concert.

I think they're the same in many respects.

I think the customer wants to see that.

- When I saw Dillon

Francis at EDC in Orlando,

there was a couple times

where he like messed up

and he's like, "Sorry guys.

"Like that's what happens

when you're a real DJ."

You know, and I thought

it was really cool,

seeing him kind of mess

up and be real like that.

I thought it was awesome.

- Yeah, the best always mess up.

- Yeah, last night Tisto did like

for like, just like a second.

I mean, it does show that

he was actually like-

- Human?

- Yeah, yeah.

- That they're actually human.

- Listen, it's easier

to write and produce a

song than it's ever been.

The accessibility of what

it takes to make a song is,

like, it used to be up here. 808, 909.

You have to used to buy these analog gear.

Now, it's like cool.

You pop open your new laptop

and it comes with some kind

of music-making program.

There's some kid in Amsterdam

right now that's making a hit.

- [Narrator] As Hardwell prepared

to headline TomorrowWorld,

the stakes were high

for SFX Entertainment.

The company's stock price was tanking.

Sillerman's big gamble was

on the verge of failure

and a steady rain was about

to make it a tough night

for the Dutch superstar, and for EDM.

[rain falling outside]

- I never prepare my complete set.

I just select a couple of tracks.

For example, for today,

I have like 2 1/2 hours

but I only play like

an hour and 15 minutes.

So it's gonna play a couple of

tracks at the festival itself

that's the moment I decide

which tracks I'm actually gonna play live.

[electronic music [on

laptop]: eerie topline]

- [Speaker] They're saying it's the rain.

- What do you mean?

Is it raining?

- [Speaker] It's raining

a little bit outside,

but they said that the weather's

really bad at the venue.

So a lot of the SUVs that they

had and vans got stuck inside

or they broke down at the venue.

So they lost vehicles.

- Are they expecting

more rain for tonight?

- You're pretty lucky

when it comes to that.

- I know.

- You're pretty lucky.

- Don't jinx it. [laughs]

[music: "Blackout" by

Hardwell. Dark, heavy synth]

- A lot of new kids on the block now,

if you try to book them,

they only can play 60 minutes.

They're not gonna play five minutes longer

'cause they don't have enough music.

I think that's completely

against the DJ culture.

- Listen, there's a

lot of jokers out there

that are making millions

and millions of dollars

that are really just that, they're clowns.

But I can't hate on that

'cause they wanna go and get money.

I'm like, whatever.

That dude's got some hustle,

he's trying to make a living.

Whatever, man.

I only hate on it when

they start encroaching

on my territory.

It's like, there's like a lane.

There's a big gutter in between

where my space and your space.

I only get mad when they try

and you know, move into my world.

That's when I'm like, "Okay, cool.

"The charade's off."

- Now this style of music is here to stay,

but if all the big DJs get paid $300,000

to play the same 20 tracks,

it's not gonna stay relevant.

We need to make sure that

it's not just about the show,

but it also stays about the music.

- To see anything diminished,

it becomes a little bit sad

because I know the

importance of that craft

as somebody who's taken a

lifetime to master that.

I've been to countless

shows where I've seen guys

where my mind's just been blown

and it's like, man, if we miss that

and we're just onto like guys standing

and playing the radio

hits, that's kinda boring.

You know? [laughs]

Like, is that really where we're at? Uhh

- Of course, we press

play, it's a CD player,

of course, we sit home

and prepare, give the show

to our lighting and designers

and the visual guy to keep the show tight.

But we also do a lot of things.

We perform, we speak to the crowd,

we filter it down music when we need to.

And if we don't, they complain.

Ah, he wasn't prepared

or the set was not good.

That's the mind f*ck for people

because they're like, "But you are a DJ."

No, but now we're not DJs anymore.

We're rock stars.

[music: "Atrio - dark17"

by DSK CHK. Dark, powerful]

[sucking sound and expl*si*n]

[crowd cheers]

[electronic music continues]

[electronic music continues]

- Who knows how long anyone

gets a chance to do this, right?

What's the lifespan?

How many years have we been talking about

is this the year that

the bubble's gonna burst?

I don't think it's going to,

but you know, people in the

industry continue to say,

is this gonna go away?

[music: "Blackout" by

Hardwell. Pleading, upbeat]

[electronic music continues]

- It's Swedish House

Mafia for life, this time.

[electronic music continues]

[crashing sound effect]

- If the EDM bubble did [mimics popping],

then all of a sudden,

this whole house of cards

would fall down around Vegas and Miami

and all the really big things of it.

But, I've been around long enough

to see that happen a few times.

And what happens is we

just go back underground.

[electronic music:

mysterious, dark, upbeat]

["Welcome The Night" by

Sevenn and Silver Panda]

Welcome, the night

[electronic music]

[electronic music continues]

[electronic music continues]

[electronic music continues]

[electronic music continues]

Welcome, the night

[electronic music continues]

- If you're with me, can I

get some energy, Tomorrowland?

[crowd cheers]

[electronic music continues]

Welcome

[electronic music continues]

[electronic music continues]

[music: "Underwater" by

Joel Freck. Light, downbeat]

- I am just waiting for

the bubble to burst.

And then I'll be like,

that was fun. [laughs]

Time to have babies now. [laughs]

[electronic music]

- Every year, we come back

to this amazing crowd.

[crowd cheers]

- I look into star signs sometimes.

I notice when, I'm a Capricorn

and born January 17th,

but a lot of superstars DJs are born

in the Capricorn star sign.

Deadmau5, Skrillex,

Hardwell, Nicky Romero,

Armin van Buuren, me, Calvin Harris.

We're all born between 20th of

December and 20th of January.

There must be something with the star sign

that all those guys are Capricorns.

- I'm 40 years old.

I have no kids.

I'm dying for a kid.

So if you know anyone that would like

to have a kid with me, I would love that.

I have two dogs.

I have a one-eyed cat

and I'm very lonely.

[electronic music]

- You should be sweaty after.

- That's right.

- If you don't, then you're

just pressing the button.

- That's right, I'll be

very sweaty [crew laughs].

- These are all the

places where we was going

to put lorries and carts

and whatever to stop another invasion.

We kept this just in case they

had an anniversary. [laughs]

- We're wearing bum bags,

which are very much in fashion.

Five pound TK Max, waterproof.

It's versatile, you can spin around.

- And we're gonna show

you, two hands to party.

- We're gonna show you the bum bag move.

Ready? One

[hopping up and down]

- Yep.

[hands slapping]

[music: "Run" By Tristan

Barton. Emotional, swelling]

[electronic music continues]

[electronic music continues]

[electronic music continues]

[electronic music continues]

[electronic music continues]

[electronic music continues]

[electronic music continues]