New Zealand's Top Eight: A Drum & Bass Backbone and One Clear Leader

New Zealand has 95 DJs on the DJ Radar board. The eight at the top don't read like a generic export list — they read like a map of what the country actually plays.

At No. 1 with a credit score of 835 and 7,588 votes, Sammy Virji leads the New Zealand board by 67 points over second place. The tech house entry is also the most-voted name in the top eight, and the platform figures scale with the ranking rather than contradicting it: 4,884,100 Spotify monthly listeners, 285,692 Spotify followers, 537,133 on Instagram, 202,100 on TikTok, 321,085 Last.fm listeners and 46,157 Resident Advisor followers.

That RA number is worth pausing on. Nobody else in the top eight is close to it, and it's the clearest signal here that the appeal isn't only streaming-side — it's club-side too.

Below the leader, drum & bass does the heavy lifting. The Upbeats take No. 2 on 768 with 5,496 votes, Bulletproof sit fourth on 730 with 6,449 votes, and State of Mind hold fifth on 721 with 5,592 votes. Three of the top eight, one genre — that's not a coincidence in a country whose bass scene has long punched above its population.

The numbers behind those three are modest next to the leader and pointedly consistent with each other: The Upbeats at 175,506 Spotify monthly listeners and 128,284 Last.fm listeners, State of Mind at 90,853 and 131,729, Bulletproof at 74,949 and 58,801, plus 28,000 YouTube subscribers. Deep catalogue play, loyal listenership, no streaming-era inflation.

What separates them is thin. The gap between second and third is eight points, and between fourth and fifth it's nine. On this board, one good year reorders the middle.

Third place goes to Brooks on 760 with 6,972 votes — the second-highest vote total in the top eight — under the dance/pop banner. The profile is a different shape entirely: 1,259,333 Spotify monthly listeners, 48,737 SoundCloud followers, 129,510 on Instagram, and 321,395 Spotify followers, which is more than the No. 1 artist has.

That's the useful lesson in this board. Credit score isn't a follower count. Brooks out-follows Sammy Virji on Spotify and still sits two places back; The Upbeats sit above Brooks on nearly 1,500 fewer votes.

P-Money rounds out the house contingent at No. 6 with 712 and 5,060 votes, working with 230,400 Spotify monthly listeners and 52,179 Last.fm listeners.

The last two slots belong to a genre that rarely surfaces on national boards elsewhere. Grouch is seventh on 706 with 5,713 votes — the fourth-highest vote count in the group — alongside 54,760 Spotify followers and 50,300 YouTube subscribers. Tiki closes the eight on 693 with 5,275 votes and 66,580 Spotify followers, the third-largest Spotify following in the top eight.

Both outrank their raw streaming numbers, which is what a festival-and-floor genre looks like when it's measured by standing rather than plays.

From 835 down to 693, the top eight spans 142 points — wide at the summit, compressed everywhere below it. New Zealand's board is bass-anchored, psy-trance-flanked and increasingly house-fronted, with 87 more names underneath waiting for the middle to move.