Pakistan's Eight: Jasmin Out Front, Electronica Everywhere Else

Pakistan's entry on the DJ Radar board is small but unusually legible. Eight artists, one clear leader, and a genre spread that says a lot about what the country's electronic scene actually sounds like right now.

Jasmin holds the top spot with a credit score of 538 from 2,152 votes — comfortably the largest vote haul on the Pakistani board, and a 127-point cushion over second place. She is also the only artist here working in Dubstep, which makes the lead more interesting than the raw margin suggests: the number one DJ in Pakistan is not representative of the country's dominant sound, she's the exception to it.

Her platform footprint is spread across SoundCloud (231 followers), Mixcloud (36) and Last.fm (16,264 listeners). The Last.fm figure sits well out of proportion with the rest of that profile, so treat it as a data point rather than a verdict — aggregated listener counts can pick up artifacts. The votes are the harder currency here, and the votes are decisive.

Below the top spot, the board tightens considerably. Osama Qureshi (411), Hasan Shabbir (400), Mixxtone (393) and Bayaan (377) are separated by just 34 points — close enough that the order could realistically look different next cycle.

There's texture inside that cluster. Hasan Shabbir has actually logged more votes than Osama Qureshi — 1,088 against 1,001 — yet sits a place behind him on credit score. Bayaan, likewise, carries 1,035 votes to Mixxtone's 979 but ranks fifth on 377 to Mixxtone's 393. Vote volume and credit score are measuring different things, and in Pakistan the gap between the two is where the movement is likely to come from.

Bayaan's numbers include 248 TikTok followers and a Last.fm listener count of 33,211 that sits far outside the shape of the rest of that profile. Again: noted, not leaned on.

The most telling thing on this board isn't any single name — it's the genre column. Five of the eight Pakistani artists are logged under Electronica: Osama Qureshi, Hasan Shabbir, Rizwan-ul-Haq, FAHASHI and Sarmad Abdul Ghafoor. That's a clear centre of gravity, and it points toward a scene built more on production and texture than on peak-time club functionality.

The two exceptions in the middle of the board are the melodic ones. Mixxtone and Bayaan both work in Melodic House & Techno, the genre family that has done more than any other to carry regional electronic scenes onto international bookings over the last few years. Their proximity to the top four suggests that lane is opening up locally as well.

Rizwan-ul-Haq (287, 640 votes) and FAHASHI (267, 638 votes) sit within 20 points and two votes of one another — effectively a dead heat for sixth. Sarmad Abdul Ghafoor rounds out the eight with a credit score of 0 from 2 votes, which reads as a profile that simply hasn't been voted on yet rather than a judgement on the music.

A board of eight is a scene in its early ranking phase, and that cuts both ways: positions move fast when the sample is small. Jasmin's lead is the only genuinely settled thing here. Everything from second to fifth is live, and the Electronica bloc is deep enough that the next name to break out probably comes from it.