The State of Trance on DJ Radar: Armin van Buuren Leads Tiësto by 5 Points

Trance has 742 DJs on the DJ Radar board, and its top eight all come from three countries. Three are from the Netherlands, three from Germany and two from the United Kingdom. Few genres have their elite drawn from such a small map.

Armin van Buuren is No. 1 with a credit score of 995. Tiësto is No. 2 on 990. That gap of 5 points is the only close race near the top. Paul van Dyk, in third on 947, trails Tiësto by 43.

The two Dutch leaders get there in different ways. Armin wins the vote count clearly, 86,057 to Tiësto's 53,203. He also leads on TikTok (2,500,000 to 1,300,000) and Resident Advisor (58,187 to 35,724).

Tiësto has the bigger reach on streaming and social platforms: 34,038,383 Spotify monthly listeners to Armin's 15,158,683, 8,551,091 Spotify followers, 7,230,000 YouTube subscribers and 7,854,878 Instagram followers. Voters favour one, reach favours the other, and the two scores end up nearly level.

Paul van Dyk (Germany, 947) has the third-highest vote total on the board at 14,268. His profile is the only one here with a festival count, and it lists 252. He has 108,335 Mixcloud followers and 903,866 Last.fm listeners, which points to an audience that follows full sets, not just singles.

Above & Beyond (United Kingdom, 932) has 11,371 votes and the most Mixcloud followers of the eight at 193,200. With 537,087 SoundCloud followers, Above & Beyond is third on that platform, behind only the two Dutch leaders.

Ferry Corsten (Netherlands, 918) is close behind with 11,299 votes and 715,575 Last.fm listeners.

Paul Oakenfold (United Kingdom, 890) has 8,166 votes. His Last.fm figure of 932,266 is third among the leaders, ahead of Paul van Dyk. His 830,777 Instagram followers are also third, behind only Tiësto and Armin.

Markus Schulz (Germany, 881) completes the top eight with 7,592 votes, 388,000 YouTube subscribers and 119,438 Mixcloud followers, the second-highest Mixcloud total of the group.

Marlon Hoffstadt (Germany) is No. 5 with a credit score of 927, 5 points behind Above & Beyond. His 12,195 votes are the fourth-highest of the leaders, ahead of Above & Beyond, Ferry Corsten, Paul Oakenfold and Markus Schulz.

His profile looks different from the rest. His 42,729 Resident Advisor followers are second only to Armin's among the eight. His 231,600 TikTok followers are more than Paul van Dyk's 138,000. Other channels are smaller: 48,700 YouTube subscribers and 537 on Mixcloud. His following is strongest on club-focused platforms and weaker on the broadcast-style ones where the veterans do best.

Three patterns stand out in the data.

Mixed sets matter. Three of the eight (Above & Beyond, Markus Schulz and Paul van Dyk) have more than 100,000 Mixcloud followers each. Mixcloud is built for full DJ mixes, and trance's leaders have strong followings there.

Fans keep listening. Last.fm is strong across the group. Tiësto (2,735,235) and Armin (1,738,312) lead, and four more acts have more than 700,000 listeners each. That suggests regular, ongoing listening, not one-off hits.

The top is concentrated, the middle is open. From Armin's 995 to Markus Schulz's 881, the top eight span 114 points. Only two acts have more than 20,000 votes: Armin and Tiësto. Below them, five acts are packed between 14,268 and 8,166 votes.

The top two lead by a wide margin in votes, but on score they are separated by just 5 points.