Top 10 DJs Worldwide: Armin van Buuren Edges David Guetta by 369 Votes

The fan vote is in, and it has produced a ranking with three distinct levels. At the top, Armin van Buuren leads DJ Radar's Top 10 DJs Worldwide with 86,057 votes, just 369 ahead of David Guetta on 85,688. Charlotte de Witte sits a further 358 back on 85,330. That puts three artists within 727 votes of each other.

Then the floor gives way. Tiësto, in fourth, collected 53,203 votes, 32,127 fewer than de Witte. Everything below the top three is a separate race.

The top three share a vote total and little else. Van Buuren carries the trance banner, Guetta holds the dance-pop end of the spectrum, and de Witte represents techno. Van Buuren and Guetta also share the highest credit score on the board, 995 each, so the fan vote is the only thing separating them.

Streaming doesn't explain the order. Guetta's 82,502,263 Spotify monthly listeners are the largest audience in this ten, more than five times van Buuren's 15,152,615. De Witte, the only female artist in the countdown, draws 1,805,792 monthly listeners and still finishes within 727 votes of first place. Passive plays don't drive this ballot. Fans who turn up to vote do.

Fourth through sixth are nearly as close as the top three. Tiësto (53,203), Martin Garrix (53,013) and Anyma (52,796) are separated by only 407 votes.

Tiësto and Garrix join van Buuren to make three Dutch entries, so the Netherlands is the most represented country here. Their digital reach is formidable. Tiësto's 33,798,429 monthly listeners trail only Guetta's, and Garrix has the biggest Instagram following on the list at 15,319,676. Neither number was enough to break into the top tier.

Anyma, a United States entry, brings Melodic House & Techno onto the board with a credit score of 981. After sixth place comes the second big drop: 19,196 votes separate Anyma from John Summit in seventh.

The last four places are packed into 1,077 votes, and this is the most varied stretch of the countdown, with four different genres in four places.

John Summit leads the group on 33,600 votes. That makes a second US entry and a second Melodic House & Techno act, backed by 11,747,076 monthly listeners.

Carl Cox is the story of this tier. With 960,194 Spotify monthly listeners, the smallest figure in this ten, Cox takes eighth on 32,756 votes. Fred again.. sits ninth on 32,662 votes despite 27,997,959 monthly listeners, just 94 votes behind. Cox's 259,283 Mixcloud followers are the highest Mixcloud count recorded among these artists, which suggests an audience that follows long-form mixes.

Black Coffee, the only Afro House entry and South Africa's sole representative, closes the countdown on 32,523 votes, 139 behind ninth place.

Six countries and six genre families make the cut. Trance, techno, commercial dance and melodic house & techno each place two names. Credit scores sit in a narrow band from 995 down to 966. The votes don't. They form three clusters, separated by gaps of 32,127 and 19,196.

Within each cluster, the margins are small enough that one mobilised fanbase could reshuffle the order. At the top, 369 votes is all that separates Armin van Buuren from David Guetta.