Top 10 DJs Worldwide: Deadlocked at 995, Divided by Votes

Armin van Buuren and David Guetta open the countdown level on 995, the highest credit score on the board. Armin takes the top line and also has the bigger vote count, 86,057 to Guetta's 85,688. That's a margin of 369.

Charlotte de Witte follows on 992 with 85,330 votes, which puts the entire top three within 727 votes of each other. She is the only woman in this Top 10. She also brings techno into a top three that is otherwise split between trance and Dance / Pop.

We can't say exactly what goes into the credit score, but the vote column moves in exact step with this countdown. Every position has fewer votes than the one above it. The votes also break the list into three clear tiers.

The top three sit between 85,330 and 86,057 votes. Then the count drops by 32,127 to Tiësto on 53,203, with Martin Garrix (53,013) and Anyma (52,796) close behind him. Just 407 votes separate that trio. The next step down holds John Summit, Carl Cox, Fred again.. and Black Coffee, all between 32,523 and 33,600.

Credit scores are packed much closer together. Only 29 points separate first from tenth, and the top six fit inside 13, from 995 down to 982. The biggest single drop on the board is the 9 points between Fred again.. on 975 and Black Coffee on 966.

There is a second tie, too. John Summit and Carl Cox both sit on 978, and Summit leads on votes, 33,600 to 32,756.

If this were a Spotify chart, it would read very differently. Tiësto draws 33,798,429 monthly listeners and lands fourth, one place below de Witte and her 1,805,792. Fred again.. pulls 27,997,959 and sits ninth. One spot above him is Carl Cox, whose 960,194 is the smallest monthly figure in the group.

Cox's strongest number is somewhere else. His 259,283 Mixcloud followers are the highest Mixcloud count recorded for anyone in this Top 10. Whatever the credit score measures, raw plays are clearly not the whole of it.

The Netherlands claims three places, through Armin, Tiësto and Garrix, more than any other country. The United States takes two with Anyma and John Summit, who are both listed under Melodic House & Techno. The United Kingdom also takes two, with Carl Cox and Fred again.. France, Belgium and South Africa have one entry each.

The genres are just as evenly spread. Four styles hold two spots each:

- trance - techno - melodic house and techno - the commercial end of the dial, with Guetta's Dance / Pop and Garrix's Mainstage

House has Fred again.., and Afro House has Black Coffee. No single sound holds more than two places.

Black Coffee closes the countdown on 966. He is South Africa's only entry and the only Afro House artist on the list. Our data records a festival count of 371 for him and 202 for de Witte.

The tiers are where to look. The gaps inside them are small: 727 votes across the top three, 407 across the middle trio and 1,077 across the last four. The jumps between tiers run to 32,127 and 19,196. On these numbers, a reshuffle inside a tier looks far easier than a jump from one tier to the next.

At the very top, there is nothing left to separate on score. Armin and Guetta are level at 995, and the gap between them is 369 votes.