Top 10 Trance DJs: Armin van Buuren Edges Tiësto by 17 Points

Trance has always been a genre with long memories and longer loyalties, and this edition of the DJ Radar Top 10 proves it. Ranked by credit score — our composite of voter support and verified platform reach — the leaderboard is crowned by a familiar name, but the story is in how narrow the margins have become at the top.

Armin van Buuren takes #1 with a credit score of 938, backed by 11,940 votes — the largest ballot count in the field. His profile is remarkably even across platforms: 14,613,807 Spotify monthly listeners, 4,938,795 Instagram followers, 2,400,000 on TikTok, and 58,187 followers on Resident Advisor — the highest RA figure in this Top 10. That last number matters: it signals credibility with the club-facing audience, not just streaming scale.

Because here's the twist: Tiësto, at #2 with a 921 credit score, is comfortably the biggest streaming act on this list. His 34,282,125 Spotify monthly listeners more than double Armin's, and his 7,800,578 Instagram followers lead the field too. Yet with 11,880 votes — just 60 fewer than Armin — the race came down to a 17-point gap. If credit score rewarded raw reach alone, this order would flip. It doesn't, and that's the point.

The podium fight is genuinely close. Paul van Dyk lands at #3 with 913 — only 8 points behind Tiësto and 25 off the top spot — on 11,040 votes. The data also credits him with 252 festival appearances, a workload figure that helps explain why voters keep him in the conversation decades into a career. Above & Beyond follow at #4 with 904, pairing 2,202,325 Spotify monthly listeners with one of the strongest Mixcloud bases here (193,200 followers), a reminder that the radio-show tradition still anchors trance fandom.

Then comes the most interesting entry on the board. Marlon Hoffstadt at #5, credit score 899, is the disruptor in a list otherwise stacked with long-established names. His 7,045,840 Spotify monthly listeners outstrip everyone in the bottom seven, and his 42,729 RA followers rank second only to Armin's — a clear signal of underground heat converting into mainstream voter support (10,950 votes, more than #4).

The back half is a roll call of the genre's load-bearing walls. Ferry Corsten (#6, 878) keeps the Dutch contingent at three. Paul Oakenfold (#7, 868) posts the strongest Instagram following outside the top two at 794,057, alongside 932,266 Last.fm listeners. Markus Schulz (#8, 854) shows his mix-culture roots with 119,438 Mixcloud followers, while Giuseppe Ottaviani (#9, 842) is the sole Italian entry, carried by 7,707 votes and a substantial YouTube presence of 492,000 subscribers. ATB closes the list at #10 with 840 — and note that just 2 points separate him from Ottaviani, the tightest gap anywhere in the ranking. His 6,521,742 Spotify monthly listeners and 1,370,097 Last.fm listeners suggest a catalogue that still streams far beyond what a #10 placing implies.

Zoom out and the geography tells its own story: three Dutch entries, four German, two from the UK, one Italian — trance remains a European stronghold. The bigger takeaway is generational. Nine of these ten names have been fixtures for years; one, Hoffstadt, arrived through a newer wave and is already sitting at #5. The old guard still holds the summit — but the 17 points between first and second, and the 25 covering the entire podium, say nothing here is settled.