Trance's Top Eight: Armin van Buuren Leads Tiësto by 5 Points

Trance counts 742 DJs on the DJ Radar board, but its summit is a small club. Eight names lead the genre right now, and how they got there shows what this scene rewards.

Trance runs on tension and release: patient builds, melodic hooks and breakdowns that hold a room before the drop returns. At heart it is a DJ's genre, made for the arc of a full set rather than a single moment. Fittingly, DJ Radar tracks its leaders on streaming services and also on Mixcloud, a platform built around DJ mixes, and Resident Advisor (RA).

Armin van Buuren holds No. 1 with a credit score of 995. Tiësto is No. 2 on 990, 5 points back. Only the gap between No. 4 and No. 5 is as small. Both are listed under the Netherlands.

They reach the top by different routes. Armin van Buuren wins the public vote: 86,057 votes, the most of any DJ here, against Tiësto's 53,203. He also leads on TikTok (2,500,000 to 1,300,000) and RA (58,187 to 35,724).

Tiësto has the bigger mainstream footprint: 33,937,605 Spotify monthly listeners to Armin van Buuren's 15,203,152. Tiësto also leads on Spotify followers (8,542,756), YouTube (7,230,000), Instagram (7,854,878), SoundCloud (2,066,685) and Last.fm (2,735,235). Votes on one side, reach on the other, and 5 points between them.

Below the top two, scores drop 42 points to Paul van Dyk (Germany) at No. 3 on 948. His 14,268 votes are the third-highest of the eight, and his is the only profile here with a festival count listed: 252.

Above & Beyond (United Kingdom) sits No. 4 on 932 and has one of the most consistent profiles outside the top two. Above & Beyond's 903,733 Spotify followers and 537,087 SoundCloud followers both rank third among the leaders. Its 193,200 Mixcloud followers are the most of any leader with a Mixcloud figure listed.

Marlon Hoffstadt (Germany) is No. 5 on 927, and his numbers show that votes alone don't set the order. His 12,195 votes beat both Above & Beyond (11,371) and No. 6 Ferry Corsten (11,299). His RA following of 42,729 is second only to Armin van Buuren's among the eight. His 229,000 TikTok followers rank third, behind the top two, among leaders with a TikTok figure listed.

Ferry Corsten (Netherlands) holds No. 6 on 918, with 715,575 Last.fm listeners. Paul Oakenfold (United Kingdom) is No. 7 on 889, with 830,777 Instagram followers and 932,266 Last.fm listeners. Both are the highest figures outside the top two.

Markus Schulz (Germany) completes the eight on 881, 8 points behind Oakenfold, with 7,592 votes. His 119,438 Mixcloud followers trail only Above & Beyond among the leaders with a Mixcloud figure listed.

If one fact defines trance on DJ Radar right now, it is geography. The entire top eight comes from three countries:

- Netherlands: Armin van Buuren, Tiësto, Ferry Corsten - Germany: Paul van Dyk, Marlon Hoffstadt, Markus Schulz - United Kingdom: Above & Beyond, Paul Oakenfold

The race to watch is still the one at the very top. One DJ leads the vote, the other leads the streams, and the board has them 5 points apart.