International Dance Music Awards Nominees & Big Data: The Connection

International Dance Music Awards (IDMA) have a long tradition of celebrating outstanding artists, venues, festivals, services, and other electronic music industry stakeholders. For years it has been one of the pillars of the Winter Music Conference that has thousands of dance music professionals from all over the world coming to Miami each March. The IDMA winners are chosen by a public vote, however, the past two years the International Dance Music Awards Nominees nominees in the artist categories have been selected by the music-tech startup, Viberate.

Founded by a techno legend, UMEK, Viberate analyzes over a billion data points from social and streaming sites for almost half a million artists. For the IDMA they single out those who made the most impact within a one-year period. This methodology is fair and objective since it looks into the nominated artists’ true popularity, regardless of where they come from or who they work with. If fans show them love, they get picked.

The methodology goes well beyond just counting likes and followers, or as the company’s co-founder, Vasja Veber, says: “We monitor most of the global social media channels and streaming sites. In order to rank artists by their popularity across all those channels, we need to boil down an array of unrelated metrics into one single key performance indicator. For each channel we measure audience, engagement, and the ratio between those two. An engaged audience means more than a huge mass of inactive followers. We also look into how artists are following each other across monitored channels. So if you’re a local techno producer, and you get followed by Adam Beyer and Amelie Lens on Soundcloud or Twitter, this definitely brings extra points to your profile, and you rank higher. This, combined with a pile of other raw data, is then processed by our statistical algorithms. The result is various popularity charts – filtered by genres, countries and different time periods. Working in a music startup sure sounds like fun, but with Viberate it’s more about advanced math and all those other things most of us hated in school.”

For those who want to find out more about the use of big data in the music industry, WMC will host a panel on the topic, featuring Rolling Stone’s Director of Charts – Emily Blake, NWA founding member – Arabian Prince, Napster’s Chief of Programming – Andre Glanz, and Viberate’s business development director – Vasja Veber.

More about the panel can be found here, while the 2020 IDMA nominees can be found below

THE 2020 IDMA NOMINEES

2020 Artist Categories
Nominations powered by Viberate

DANCE/ELECTRONIC (Male)
 Calvin Harris
 Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike
 Marshmello
 Martin Garrix
 The Chainsmokers

DANCE/ELECTRONIC (Female)
 Juicy M
 Krewella
 Mariana BO
 MATTN
 NERVO

TECHNO (Male)
 Adam Beyer
 Boris Brejcha
 Carl Cox
 Enrico Sangiuliano
 Richie Hawtin

TECHNO (Female)
 Amelie Lens
 ANNA
 Charlotte de Witte
 Deborah De Luca
 Nina Kraviz

TRANCE (Male)
 Above & Beyond
 Aly & Fila
 Armin Van Buuren
 Giuseppe Ottaviani
 Cosmic Gate

TRANCE (Female)
 Alessandra Roncone
 Christina Novelli
 Clara Yates
 Maria Healy
 Nifra

HOUSE (Male)
 ARTBAT
 Black Coffee
 Claptone
 FISHER
 Meduza

HOUSE (Female)
 Hannah Wants
 Honey Dijon
 Maya Jane Coles
 Nora En Pure
 Peggy Gou

BASS (Male)
 Illenium
 NGHTMRE
 RL Grime
 Skrillex
 Yellow Claw

BASS (Female)
 Alison Wonderland
 CloZee
 Lucii
 REZZ
 WHIPPED CREAM

DRUM & BASS (Male)
 Andy C
 Bou
 Chase & Status
 Enei
 Sub Focus

DRUM & BASS (Female)
 Changing Faces
 DJ Rap
 DJ Storm
 Kyrist
 Mollie Collins

HARDSTYLE (Male)
 Angerfist
 D-Block & S-TE-FAN
 Da Tweekaz
 Headhunterz
 Warface

HARDSTYLE (Female)
 AniMe
 Korsakoff
 Lady Dammage
 MANDY
 Miss K8

DOWNTEMPO (Male)
 Bonobo
 Four Tet
 Petit Biscuit
 Thievery Corporation
 Tycho

DOWNTEMPO (Female)
 Huxley Anne
 D. Tiffany
 Roza Terenzi
 TOKiMONSTA
 Yu Su

2020 Industry Categories
Nominations Powered by The IDMA Advisory Board

BEST ALBUM
 Avicii “TIM”
 Flume “Hi This is Flume”
 Gryffin “Gravity”
 Illenium “ASCEND”
 The Chemical Brothers “No Geography”

BEST SONG (DANCE)
 MEDUZA “Piece of Your Heart”
 Sam Feldt feat. RANI “Post Malone”
 Yves V feat. Afrojack & Icona Pop “We Got That Cool”
 Oliver Heldens, Lenno “This Groove”
 LUM!X, Gabry Ponte “Monster”

BEST SONG (ELECTRONIC)
 Bonobo “Linked”
 Camelphat ft. Jem Cooke “Rabbit Hole”
 Elderbrook & Rudimental “Something About You”
 Fisher “You Little Beauty”
 Peggy Gou “Starry Night”

BEST REMIX
 Monolink – Return To Oz (ARTBAT Remix)
 Meduza, Goodboys – Piece of Your Heart (Alok Remix)
 LUM!X, Gabry Ponte – Monster (Robin Schulz Remix)
 UK Apache & SHY FX – Original Nuttah 25 feat. IRAH (Chase & Status Remix)
 Madonna – I Rise (Tracy Young Remix)

BEST LABEL
 Armada Music
 Anjunabeats
 Astralwerks
 Spinnin’ Records
 Ultra Records

BREAKTHROUGH ARTIST
 ARTBAT
 Dom Dolla
 Meduza
 Solardo
 WHIPPED CREAM

BEST FESTIVAL/EVENT
 Coachella
 Electric Daisy Carnival
 Electric Zoo
 Tomorrowland
 Ultra Music Festival

BEST CLUB
 Avant Gardner/Brooklyn Mirage (New York)
 Berghain (Berlin)
 Fabric Nightclub (London)
 Space (Miami)
 Ushuaïa (Ibiza)

BEST RADIO SHOW / PODCAST

 “A State of Trance” by Armin van Buuren
 “Club Life” by Tiësto
 “Group Therapy” by Above & Beyond
 “Heldeep Radio” by Oliver Heldens
 Spinnin’ Sessions

BEST RADIO STATION
 BBC Radio 1
 BPM (SiriusXM)
 Diplo’s Revolution (SiriusXM)
 Evolution (iHeartRadio)
 KCRW (LA)

BEST STREAMING SERVICE
 Amazon Music
 Apple Music
 Deezer
 Pandora
 Spotify

BEST YOUTUBE CHANNEL
 MrSuicideSheep
 Proximity
 Spinnin’ TV
 Trap Nation
 Ultra Music

MANUFACTURER
 Allen & Heath
 Denon DJ
 Native Instruments
 Pioneer DJ
 Technics

BEST DAW
 Ableton Live 10
 Avid Pro Tools
 FL Studio
 Logic Pro X
 Steinberg Cubase