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DJ cult alive — in China

Whatever may be happening in Europe and the U.S. a new poll, released on Friday shows that the cult of the superstar disc jockey (DJ) is alive and well, it’s moved to China.

Dutchman Armin van Buuren was named the world’s favourite DJ this week in the annual readers’ poll run online by DJ magazine. “We got 350,000 people voting this year up from 229,000 last time around,” said J ason Robertson, the magazine’s publisher. “That’s largely down to a real appetite for dance club culture coming from outside the U.K. The U.S. was the biggest voting bloc, then the UK. But China was close behind them both and eastern European countries not far behind either. China was a big player this year. The market for dance music is shifting abroad.”

The explanation for such a trend is likely to lie, as with so many things, in the continuing Chinese economic boom, which has funded outsized nightclubs in cities including Shanghai and Guangzhou. Dance music website dontstayin.com has community pages for eight such venues in Shanghai alone.

A rise in the consumption of ecstasy and other drugs has been acknowledged by Chinese authorities which may have helped encourage an appetite for repetitive beats.

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