Charlotte De Witte Tops DJ Mag’s Alt 100 List

Belgian techno superstar Charlotte de Witte has surpassed two-time champion Carl Cox as the winner of the Beatport x DJ Mag Alternative Top 100 DJs list.

Despite worldwide lockdowns, De Witte has had a hugely successful year, dropping the Vision EP via Len Faki’s revered Figure label back in February, remixes of Jerome Isma-Ae’s “Hold That Sucker Down” on Armada in April, and her own Return to Nowhere EP on her label KNTXT this June. The success of that EP was powered in part by the Return to Nowhere EP livestream launch on Beatport, which helped push “Sgadi Li Mi” to the number one position in the techno charts and the EP itself to the top of the overall chart.

As for other artists, Carl Cox took the number two spot, followed by the enigmatic Claptone at number three, Adam Beyer at number four, and Amelie Lens at number five. The annual list is compiled by combining votes in DJ Mag’s Top 100 DJs poll with house and techno sales data from Beatport to give us a list of the top house and techno DJs in the world.

Other noteworthy changes from last year’s results include Green Velvet, who replaced Richie Hawtin as the list’s highest-selling North American DJ and took the number six spot; and ANNA who has replaced Ricardo Villalobos as the number one alternative DJ from South America after climbing 52 places on the list. Italian Deborah de Luca, who is up 31 places in the Alternative list at number 14, joins a handful of other DJs who have climbed upwards toward the most prominent spots on the list this year. These names include: The Martinez Brothers (up 31 places), Meduza (new entry at No. 22), Honey Dijon (new entry at No. 23), Maya Jane Coles (up 23 to No. 25), and Nicole Moudaber (up 15 places to No. 26).