Voter Fraud in DJ Mag Top 100 Poll
DJs Dan and Christopher Lawrence Prove Too Popular For Comfort
The results of the new DJ Mag Top 100 DJ poll for 2007, released today, revealed more than the usual surprises for both DJs and fans. Do cheaters sometimes win after all?
After weathering a little voter fraud, red-faced PR releases from a few quarters, and a bit of "it's all bollocks"-style Internet grumbling, DJ Mag today finally released its much-hyped annual readers poll of the top 100 DJs worldwide for 2007.
This year's poll provided more than the usual drama as publisher James Robinson decided, for the first time, to count the e-mailed votes personally. What he found surprised him and embarrassed Christopher Lawrence (#4 on DJ Mag's Top 100 for 2006) and DJ Dan (#5 in 2006).
“In both their cases, a script was used to bypass our security system,” said Roberston in a press release. “Not only did we get multiple votes from the same IP address, but we got multiple votes from multiple IP addresses — in other words, we received in excess of 50 votes from the same IP address on over 20 occasions.... The chances of the same person getting voted for by 50 different computers each having been allocated the same IP address within a week would be billions to one.”
The press release went on to describe the mag staff as "appalled and disgusted to discover suspicious voting irregularities;" Lawrence and DJ Dan, along with several far more obscure DJs, were disqualified from the list.
Later the same week, however, both Lawrence and Dan announced that they had been "cleared" of wrongdoing by the mag; apparently their mutual marketing person was to blame. Whether their names would still appear in the results wasn't "clear," however, until earlier today. Did they make the cut? See who DJ Mag voters consider the World's Best DJs.
DJ fan reaction on sites like Resident Advisor ranged from "the poll should be renamed 'DJ Mag Top 100 Spammers' " to "the poll has always been rigged" to "who cares about this bollocks anyway?"
Well, Lawrence and Dan may have cared...at first. “My wife was worried and considered signing me up with a wedding DJ agency," Lawrence told JudgeJules.net after the dustup. "But fortunately there has been no impact whatsoever. No cancelled bookings, no drops in offers. Nothing. So I guess I can put my Kool & the Gang records away. No weddings any time soon.”
For his part, Dan thanked fans for their supportive messages and advised them to wait for "an article in the next issue of DJ Mag explaining the situation in further detail."
Find out more about the voting process and peruse the full DJ Mag Top 100 list at World's Best DJs.
