Apple reportedly wooing Drake, Pharrell, David Guetta for iTunes Radio guest DJ spot

As Apple prepares to relaunch a revamped version of its free-to-stream iTunes Radio service, the company is looking to bring on musicians Drake, Pharrell Williams and David Guetta as guest DJs, a report said Sunday.



Music industry sources told The New York Post that Apple is negotiating a $19 million deal to have Drake serve as a guest DJ for iTunes Radio. The rapper may also assume other roles as part of the agreement, but it was not immediately clear what those extra duties would entail.

Along with Drake, Apple is reportedly in similar discussions with Pharrell and Guetta, though financial estimates of their arrangements were not provided.

Perhaps unrelated to the iTunes Radio proposition, Drake and Pharrell were among the first celebrities to don pre-release Apple Watch Editions in April. Drake was seen wearing a yellow gold version at Coachella just days after Pharrell showed up on his TV show "The Voice" sporting an identical model with Sport Band.

As for Apple's broader streaming strategy, the report said the company wants to offer a free three-month trial period for a separate subscription product widely thought to be based on Beats Music. Apple doesn't want to foot the bill for licensing rights, however, and is thus requesting labels waive fees for customer trials. The company is also asking for free lyrics, the report said.

Rumors of an iTunes Radio revamp came earlier this year alongside word of that Apple was working on a branded subscription service. It was later learned that Apple poached Grammy-nominated DJ Zane Lowe from the BBC to spearhead work on the renewed iTunes Radio effort. Most recently, reports in April said a handful of top producers from Radio 1, some of whom worked with Lowe, were also hired away.

Apple is expected to introduce iTunes Radio and its new subscription platform at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June.

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David Guetta: lord of dance

Electronic dance music is now the biggest youth movement in America since hip-hop – and David Guetta is spearheading it

 

All hands on deck: DJ David Guetta unleashes his massive global hit “Titanium” on the crowd at last month’s Ultra Music Festival in Miami. Photograph: Brian Smith for the Observer

"Miami! Are you ready? This. Is. The. Biggest. Party. On. Planet. Earth!" David Guetta, the floppy-haired Frenchman in his mid-40s, shouts as he takes to the stage in front of thousands of delirious, bouncing teenagers in various states of fluorescent undress. As Guetta drops his pop ballad "Titanium", Paris Hilton, whose latest career plan is to launch herself as a DJ, gyrates just behind the decks with her Dutch boyfriend Afrojack, one of Guetta's closest collaborators.

The dramatic, imposing setting of Ultra Music Festival – on the edge of Biscayne Bay and in the shadow of the towering downtown skyline, where the final scene of Miami Vice was filmed – only makes the event more bizarre. During his set, Guetta picks up the microphone to address "my party people". "It's incredible what's happening in the world right now, with our music, especially in America," he tells the crowd. "I never thought for one minute that this would happen!"

After he finishes, his entourage, including his wife Cathy, Afrojack and Paris, and long-time manager Caroline Prothero, are whisked through successive VIP sections, until they reach their own tiny enclosure behind a velvet rope. Waiters scoot past bearing magnums of champagne with fireworks attached to the necks, as the crowds in the neighbouring not-quite-as-VIP section crane their necks to get a glimpse of the group – more of Guetta than Paris. He is the major star here.

Miami has always had a slightly preposterous side, but this week it feels even weirder due to the electronic musical epiphany mainstream America is going through. The previous night, Madonna, never one to miss an opportunity to show she's down with the kids, took to the same stage with the 22-year-old Swedish DJ Avicii to remind these new converts that there has always been a dance element to her music. "Electronic music has been a part of my career since I started, and I can honestly say… a DJ saved my life."

Ultra takes place at the end of the Winter Music Conference (WMC), dance music's equivalent to the Cannes Film Festival, which for nearly three decades has welcomed the world's electronic music industry to South Beach for a week of bacchanalian hedonism very loosely disguised as work. It's always a heady, excitable week, but this year there's a heightened air of expectation. Although dance music was invented here, in the clubs of Chicago, Detroit and New York, it has only periodically troubled the top of the US charts, and for the most part remained a relatively niche genre. But in the past couple of years, electronic dance music – or EDM, as it's increasingly now abbreviated – has gone mainstream.

Last year 150,000 people attended Ultra. This year capacity increased to 200,000 and it still sold out three months in advance. Dance music artists have also headlined other US festivals such as Lollapalooza, Coachella, SXSW and Austin City Limits – and Identity Festival took EDM on a tour through 20 smaller US cities. Announcing the launch of their new US edition, DJ Magazine rather excitedly proclaimed: "We still need to keep pinching ourselves because the reawakening of the US dance giant after roughly two decades of deepening and deepening slumber is a joy to behold."

If you're part of the original acid-house generation, for whom dance music was a genuinely counter-cultural movement born out of dirty raves in basements and warehouses, it couldn't be a more alien world. Dance music went mainstream in the UK in the 90s with the rise of superclubs and festivals, but the likes ofMinistry of Sound and Creamfields have nothing on its current commercialisation in the US. All week in Miami, planes fly overhead trailing 40ft banners advertising new gigs in Las Vegas for Guetta, Afrojack, Swedish House Mafia, et al. Vegas has no interest in alternative music – only in who sells the most tickets, and the casinos that used to court Elton John and Dolly Parton are now scrambling to offer residencies to DJs.

If one person has personified and largely been responsible for this change it's the 44-year-old Parisian David Guetta. The Frenchman's music combines the populist US urban culture of hip hop and R&B with the poppier end of European house culture. His smash hits polarise opinion among the purists, more in this country than the US, but they sell millions and millions. His collaboration with the Black Eyed Peas, "I Gotta Feeling", was number one in the US for 14 weeks, and a global hit, selling 13m units.

His rise has been unstoppable since, including hits with Kelly Rowland, Akon, LMFAO, Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, Usher, Sia, Jennifer Hudson, Snoop Dogg and plenty more. He has 31 million friends on Facebook, 4 million followers on Twitter, and is probably the most sought-after producer on the planet, his homogenous four to the floor beats as ubiquitous as the Neptunes were a decade ago.

 

David Guetta at the Soho Beach House, Miami Photograph: Brian Smith

I meet Guetta for a late lunch the day after his set at the poolside restaurant at Fontainebleau hotel. Sunbathers' heads turn in slight disbelief as he makes his way around the pool. In person, he's amiable and almost as relentlessly upbeat as his pop music. His favourite word is "crazy". Despite his success and age, he still has a boyish enthusi asm and can't quite believe what has happened over the past few years. How "crazy" things have got. "It was really like a war to get the music to where we are," he says, grimacing and miming a tug of war, "because no one would let us through."

The shift in populist tastes in America is such that even the business magazine Forbes recently pontificated about the house music "phenomenon" and ran a series of profiles on the world's biggest DJs. "The vultures are swooping above the industry," says Ben Turner, director of the International Music Summit, Ibiza's answer to WMC, which is now planning to launch in Vegas. "After 20 years people have realised that EDM has matured and become the biggest youth movement in America since hip hop. It feels like everybody suddenly wants a piece of the action."

Guetta started DJing 30 years ago in Paris as a teenager, long before most of his contemporaries were born. He and his wife Cathy ran nightclubs including Le Palace and Les Bains Douches. Balearic legend Alfredo told me that Guetta once booked him and Ibiza club Manumission to play in Paris in the early 90s, which was the night Manumission promoters Mike and Claire first had sex live on stage, later a regular, and infamous, feature at their club.

Guetta's parents originally frowned upon his choice of career. "My parents were extreme left," he says, "so everything was against the system. I was walking barefoot in the streets of Paris when I was eight. When I started to DJ they hated it, because for them, nightclubs, and all of this life, was terrible and fake. But when I stopped doing only this, and became an artist, my mother was like 'OK, now I'm proud of you.' Which is crazy."

Guetta spent years down the bills at clubs and festivals. Now his club brand, F**k Me I'm Famous, masterminded by Cathy, sells out every week over the summer at Pacha in Ibiza, with thousands of clubbers paying €70 to get in. He plays in several countries, often continents, a week. He is a global priority for his record label EMI, a key asset because of his ability to shift millions.

Having come from an underground culture that relentlessly analyses itself, the dance music world often frowns upon mainstream commercial success. There are relatively few acts which have managed to combine huge success while retaining credibility. "In a way, this is what killed dance music for so many years," argues Guetta. "That spirit of wanting to keep this only for ourselves, and anything that's successful is bad. That culture that goes in a cycle where everybody loves someone and they're all talking about him, and then in one second, because he's successful, 'Ah, fuck him, he's bullshit!' What? But you were saying the same guy was a genius last year, now he's the worst person?"

Guetta is now France's biggest musical export, but the French version of Spitting Image, Les Guignols de l'info, has had a light-hearted dig at him a few times for the simplicity of his poppier tunes. One episode showed a craftsman customising a grand piano for Guetta – and when the lid was opened it only had one key. But he laughs off any such criticism. "I thought it was really funny. Honestly, I loved it!" he says. "I showed it myself to a lot of DJs and it became a joke between us. I don't take it wrong. It's crazy because usually they just focus on the president or ministers."

Being such a relentlessly upbeat character makes him easy to caricature, but he shrugs off any jibes as an inevitable backlash to his success. There isn't a huge difference between his public and private personas, a man whose cup is not so much half-full as overflowing. The only time he seems a little tired is when approached by a fan for a picture during our interview. He patiently explains not now, but he'll happily do it afterwards.

Over the past couple of years he has been rumoured to be producing everyone from U2 to Madonna, but he explains that he has no desire to tie himself down to a studio for months on end to produce a whole album for anyone. He makes most of his records on the road. "My studio is a laptop. Everybody I work with is the same. We make computer music, we're the laptop generation. I have studios in the different places where I live – in Ibiza, Paris and London – but they're not crazy studios, they're just rooms with good monitors, and all I do is plug my laptop in. It's a different way to make music, but for me, I love it, because it's more connected to the world."

As much as he is unapologetic about his poppier anthems, Guetta is keen that people, especially those fresh-faced teenagers new to dance music, know there's another side to his music. Last year's Nothing But The Beat was a double album, the first disc containing the radio hits and the second disc purely instrumental tracks. If you heard its closing track, "The Alphabeat" blind, you would be more likely to think it was Daft Punk than Guetta.

"Listen, let me tell you," he smiles. "This story is so funny. Xavier [de Rosnay of Justice, another French outfit] told me: 'Man, I love "The Alphabeat", it's so crazy… Jackson [Fourgeaud, of Jackson and his Computer Band] sent me the album, saying: 'I. Can. Not. Fucking. Believe. That David Guetta did this.' That put a smile on my face, because people like to put a stamp on what you do."

Guetta's latest project is a new record label, which he wants to showcase more of this side of his music. "I'm starting a label called Jackback Records, which is kind of back to my roots. It's going to be only electronic music." His first signing is Dutch DJ Nicky Romero and the first release, "Metropolis", an instrumental collaboration between Guetta and Romero, is out now. "I don't do this for the money, I don't do it for record sales, I don't really care about that, I just want to make beats."

Guetta doesn't think it matters that many of the young American kids experiencing an epiphany with dance music don't appreciate its history. "It's just different now," he says. "To us it was underground, it was a subculture, it was a lifestyle, it was all of these things. But these days, it's not really working like this any more. It took me 20 years to do what I did. Avicii, last year, no one knew who he was. Now he's the biggest thing on the planet. You understand? It's totally different."

For Guetta, dance music's newfound popularity can only be a good thing. He won't convince everyone, but few in the industry would deny his phenomenal success in the US has given the industry as a whole a healthy financial boost. "Listen, some people take themselves very, very seriously," Guetta says. "I'm not a politician, you know what I mean? You remember in the old days you had people like Underground Resistance?" [a late 80s militant dance collective from Detroit]. He pauses and smiles. "I never took myself so seriously."

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David Guetta on going mainstream: 'Not only did I cross over, my entire scene did'

Once part of France’s dance music underground, Guetta is now one of the world’s top paid DJs – but he still enjoys the occasional moment of silence



Enjoy the silence: David Guetta. Photograph: Isaac Brekken/Getty Images for iHeartMedia

It’s a Saturday night in Las Vegas and David Guetta is hours away from a performance at Caesars Palace, the crown jewel of the gambling capital, known for its stunning opulence and sheer massiveness. So what’s he doing to gear up? “Sitting quietly,” he says. “I close my eyes and try to stay super calm and super bored before going on stage, so then when I get on stage, it’s like ‘boom’. I’m completely hyper.”

With or without his quiet pre-show ritual, Guetta has plenty to be worked up about these days. Not only is he one of the highest paid DJs in the world (Forbes recently ranked him just behind Calvin Harris), he’s also currently enjoying the success of his latest single, Hey Mama, the tropical dance anthem that features Nicki Minaj, Bebe Rexha, and fellow EDM star Afrojack. It took Guetta more than a year to figure out how to turn it into the kind of ear worm he has reliably produced in the past. Odds are, if you’ve turned on the radio, been to a club, or ventured out into the outside world anytime in the past five years, you’ve heard one of his hits. It might have been his ubiquitous collaboration with Sia, Titanium; the emotional club anthem with Usher, Without You; or the unapologetically sexy track with Nicki Minaj, Turn Me On.

“When I released my album, DJs started playing Hey Mama and at the time it wasn’t even a single,” Guetta says of the moment he realized the track was starting to catch on, which was the culmination of months of tinkering with its structure. The bedrock of the song is a found 1940s prison recording from folk archivist Alan Lomax that songwriter Esther Dean first showed Guetta on YouTube.

“When Esther played me that sample, I was like: ‘Oh my God, I love this so much,’” he explains. “I fell so in love that I became obsessed with it and wanted it to be the chorus.” What Guetta soon realized was the sample worked as an opening to the track, supporting a different chorus he concocted. With that, all of the gears clicked into place and Guetta found himself with another hit. “Some radio stations wanted to play it when we were promoting other records,” he says of the instant reaction to the song. “We had to say, ‘No, please don’t play it yet!’ Which is kind of ironic.”


 David Guetta strikes a pose at the iHeartRadio Summer Pool Party at Caesars Palace on May 30, 2015 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Photograph: Ethan Miller/Getty Images for iHeartMedia

Perhaps irony is a hidden theme of Guetta’s most recent output: Listen, his sixth studio album, which came out last November. After all, he was crafting a slew of happy-go-lucky dance tracks even in the midst of a divorce from his wife of 22 years, Cathy Lobé, a club manager, socialite and event planner.

“To be honest, it’s been hard,” he says of the break-up, which played out in the media where there were reports that Guetta lost half of his $30m fortune.

“A lot of the album is really emotional compared to my past work,” Guetta says. “I spent a lot more time on the lyrics. What’s interesting is, half of the album is very much influenced by what happened in my private life, and the rest is me coming back to my fundamentals.” Those fundamentals, built on the bedrock of songs about “people having a good time and happiness”, are why fans – from his 55 million Facebook friends to his 17.6 million Twitter followers – love Guetta, a fact he’s fully aware of. “Even though I love lots of different music, you can see the party-record part of the album is really exploding. People like me for a certain thing, I could say.”

That certain thing – the ubiquitous EDM club anthem – wasn’t always what he was known for. For years, while was a big name in the underground French music scene, it took him more than a decade to find mainstream success. A vital member of the “French Touch” scene (alongside the likes ofEtienne De Crecy, Laurent Garnier, and future superstars Daft Punk), Guetta released his first song, the now-retro Nation Rap, in 1990. (To give some idea of how long ago that was, his Hey Mama collaborator Afrojack was only three at the time.)

“When I started, all dance music was underground,” he explains. “If you were going to play house, you had to be underground because it wasn’t the type of music that was crossing over. My evolution also came with the evolution of the scene in general.”

Almost 20 years passed before Guetta released what he considers his breakthrough single, I Gotta Feeling, the Grammy-winning song he produced for the Black Eyed Peas that held the number one spot in America for 14 weeks and still has the distinction of being the most downloaded song in the history of modern music.

“That changed everything,” he says of the feel-good track, which was performed everywhere from the Super Bowl to Oprah, and while some detractors pegged him as a sell-out (compared to an act like Daft Punk, which has retained underground crediblity, mostly), Guetta sees his mainstream success as a big moment not for himself, but for the scene in general. “I Gotta Feeling really changed the game and opened the doors for dance music in America,” he notes. “They started to play it for the first time on the radio, so not only did I cross over, but my entire scene crossed over. It was pretty exciting.”
A very young David Guetta

Hanging out backstage at Caesars Palace, Guetta is still focusing on being quiet before his appearance as part of the iHeartRadio Summer Pool Party, a shindig for the all-consuming parent company of dozens of radio and television stations across America. Also on the bill are the likes of Nick Jonas, Echosmith, and Chris Brown – three acts decades younger than Guetta himself (he turns 48 this November). So after seeing artists come and go for the past 20 years and presumably having his pick of the litter when it comes to collaborations, does Guetta have anyone he’d like to team up with whom he hasn’t worked with already?

“I actually started a record with Hozier that’s really exciting ,” he says of the Irish singer-songwriter. “I thought Take Me To Church was one of the best songs of last year, so we got together a long time ago to make a song and need to finish it. He’s really, really amazing.”

The release date for that Hozier song remains to be the seen, but if and when it comes out, Guetta says that even after years of the music grind he’ll still be nervous unveiling it. “It’s a very special moment when I play a song for the first time,” he says of his process of choosing singles, which includes test-driving prospective tracks during his DJ sets. “There are some records I think are amazing, but when I play them the reaction isn’t so good. Other times I’ll play a record and the audience goes crazy.”

It’s continually searching for those crazy reactions that has kept Guetta relevant, whether it was during his French underground years, or amid his mainstream success. “What motivates me to continue to create music is that magic moment when I’m going to play one of my records for the first time onstage, or when a song becomes a hit and everyone is singing along to it,” he notes. “They are some of the strongest feelings I can get in my life.”

Guetta will perhaps experience those feelings tonight at Caesars Palace. But first, a little bit more silence.

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28 Unbelievable Facts about DJ David Guetta

Out of many popular DJs in the world, there are only a few who deserve receiving fame and credit for their phenomenal piece of work been done in the field of music and one of them is the successful, the sensational David Guetta. These days when it seems more like a trend that music is been used as a stair only to receive popularity, worth-listening music and appreciable rapping is a rare thing to expect from the newcomers. David Guetta is a popular DJ who enjoys being among the top 10 richest DJs in the world with a net-worth more than $30 Million. Here are a few unbelievable facts about DJ David Guetta that his followers might have had missed so far. Have a look!

Knowing DJ David Guetta

David Guetta is completely justifying being born on 7th November in Paris as the scorpion man, intensely passionate and totally calm and composed creature with smoldering passion underneath his outer layer of innocent looks. The French House Music producer was initially a DJ at nightclubs in Paris, but later decided to move on with singing and songwriting when Guetta’s first hit single “Just A Little More” has gone over 300,000 copies on demand. In 1990 when he was influencing the rise of house music he met his wife Cathy Guetta who gave him two beautiful children living in Paris with a net worth of $30 million. He is best known for F*ck Me I’M Famous.
A closer looks at His Achievements


The French superstar DJ and multi selling artist, combining daft punk’s sleek house music with a twist of electro clash’s punch has been on Forbes list of Greatest DJ’s of World. He has successfully managed to market house music by sugar coating it with R&B vocals and commercial hip hop sounds to pop fans in US. His impressive achievements are:
2012- Favorite Electronic Dance Music
In 2007-2008 he won best International Male Solo Artist.
His recent album’s first single ‘When Loves Takes over’ nested him a 2 Grammy as a producer.
Co-produced The Black Eyed Peas’ recent No.1 hit ‘I Gotta Feeling’
‘Sexy Bitch’ featured R&B singer Akon, reaching No.5 in US pop charts.


DJ Magazine called 2009 Guetta’s ‘Year Zero’ came third in the magazine’s top 100 DJs poll.
‘Memories’, ‘When Loves Takes Over You’, ‘Getting Over You’ and Sexy Bitch was listing No.1 in the UK top charts and becoming top five hits in US and selling three million copies worldwide.
The same year when he founded Gum Production, his first hit single “Just a little more love’ had gone over 300,000 copies
Guetta has sold over 3 million albums and 15 million singles worldwide.
He was voted as No.1 DJ in the ‘DJ Mag Top 100 DJ’s fan poll’ in 2011.
In 2007 he won “World’s Best Selling DJ in the World” Music Award.
Unbelievable facts about DJ David Guetta


1) Currently ought on an odyssey of competition to encourage people to follow him, those 100,000 twitter followers will get to meet Guetta in person.

2) Has over two million fans on facebook.

3) He has recently tipped over 10 million friends on Facebook in 2 months alone.

4) Last October he launched his own iPhone App that allow his fans to remix his tracks on their phones.

5) His app allows his fans to stay up-to-date with his latest Twitter shots and tour movements, as well allow them to purchase his music.

6) He has three production bases in Paris, London and Ibiza.

7) Began hosting parties at the age of 13 in his basements.

8) Start DJing at the age of 17.

9) He got 5 million twitter followers.

10) Have over 33 million Facebook likes and 889 million You Tube views.

11) He has been igniting the Europe’s Dance clubs for two decades now.

12) He writes many of his songs in aero plane that he title works in progress after reaching a destination.

13) He needs only his laptop to create his club hits.

14) He is a son of parents who were psychologist and a sociology professor.

15) Had worked in most glamorous nightclubs around the world, taking home jaw-dropping pay cheques.

16) On his dressing room rider there are always couple of bottles of Veuve Clicquot champagne, even his friends barely see him eating.

17) He was the first one crossing boundaries of playing dance music on radio.

18) His highly successful club cum lifestyle brand is the first Ibiza party stop for Holidaying celebrities.

19) His favorite phrase, Bras de Faire, means arms wrestling.

20) His essential suitcase items, microphone, MacBook Pro and little Apogee.

21) He is the first ever DJ to be on the cover of Bill Board Magazine.

22) He is credited for producing people like Madonna, Rihanna, Kylie Minogue and Jennifer Lopez.

23) He has a passion for sporting foot wares.

24) The thrifty and down to earth superstar is a non smoker and non-drinking music producer.

25) He released the artwork for his new single on his Instagram profile.

26) He ranked 3rd in the list of Top Djs in 2009 and then 2nd in 2010 and finally residing at 1st place in the list in 2011.

27) He has been consistently winning World’s best selling DJ, Best DJ, Best Producer and Best Selling French artist of the World.

28) There is no history ever found on his schooling and graduation.

Pop music is all well and good obviously but Guetta still has a club DJ heart. Pop life can be cool but there is nothing he loves more than DJing for people. Whether or not he will be both, a big pop star, and a flawless club DJ, only time will tell.

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David Guetta Biography

Image result for about David Guetta

Overview

Date of Birth 7 November 1967, Paris, France
Birth Name Pierre David Guetta
Height 5' 9¼" (1,76 m)

Mini Bio 
David Guetta was born on November 7, 1967 in Paris, France as Pierre David Guetta. He was previously married to Cathy Guetta.

Spouse 
Cathy Guetta (29 July 1992 - 2014) (divorced) (2 children)

Trivia
Is a member of the five famous Dj in the world.
Younger brother of actress Natalie Guetta.
Has supported Nicolas Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign.
Winner of Best House/Garage Track, Best Breaks/Electro Track (for the single, "Love is Gone") - International Dance Music Awards.
Has two children with former wife Cathy Guetta: - a son Tim-Elvis (09/02/2004) and a daughter Angie (23/09/2007).
Nominated for Best French Act and Best Song (for "When Love Takes Over") with Kelly Rowland, MTV Europe Music Awards.
Had to cancel a world tour due to losing the USB drive he'd saved his musical set onto.

Personal Quotes 
So dance music is now pop music. So now, as a dance producer, what do I have to do? So I'm starting to do alien music, because pop is not pop anymore; we need to go alien to be independent.
I'm totally not a nostalgic person. I always look to the future and as much as I've enjoyed the ride until now and the different phases, I'm more excited about the next music.

I have studios in the different places where I live - in Ibiza, Paris and London - but they're not crazy studios, they're just rooms with good monitors, and all I do is plug my laptop in. It's a different way to make music, but for me, I love it, because it's more connected to the world.

Actually, because of new technologies, my full studio is on my laptop. And I have a little keyboard in my bag. I can make everything I do come from my laptop. Even when I go to a big studio, all I do is to plug in my laptops. That's they way I do it.

You know, kids come to see me in the same way that their parents would go to see a rock concert.

When you're too relaxed it's not good to create.

Traveling all around the world, music sounds different.

There's many different genres, and when you see R&B and pop and house, as well as electronic, come together, that's the reality of what music is.

The more melodies and chord changes, the less good it is for the clubs, but the better it is for radio, because it makes it really emotional.

Sometimes two artists wanna work together, but it doesn't mean it's gonna happen, because you have to find the right idea.

Our job as producers is to make the music sound as good as possible.

Kids listen to everything on the Internet.

It's nice because success has allowed me to have a blast on stage, to be in the studio with amazing people, but I find it all a bit bizarre.

If you put a demo on the net and people say it was the finished version then they're going to say it sucks. I really hate that.

I've created a bridge between European electronic culture and urban American culture, and I've worked with established brands.

I'm not limited.

I wanna be a nice guy.

I mix up all styles on my albums because that is what music is about now.

I headline concert halls for 20,000 people, but I still play smaller venues.

I can make everything I do come from my laptop. Even when I go to a big studio, all I do is to plug in my laptops. That's they way I do it.

Everything I do comes from the clubs. If I lose that, I'm done.

All the big artists I talk to say that they are trapped in a formula and they are looking for the music of tomorrow.

I'm not the type of person to live in fear. I think positively.

I want to party in space because I make alien music.

I had the most reversed education possible. Every parent wants their son to be a businessman, respectable - me, it was the opposite. When I had an artist career my mum was like, 'Oh finally, I'm proud of you!'

My parents were extreme left so everything was against the system. I was walking barefoot in the streets of Paris when I was eight. When I started to DJ they hated it, because for them, nightclubs, and all of this life, was terrible and fake.

Everything I make as a producer, I visualize it as a DJ first. And all those beats, I test them as a DJ.

My studio is a laptop. Everybody I work with is the same. We make computer music, we're the laptop generation.

If I had to play only for people who liked the music because they heard it on the radio, it wouldn't make me happy. That's why I'm working so hard to have, yes, a profile as an artist, but also a profile as a DJ.

I don't do this for the money, I don't do it for record sales, I don't really care about that, I just want to make beats.
I am trying to walk a tightrope; trying to keep the DJ community happy while trying to spread the message about dance music to more people. That is the mission that I am on.

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DAVID GUETTA TOPS THIS YEAR'S LIST OF THE BOTTOM 100 DJS



David Guetta, the world's No. 1 bottom DJ
Photo by Timothy Norris

In what has quickly become the EDM world's equivalent to the Razzies, the annual "Bottom 100 DJs" poll was released today, and a new but familiar face tops the list: David Guetta, who placed fourth last year. The list, which was rolled out via Twitter, also included last year's "winner," Deadmau5, at No. 2, celeb DJ Paris Hilton at No. 3 and EDM superstars Hardwell and Martin Garrix returning to the top 10.

A parody of much-maligned DJ Mag's annual "Top 100 DJs" poll (topped for the past two years by Hardwell), the list was created by Stefan Engblom, one half of the Swedish EDM duo Dada Life. Despite frequently appearing on the Top 100 DJs list themselves, Engblom and his partner, Olle Cornéer, were frustrated with how it had ballooned into a popularity contest that they felt was "taking the fun" out of the DJ world.

"The campaigning people do and the ads that they put on the net, they take it too seriously," Engblom explains, speaking to L.A. Weekly in Los Angeles the day before the Bottom 100 DJs results were released. Ironically, a giant Hardwell billboard, advertising his Hakkasan residency in Las Vegas, looks down on where we're sitting, near Sunset and Highland.

"Me and Olle, we spend too much time in airports and airplanes, thinking about stupid ideas," he continues. So they hatched the idea for a Top 100 DJs piss-take, and launched their first poll anonymously in 2013. Since then, the Bottom 100 DJs poll has taken on a life of its own; this year's poll claims to have garnered more than 100,000 votes from 117 countries.

Last year's bottom DJ, Deadmau5, "took it in a fun way," Engblom says. It's hard to say how Guetta will respond, but in our experience, the French EDM star does have a sense of humor about his critics; in 2011, his lighting technician told a Weekly reporter that he had read a takedown of his song "Without You" in this publication and found it "hilarious."

Dada Life are no strangers to big, attention-grabbing projects. They threw a world record–breaking pillow fight in Chicago once that required a year of planning and 5,000 pillows. This past summer, they invited fans to show up to their San Bernardino festival, the Voyage, in banana suits. That was a record-breaking gathering, too. "For us, it's not a gimmick, it's natural," Engblom says.

Raised in Stockholm, Engblom initially wanted to work in the circus. Instead, he studied computer science. Life, however, takes weird turns. "I feel like I became a part of this crazy circus," he says.

The poll itself is in keeping with what Dada Life hope to accomplish in the dance scene. "When we started Dada Life, DJs were too serious, standing up in the DJ booth, smoking and looking like they're having no fun, not moving at all," says Engblom. "This is not what music is about."

In other words: If DJs are going to get super-serious about a little magazine poll, then Dada Life will create one that you really can't take seriously. Sometimes the responses have little to do with DJs, which is part of the fun. In the 2014 Bottom 100, "your mom" came in at No. 60; this year, Deadmau5's cat, Professor Meowingtons, ranked at No. 5, and "me" was No. 57, proving that many voters apparently realize their own DJ skills are even crappier than, say, Borgore's.

Engblom is excited as he talks about the potential that Bottom 100 has. "Next year, I can't say too much, but we have more plans if it keeps on growing, because it's so much fun," he says.

The 2015 poll wasn't out when Engblom spoke to L.A. Weekly, and he insisted that even he did not yet know the final results — though Dada Life had been campaigning hard for bottom honors. "Fingers crossed that we're ranked as high as possible."

Well, good news, Dada Life: You came in at No. 9, up from No. 13 last year. You even beat out Pauly D and Justin Bieber! Congrats.

Bottom 100 DJs - The Top 10:

1. David Guetta
2. Deadmau5
3. Paris Hilton
4. Vinai
5. Professor Meowingtons
6. Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike
7. Hardwell
8. Martin Garrix
9. Dada Life
10. DVBBS

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DJ David Guetta



There are few DJs in the world that create the reaction that David Guetta sparks. Whether it’s 50,000 fans singing along to his hit records at the recent massive Stade De France stadium Unighted über-party, or dark rooms of clubbers locked in the groove nine hours into his set, Guetta gets passions flowing. That’s because he uniquely and boldly treads a tightrope most DJs wouldn’t dare to traverse: the line between being an underground DJ and having huge crossover success.
That might not sound like two worlds that go together, but David flits between French prime-time TV appearances, deep sets at Space Miami and producing music that appeals to clubbers and also way beyond with apparent ease. That he won a World Music Award and was voted the best house DJ in the DJmag Top 100 in the same year is a credit to his ability to work in both of these seemingly disparate worlds.
“I’m not trying to be credible,” David admits with a smile broadening across his soft, open face. “I’m trying to be incredible. It’s very easy to be underground because you just have to obey a set of codes. It’s very formulaic. But it’s also very easy to be totally pop, because it’s very formulaic too. I’m trying to do something different.”
And it’s working. With DJ sets at hundreds of the coolest clubs each year and record sales clocking in at more than three million singles and almost 2 million albums – half a million of which are for his latest artist long player ‘Pop Life’ – it’s clear that his own path is a fruitful one. A huge star in France for over a decade, David is following that success worldwide. In America for example all of ‘Pop Life’s singles smashed into the Billboard Dance airplay top ten and Love Is Gone refused to leave the No.1 spot on iTunes Dance USA for three months – while the album went gold in multiple territories across Europe. Guetta is also the most requested artist for summer compilations on the whole of EMI. With around 50 million hits on YouTube (and climbing fast), David is as popular outside of nightclubs as he is in them. In fact, David’s video’s hold the Number 1 and No 3 spots in the most watched Electronica clips on Youtube – worldwide and of all time!
This summer has seen Guetta play to an incredible array of people, calling in at Love Parade, Bahia Carnival, Queensday, Techno Parade and Global Gathering. That adds up to around 4,500,000 dancers before you even count the club gigs or the Pacha Ibiza residency! It’s such a buzz playing to big crowds, but he’s never out of a club for too long.

“At the Brazil carnival I spun to two million people and I’ve played to up to 200,000 a few times,” he says with pride but without arrogance. “It feels very good, of course, because of the energy you receive from the people. At first I wanted to play only to the biggest crowds possible, because it’s like a drug. Now I balance the big shows with more intimate club gigs were I can play more new sounds. The big venues are great but sometimes playing to so many people forces you to repeat the same tricks.”
That explains a lot about David Guetta. He’s wants to entertain as many people as possible – show everyone a great time – but never at the expense of being a DJ. Of all the parts of his renaissance life it’s this that is key – he’s a DJ first, everything else follows.
One of his favourite gigs was during his phenomenal US tour. After playing three hours of his biggest and best at Crobar Miami he dived over to Space to go deep for another six hours.
“Playing those two gigs was like the two basics of DJing,” he explains, “the raw energy of super dynamic mixes and party tracks for Crobar, and taking people on a trip with long, deep mixes at Space.”
It’s not uncommon for David to stay on the decks after he’s thrown down his big party set so he can play all the other records that he adores. After a couple of hours of big drops, singalongs, arms in the air, screaming and accapellas being sliced and diced, he’s got the crowd where he wants them and for the next one, two, three hours he’s going to take them on a groove.
“And that’s the part I love most!” he laughs.
To see Guetta wind a room into a frenzy is something special. With an unrivalled connection to the crowd he’ll direct them like a puppet-master, driving their hands in the air as he works CDJs, EQs and effects in a way that sounds more like someone using Ableton. That’s something that has escaped a lot of people: technically David is one of the most impressive DJs in the house scene. Almost remixing records live, he makes loops, slams tracks together that you’d never think would go and uses vocals over other instrumentals. His sets are so dynamic that at times it’s difficult to see how he can keep the energy up. To put it simply, Guetta creates moments. And that’s why when you look out over one of his crowds you see smiles and hands shaped into heart signs. When you give people a night to remember they love you for it.
When you get this close to Guetta, it’s clear he’s really not about the cash, or the glamour or the pop star life. A much softer, more emotional and easy going man some of the press want him to be. He doesn’t want to dazzle people, he wants to touch them.
“Everything I’m trying to do – in my DJing, my production – is about sharing emotion. When I’m making music in the studio that’s all I’m looking for. It’s what matters the most. I’m just a nice person really, you know!”
Nice, yes. And passionate and real. The media wants to stick him in a convenient box as a glamorous star, but Guetta refuses to slot into any pigeonhole – except maybe one: DJ.

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