The ascent last year of Belgian duo Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike to take the #1 spot in the DJ Mag Top 100 poll was a controversial one, causing a huge uproar when they stormed the poll to knock reigning Dutch champions Hardwell and Martin Garrix off their thrones.
Allegations the duo had employed nefarious marketing techniques involving iPads were thrown around by dance media, though with the poll now open again for 2016 , Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike have come out again to face the controversy head-on.
Dimitri clarified to YourEDM in an interview this week that the campaign in question was actually related to tickets for the duo’s own arena shows in Belgium at the end of the year.
“Then once you’ve signed up for your tickets on the iPads, we give people the opportunity to vote. But nobody ever made anybody vote for us. You can vote for anyone, but of course we ask you to vote for us,” Dimitri told YourEDM.
The duo attributed their win last year to popularity in their home country of Belgium, where they sold more than 60,000 tickets for their Bringing the Madness arena shows last December.
“In general, if somebody in Belgium votes, mostly likely they’re going to vote for us. So that’s one of the big reasons I think why we got that #1… But it’s true, we did a big campaign, and everyone who campaigns uses certain marketing materials. But nothing we did in our campaign was against the rules of DJ Mag.”
Check out YourEDM for the full interview. You can watch the duo’s Bringing the Madness arena show in its entirety below.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acnCwXgstyw]
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