Let's Mix

The NGDJ finalists were announced yesterday. Congratulations to the 100 DJ:s that are now competing for the first prize, this is were the real action begins!

Also, a big thank you everyone who entered the competiton but unfortunately didn’t make it to the finals. The committment of the over 3200 DJ:s that have competed in NGDJ Stage 1 has been a privilege to witness. Even if you’re not in the finals you have done a tremendous job, keep that up and it will take you far. So far more than 190 000 people have place more than 333 000 votes on the mixes in NGDJ. Amazing.

Regarding the screening process leading up to the finals, we’ve already stated that this was prolonged in order to secure that fraudulent votes didn’t put someone in the finals who shouldn’t be there. The vote count (and subsequent re-recounts) looked at how votes were placed and the quality of the e-mail addresses for those votes. This review was a combination of a qualitative and automated process. We cleansed the results from votes systematically placed in a manner aimed at circumventing the rules of the competition. This effectively meant marking several votes as false, leading to the elimination of a some qualifiers – perhaps most notably several who qualified at the later stage of the qualifiers race.

It should be added that during this vote count we have not disqualified a single contestant, but opted to rather stick to an analysis and flagging of individual votes. Some accounts however are still under review – as is our overall competition process and voting system.

We want to take this opportunity to again thank you, the NGDJ contestants, for your participation. We have another couple of awesome competitions to be announced, with more great prizes there for the taking. If you didn’t get through to the finals this time around, we’re definitely hoping to see you back next time.

Who will be the 100 NGDJ finalists? After the mix screening process is completed, the finalists will be revealed on February 3rd – see previous post. In the meantime, let us proudly present the statstudded panel of industry heavy-weights that will decide who the final NGDJ winner is.

Ladies and gentlemen, we give you: The Next Generation DJ Jury!

• Sebastian Ingrosso, founder of the Swedish House Mafia and Refune Records and dance music’s break-out star of 2009.
• Dean Wilson, Three Six Zero Group, global manager for Deadmau5 and several other artists.
• David Waxman, VP/GM of Ultra Records, the number one US dance label and home to artists like Basement Jaxx, Deadmau5, and Tiesto
• Ben Murphy, Editor in Chief of DJ Mag, dance music’s premier editorial authority.
• Jonas Tempel, CEO & Founder of Beatport, the world’s leading store for dance music downloads.
• Mark Grotefeld, Head of marketing of Pioneer DJ.

True to the across-the-board nature of the NGDJ contest, this is a jury with an inside knowledge on all aspects of global dance music: Production, music selection, skill, promotion and brand building. The NGDJ jury will judge the NGDJ finals, where NGDJ’s top 100 qualifiers are asked to create a unique mix based on the theme of Miami WMC 100. The theme of the mix will be revealed with the finalists on February 3rd.

Dear NGDJ contestants,

Thank you for your hard work in the NGDJ competition. We’ve received over 333 000 votes spread over all of your submissions. We’re deeply impressed.

For the sake of the integrity of the competition, we will at this point require another day to better examine the results before presenting the NGDJ finalists on February 2nd.

In order for these finalists to then be able to prepare and fulfil the stage 2 tasks, the dates for the NGDJ finals have been pushed back to February 3rd-22nd.

If you have achieved qualifier status at the time of closing of stage 1, please note that this status is now considered as pending. It may change, should any irregularities associated with your NGDJ mix or Letsmix.com account be discovered.

We’re sorry for any inconvenience this rescheduling may cause you. We hope that you will appreciate us taking a closer look at the voting results from the qualifier stage and look forward to an amazing finals race. Please leave comments below, or go to the Get Satisfaction forum thread where the discussion is already on!