Calvin Harris tops Forbes DJ list for fifth straight year, but who are the new guys?

Forbes has released their annual list of the world’s highest-paid DJs and it’s mostly business as usual for the biggest names in dance music.

Calvin Harris tops the list, raking in almost $50 million. Harris released his fifth studio album, Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 1 at the end of June. Funk Wav Bounces debuted at number 2 on the charts in both the UK and US.

But Harris, like most DJs on this list, is buoyed by live appearances, including exclusive residences at three Las Vegas nightclubs owned by the Hakkasan group.

This is fifth year straight that Harris has topped the Forbes DJ list.

After Harris, Dutch DJ Tiesto, another mainstay on this list, comes in at number two, grossing almost $40 million this year. According to Forbes, Tiesto booked 134 gigs during the year.

Other mainstays on this list include Skrillex, Steve Aoki, Diplo, David Guetta, Martin Garrix, and Zedd.

Those are pretty standard names for this list. But more interestingly, there are two newcomers to the list: The Chainsmokers and Marshmello.

On one hand, The Chainsmokers, who slotted in at third on the list, are pop-dance crossovers who have stolen headlines and pop radio with hits like “Closer” featuring Halsey and “Something Just Like This” with Coldplay.

The Chainsmokers names and faces have been virtually inescapable in the last year.

On the other hand, DJ Marshmello, the other newcomer on the Forbes list, is completely anonymous.

I consider myself relatively #PluggedIn and I had never heard of this dude, who raked in $21 million this year. We’ve seen DJs do the whole anonymous thing before, but Marshmello seems to have taken it to a new level.

It’ll be interesting tracking this list over the next year, I expect a lot of these names to remain, mostly due to lucrative residency deals and massive festival appearances.

Will the newcomers stay around? We shall see.

Here’s the list in full:

1. Calvin Harris ($48,500,000)
2. Tiesto ($39,000,000)
3. The Chainsmokers ($38,000,000)
4. Skrillex ($30,000,000)
5. Steve Aoki ($29,500,000)
6. Diplo ($28,500,000)
7. David Guetta ($25,000,000)
8. Marshmello ($21,000,000)
9. Martin Garrix ($19,500,000)
10. Zedd ($19,000,000)