Armin van Buuren

Elected as the best DJ in the world by his peers from 2007 to 2009, Armin van Buuren is considered one of the leading figures in the electronic music scene worldwide. Born on Christmas Day in 1976 in Leiden, Netherlands, he worked as a DJ in his hom town, which led to work in the UK and US. He released three albums in the 1990s, gaining enough popularity in the club scene in Ibiza for the track "Communication" to make the top 20 in the UK's Singles Chart in 2000, soon collaborating with Tiësto on "Wonder Where You Are" and "Eternity" and with Ferry Corsten on Out of the Blue, the same year. Focused on a mix of vocal trance music and progressive house, he released his own albums, A State of Trance in 2000 followed by Basic Instinct in 2001. Many albums followed including Universal Religion: Live from Armada at Ibiza (2007), which reached number 4 on the Billboard Top Dance/Electronic Albums Chart, Imagine (2008) and A State of Trance (2008), which both peaked at number 5, Intense (2013), which hit number two followed by a collaboration with artists such as Mr. Probz, Hardwell, DBX, Gavin DeGraw, and Angel Taylor on Embrace (2015), which went to number 4. Continuing his prolific collaborations, in 2019, Armin van Buuren released the album Balance, featuring a multitude of producers and contributors such as James Newman, David Hodges, Ne-Yo, Inner City, Sam Martin, and Garibay. In 2023, after the release of A State of Trance 2023, the new single "Motive" emerged, reaching the 38th position on the Billboard Top 40 Dance & Mix Show chart in the United States. That same year, he was crowned the world’s number one trance DJ in DJ Mag’s Top 100 DJs poll and in December announced his ninth studio album, Breathe In, which was written in the two-plus years after the pandemic and presented as a unifying and optimistic take on Armin van Buuren's dancefloor-ready sound. The LP was released in January 2024 via his own Armada Music, which marked its 20th anniversary in 2024, with the compilation A State of Trance Year Mix 2024 arriving a few months later.