Without a doubt, this has been one of the hardest years for musicians in a long, long time. Perhaps ever. COVID-19 absolutely decimated the live event space and many artists who were coming up and booked major shows, opening slots, or festival appearances were left without a plan.
Still, in this day and age, without a strong sense of perseverance, you won’t get far in this industry. Thankfully, many artists have taken the hit and rolled with the punches and still had a phenomenal year.
We began compiling this list as early as late last year, and expected it to look a lot different taking live shows and support into account, but COVID-19 obviously derailed those plans. Then, live streams started happening and smaller promoters were able to highlight some truly talented artists.
This list was created based on our own observations throughout the year, recommendations from key industry figures, and some like Castion, Dr. Ushūu, and Ipsiom from suggestions from our own followers on Twitter.
As we do every year, we’ve picked our 40 artists who we feel will have an incredible year in 2021, not just in their own personal careers, but also on the electronic music scene as a whole. As a reminder, we do our best not to repeat names year after year so as to give new artists the spotlight. So if you don’t see the name of an artist you feel has had a great year and is destined for more, it’s more than likely we featured them in the past five years.
2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020
See Your EDM’s Artists To Watch in 2021 list below. Congratulations to all who are featured! We expect big things of you next year.
Your EDM’s Top 40 Artists To Watch for 2021
Last Heroes | acloudyskye | Jon Casey | Rossy | Ekcle | Deadcrow | Darby
Heimanu | Trinergy | Highlnd | OMAS | SpeedStr | Rival | phonon
Maliboux | Wreckno | MASTERIA | Heyz | Haus of Panda | Voltra | Ipsiom
Dr. Ushūu | Farrah | gyrofield | FREAK ON | euphorian | PAX
Akosmo | Castion | Knock2 | Whales | Super Future | Papa Khan
yetep | Ruvlo | Lipless | Cloverdale | Slowpalace | Kumarion | Jinx
Photo via Jeremy Verone for Space Yacht x Halcyon
