In most industries, breaking the law can end a career. But in the electronic dance music (EDM) scene, certain forms of lawbreaking can have the opposite effect.
Authors
- Amandine Ody-Brasier
Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior, McGill University
- Xu Li
Assistant Professor of Management, London School of Economics and Political Science
Our recent study found that DJs who release illegal remixes - also called bootlegs - can improve their chances of getting hired for live gigs, but only when their actions are seen as serving the broader community rather than as a self-serving tactic.
Most EDM artists support and respect copyright law and know that sharing a remix online without the permission of the copyright owner is illegal. They also recognize the importance of respecting others' work, as illustrated by the public apology issued by Dutch DJ Hardwell in a recent feud with Swedish House Mafia over a trio of bootlegs.
Yet in practice, bootlegs are not necessarily condemned, and in some cases, can even be supported by the community.
Not all bootlegs are the same
We studied the careers of nearly 39,000 DJs across 97 countries from 2007 to 2016, tracking their music production activity and live performances. Given the legal and reputational risks involved, illegal remixing is relatively uncommon. Our data suggest that fewer than 10 per cent of EDM DJs post bootlegs online.
Still, we found that those who do post bootlegs tend to get more gigs than those who produce legal remixes or original tracks.
To better understand this surprising result, we complemented our secondary data analyses with an expert survey, an online experiment with almost 900 EDM fans and interviews with 34 industry professionals including DJs, promoters and label managers.
Interestingly, we found that bootlegs weren't generally seen as more creative, higher quality or attention-grabbing than legal remixes or original tracks. So why then did some DJs benefit from them?
The answer lies in how the broader EDM community perceived the bootlegger's intentions.
Valuing disinterestedness
We found that artists who were seen as disinterested - breaking the law to give back to the community - tended to be rewarded, despite violating copyright law.
When bootlegs were perceived as homages to a peer, a gift to fans or a way to revive a beloved song, it triggered community support for the artist. Specifically, other community members would step in and provide that artist with more opportunities to perform and open for peers.
Sharing a bootleg online increased the number of monthly opening acts a DJ played by 4.4 per cent - twice the impact of releasing official remixes or original music.
This could explain seemingly surprising responses to bootlegs, like in 2019, when a young DJ named Imanbek Zeikenov remixed "Roses" by Saint Jhn and shared it online without obtaining the proper rights.
The EDM community reacted positively to the remix, which helped propel Zeikenov's career forward. He has since become an established artist and has opened for high-profile artists, including Saint Jhn himself.
It's clear the EDM community places a lot of value on disinterestedness. But the inverse is also true: when bootlegs were believed to be self-serving attempts to ride someone else's success, the support quickly waned.
In fact, bootleggers perceived as self-serving experienced a decrease of up to 10 per cent in the number of monthly bookings.
Norms take precedence over formal regulations
Many occupational communities rely on informal norms. Usually, the degree to which formal regulations align with an industry's core values determines whether a community promotes, discourages or only superficially supports compliance with the law.
However, in more ambiguous situations, compliance becomes discretionary , meaning community members must interpret unlawful actions themselves and decide whether to enforce or overlook them.
While formal rules exist in EDM - like copyright law - they're not always strictly enforced. When this happens, a community's norms fill in the gap in a process known as "occupational self-regulation." In the EDM scene, these informal norms include unspoken rules about remixing, collaboration and credit.
As our study shows, this ambiguity has resulted in a system where EDM artists who break copyright laws can still gain informal support, provided their actions are seen as disinterested and beneficial to the broader community.
Breaking the rules for the right reasons
It's important to note that EDM artists do not encourage lawbreaking per se, and that the DJs we interviewed described bootlegging as a practice born out of necessity - something artists resort to when they lack the resources to clear tracks.
Community support in EDM hinges less on strict legal compliance and more on how an artist's intent is perceived. For emerging DJs, this creates a delicate balancing act: breaking the law carries real risks, but under certain circumstances, it can paradoxically open a path to a legitimate career.
EDM isn't the only field where this kind of phenomenon occurs. It's likely that other creative occupations that value disinterestedness will see similar dynamics play out. This is also true in academia or tech. For example, patent infringement in bioscience research may be treated differently, at least in part, because of perceived differences in scientists' intentions .
Ultimately, how these transgressions are judged comes down to their perceived motives and how the broader community makes sense of them. Sometimes, breaking the law isn't just tolerated, but can even be a stepping stone to professional success.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
