Belgian beats part 2/3: Dimitri Vegas and Like Mike

Flemish-Greek duo Dimitri Vegas and Like Mike have made it onto Forbes’ top 10 list of the world’s highest paid DJs. As the new boys on the millionaire’s block, they hold the 10th spot.

The duo’s estimated 2016 income amounts to €13.7 million. (Number one on the list is Taylor Swift’s boyfriend, Calvin Harris, at €56 million).

Local authorities know Vegas and Mike as Dimitri and Michael Thivaios, Willebroek-born brothers of Greek origin. They started working together in 2006, when Dimitri (pictured right), who was living in Greece at the time, returned to Flanders to help produce the first release under their Dimitri Vegas and Like Mike-moniker: “La Cocaina”.

A few years later, they hosted Tomorrowland for the first time, creating the anthem of the internationally renowned festival. “Tomorrow (Give in to the Night)” featuring Dada Life and Tara McDonald came out on the duo’s own label, Smash The House, and established their status as colossi of commercial dance music.

They went on to host annual sold-out parties at Antwerp’s Sportpaleis, to play all over the world and to create another anthem – for the Red Devils during Euro 2016. Vegas and Mike are currently the first duo to become DJ Mag’s number one DJ, dethroning the Netherlands’ Hardwell after two consecutive years.

Vegas and Mike play and produce the same genre as most of their Forbes-list compatriots: electronic dance music (EDM), which serves as an umbrella term for popular dance genres like drum’n’bass, trance and dubstep. Their style comprises a mix of heavily produced electro and heavily produced house called, you guessed it, electro-house.

EDM DJs are usually the ones who play the biggest clubs and festivals dance music has to offer and have been known to pour champagne all over the first rows of their audiences. And flamboyant Vegas and Mike aren’t averse to this kind of decadence.