Resident Advisor is an online musicmagazine and community platform dedicated to showcasing electronic music, artists and events across the globe. It was established in 2001. RAs editorial team provides news, music and event reviews, as well as films, features and interviews. The website also manages services that include event listings, ticket sales, club and promoter directories, photo galleries, artist and record label profiles, DJ charts, an online community, and the RA Podcast. The company has its headquarters in London, with additional offices in Berlin, Los Angeles, Sydney and Tokyo. The website won a People's Voice award in the 12th Annual Webby Awards in 2008.
History
RA was founded in 2001 by Paul Clement and Nick Sabine as a site to provide news and information relating to the Australian dance music scene. It outgrew its initial regional focus and by 2002, was covering the electronic music industry globally. Resident Advisor unveiled RA Tickets in 2008 to allow promoters of electronic music to sell tickets. RA Tickets launched a face-value ticket resale system to battle touting and the RA Ticket Scanner app to allow promoters to manage entry to their events. In August 2011, Resident Advisor launched a Japanese version of the website. In January 2014, the first complete redesign in the site's history was announced, adding mobile support, responsive design, a new logo, full SoundCloud integration on artist pages and other features. At that time, Resident Advisor stated to have more than two million users per month. An article in The New York Times, published in July 2015, cites the websites audience reaching 2.5 million monthly active users. The company launched its first consumer-focused iOS app in 2015. The RA Guide, free in the App Store, takes the sites listings for clubs, festivals and concerts to the mobile market. Apple featured RA as a curator, with the launch of Apple Music, to contribute electronic music playlists to the streaming service.
Podcasts
The RA Podcast is a weekly mix of electronic music from top producers and DJs. It launched on 6 March 2006 with a mix from Troy Pierce and has since featured Fever Ray, Laurent Garnier, Richie Hawtin, Erol Alkan, Frankie Knuckles, Tensnake, DJ Harvey, Greg Wilson and others. In 2010, Resident Advisor started a second podcast series titled the RA Exchange. The site defines the RA Exchange as a series of conversations with artists, labels, and promoters shaping the electronic music landscape.
Events
RA supports, partners, promotes and runs events, club nights and festival stages. This includes:
In 2011, the site launched a series of ten parties called "RA X" so as to celebrate their tenth anniversary. The first of these was held on 11 June in London. In chronological order, the next parties were held in Barcelona, São Paulo, New York City, Moscow, Sydney, Rome, Tokyo, Berlin and Amsterdam. Each party was curated by a secret guest, who determined the other DJs who would play alongside them. Additionally, ten different visual artists were enlisted to create posters for the events. RA announced "In Residence" in 2016, a series that visits one club per month, hosting four events at each. It started with Smart Bar in Chicago in March, then visiting Concrete in Paris, Robert Johnson in Frankfurt, Lux in Portugal, Kaiku in Helsinki, Macarena Club in Barcelona and Goa Club in Rome. Since 2016, RA has hosted charity fund-raiser club nights for Help Refugees.
Films
In 2011, Resident Advisor produced a series of short documentaries titled Real Scenes. Each of the 15-20 minute films was focused on a city, exploring the musical, cultural and creative climate within electronic music's key destinations. The first cities covered were Bristol, Detroit and then Berlin. In 2012/3, Resident Advisor extended this series to incorporate documentary films on the electronic music scenes in Paris, Johannesburg, New York, Tokyo and Mexico City. RA Films has since produced various series. This includes RA Sessions, which features recorded performances with live artists, ORIGINS, which traces the roots of DJs and Between The Beats, which takes a behind-the-scenes look at the life of a touring artist.
Annual RA polls
Since 2006 Resident Advisor has conducted two annual voting polls at the end of each year under the name RA Poll. The first polls the publications readers, who are asked to vote for their top 100 DJs and live acts of the year. The second poll is conducted amongst the magazine's staff and contributors who vote on their albums, compilations, labels and tracks of the year. On 22 November 2017 Resident Advisor announced that it would no longer hold its annual polls, in order to prevent the further inflation of some artists' fees and to promote electronic music in a broader sense and not just a grasp of established DJs that weren't representative of the scene's diversity anymore.
