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We love the story of the broke artist who eventually makes it through hard work, sleepless nights and sheer resourcefulness within an independent scene. That story still exists. More importantly, it served for a long time as one of the backbones of electronic music culture, but today, it is no longer really relevant. We have already talked about privilege and meteoric rises with influ-DJs. This time, the subject is broader: nepo babies, family legacies, networks, and all the advantages that allow some people to start the race way, way ahead.
Electronic music likes to portray itself as a meritocracy, where the possibility of going from your bedroom to the biggest stages in the world purely through prodigious talent is romanticised (lol). Of course, there are exceptions, but behind some of your favourite DJs are surnames you may never have noticed, pre-existing networks, fortunes and decisive encounters. In other words: privileged access to an industry that still claims to reward merit and originality alone. So, in a scene historically built by outsiders, what really remains of the myth of meritocracy? Absolutely nothing, because as we keep saying, it no longer exists — in electronic music or in any sector where enough money is involved.
Let’s start by calling things what they are. Nepotism is not simply “having famous parents.” It means benefiting, directly or indirectly, from a name, a network, a contact book, an access that others may never have. That does not mean the artist in question has no talent, but it does mean they benefit from a significant head start within the industry. Can we blame them for that? Maybe not. Can we blame the industry? Absolutely. The real problem begins when we pretend these privileges do not exist, when we erase them from the story presented to the public… or even from the story we tell ourselves.
Economic capital, social capital, symbolic capital
The word nepotism on its own is actually too narrow. In reality, it means much more than people might assume. It contains within it what is, in our view, a rather crude mechanism of: “my dad picks up the phone, he knows people, and I get booked.” In reality, as the electronic music industry grows in influence, nepotism becomes far more subtle, far more disguised and, above all, it is rarely named as such. It does not even need to be consciously activated in order to work.
Take Paloma Le Friant, Bob Sinclar’s daughter, who is currently building a career as a DJ. Her father strongly insists on the fact that she is making her own way. He has explained that she wanted to distance herself from him behind the decks, uncomfortable with a level of recognition she felt she had not yet earned. That is to her credit, we understand the intention, and she obviously has every right to want to make music. But despite herself, her case is a fairly typical and very current example of the indirect and sometimes invisible privileges that exist within this industry.
First, there is economic capital. Bob Sinclar does not need to directly pay for every deck, every plane ticket or every hour spent in the studio for us to understand that starting an artistic career from a materially comfortable environment is not exactly the same thing as doing so when every hour devoted to music is an hour that does not pay the rent. The real luxury in an artistic career is not money. It is the time that money gives you. Time to learn — especially when, in this case, Bob Sinclar is around. Time to produce, time to figure out whether this is a hobby or a career… and, above all, peace of mind.
Then there is cultural capital. Paloma herself has said that she grew up between fashion and music, listening to her father working in the studio when she was a child. She grew up in a world where DJs, artists, clubs and the cultural industry were not some abstract universe. She is familiar with all of it, she knows the codes and, above all, the important people already know who she is.
When your father is Bob Sinclar, he does not even need to call anyone. People already know who you are. On top of that, she already has a media presence, and we all know the disproportionate importance social media now has for DJs, which inevitably brings us to symbolic capital. A form of legitimacy inherited before the very first set. “Bob Sinclar’s daughter becomes a DJ”: the media cover the story. There is not even any need for a PR person to harass journalists in the hope of getting one tiny article about an unknown young DJ who has just started mixing. While one person may have to spend years generating attention in the hope of eventually being noticed, the other already has a large part of that attention before she has even started. And yes, we are not denying that this can also be difficult for nepo babies: people expect a lot from them and all eyes are on them, so there is undeniably a form of media pressure. But that inconvenience is NOTHING compared with the privilege and legitimacy attached to a name and the credibility that comes with that musical heritage.
None of this guarantees a career, talent or long-term respect from the public. But it guarantees something far more valuable in an oversaturated industry: that people will look at you at least once. It is a genuine golden ticket in a world driven by a permanent attention economy. In 2025, electronic music gained a combined 558 million additional fans across Spotify, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Facebook. It shows just how much the battle for attention has become part of the market itself. You are known, you get booked because you can help fill the club, you are a product that already works and does not need to be tested.
Acknowledging this takes nothing away from Paloma’s work. This is the same shortcut that systematically ruins every conversation about nepotism, in any field. Privilege and merit are not mutually exclusive. You can be talented and benefit from a network. You can deserve your place while also having had far more opportunities to try to reach it. That is not a crime, but it also says a great deal about how our industry is evolving and about the codes that now determine who gets accepted into it. The only real criticism we can make of nepo babies themselves is their lack of honesty with themselves and with the public. What we are asking of them is not particularly complicated. We are asking them to be honest and, above all, aware of what has been handed to them on a silver platter. Having that kind of self-awareness would actually work in their favour, because it would give them more credibility. That first — and then maybe stop accepting disproportionately huge gigs after six months of DJing. At that point, perhaps we can start talking about an honest way of beginning a career.
Visible nepotism is not the same as invisible nepotism
Paloma is an easy example. You cannot really say it is hidden, even if the implications are not genuinely acknowledged, and more importantly, she is far from being an isolated case. There are others we know very well. To name just one — and not exactly a minor one — there is also Thomas Bangalter, one half of Daft Punk, who is the son of Daniel Vangarde, the producer behind Ottawan and La Compagnie Créole. In 2001, Bangalter told Le Monde that his father had notably helped the duo “decode the industry.” Daniel Vangarde also acted as a consultant on some Daft Punk projects. None of this takes anything away from the duo’s genius, and maybe without that helping hand Daft Punk would have been missing from the French Touch… who knows?
Then there are those who could not even really be described as nepo babies, but who nevertheless benefited enormously from the people around them. Fred again.. is not the son of a famous DJ. At the age of 16, a family friend took him to rehearsals for a vocal group at Brian Eno’s house. He then regularly showed Eno his productions. Two years later, Eno invited him to co-produce his albums with Karl Hyde from Underworld. Fred again.. also comes from a British aristocratic family, which certainly opens up quite a wide range of possibilities. How many 16-year-old producers get to play their first tracks to Brian Eno?
The scene knows itself very well
On a smaller scale, this kind of phenomenon is extremely common. A huge number of opportunities still come through personal connections and favouritism. The promoter knows an agent. The agent knows an artist. A friend introduces you to someone after a party. There is nothing particularly sinister about that in itself: a cultural industry also operates through trust. But that is what real gatekeeping looks like. Above all else, it is about insiders keeping things among themselves.
Building a network takes time. You need to go out, make yourself visible, talk to people, build relationships… and you also need to feel comfortable doing it. Knowing how to introduce yourself, speak confidently, defend your project or easily approach strangers does not come naturally to everyone. When you grow up in a more privileged environment, you are often more exposed to these social codes: you learn earlier how to speak to certain people, how to behave in certain spaces, how to create connections without feeling like you do not belong there. Again, building an image is almost a full-time job, and when you are already working, you simply do not have the same energy or the same amount of time to devote to it — or the money to pay someone else to do it for you.
The DIY narrative of the little self-taught producer who built everything entirely on their own is a bit like the representation of women in advertising… it accounts for only a tiny proportion of reality. A career costs TIME. It involves travel. It may require financing your first releases or your own communication. You need to be able to absorb those expenses while earning little or nothing in return. In reality, making a living from DJing while being financially precarious seems incredibly difficult. As a reminder, Technopol’s 2022 survey, conducted among more than 1,200 respondents, found that only 27% of the artists surveyed benefited from France’s intermittent entertainment worker status. The French Ministry of Culture also highlighted another finding from the study: one third of artists reported having difficulties getting paid.
Everyone can mix, yes, but not everyone can become a DJ. It is a slightly depressing conclusion, certainly, but above all it means that the rules of the game have changed — we already knew that — just not in the same way for everyone. And what is the consequence of all this? A world that is becoming increasingly inaccessible, while highly boosted success stories continue to be presented as if they were entirely based on merit.
Nepotism is only a subcategory of a much larger and more complex phenomenon: relationship-based favouritism.