The first major book about the biggest trend in music—Grammy Award-nominated DJ, record executive, and musical tastemaker A-Trak charts the cultural history of the DJ phenomenon and the incandescent rise of Electronic Dance Music (EDM) through his own revelatory coming-of-age story.

Once upon a time, the DJ was the guy huddled in a dark booth in the corner of the club. Now DJs are celebrities in their own right, crisscrossing the globe to perform on giant festival stages lit up by thousand-watt displays. The DJ has become a pop star, flipping the music industry on its head.

An ode to the art of turntablism and DJing, When the Needle Dropped traces the personal journey of Alain “A-Trak” Macklovitch from a young Canadian scratch fiend turned world champion, through his stint as Kanye West’s personal DJ to his evolution as an in-demand producer and independent record exec. Along the way, A-Trak became a pivotal figure in the rise of EDM music, as DJs transitioned from vinyl to laptops and beyond.

Featuring exclusive photos and celebrity-studded, behind-the-scenes tales, A-Trak’s candid account is the story of global DJing, and this is the first book of its kind to chronicle what is now the most dominant scene in contemporary music. Populated with legends like Qbert, DJ AM, and Samantha Ronson alongside hip-hop and dance music royalty like Kanye West and Armand Van Helden, When the Needle Dropped is a groundbreaking music memoir of an underappreciated craft, a passionate call for a future beyond genre, and the poignant story of an incomparable artist’s rise to fame.