At 16, Stevenson student Andrew Luce navigates burgeoning EDM stardom, along with math homework.

Try to get booked at Outside Lands, getting featured on prominent electronic dance music blogs, opening the stage at SnowGlobe Music Festival in South Lake Tahoe – not long before Snoop Dogg took the stage – all while trying not to miss study hall…

Study hall?

Such is the life of Andrew Luce, a 16-year-old San Francisco Bay Area native, boarding student at Stevenson School in Pebble Beach and up-and-coming DJ in the world of EDM (electronic dance music, better known to the masses as club music or even just dance music).

The sophomore’s story provides a few interesting contrasts: He’s old school and low-key (and quiet and humble) in an industry where being as visible as possible on social media is vital.

“I’m more of a talking-to-people kind of person,” Luce says, and adds that while he loves his fans, the act of contending with social media – an absolutely necessary part for an artist launching in EDM – is at times something like a chore.

The Santa Cruz-based producer who goes by “Clark Kent,” (his songs have hundreds of thousands of plays on the online platform Soundcloud and he was featured as one of EDMSauce’s “Producers to Watch” in 2014), understands the need for the mix of personal and technological. It’s the personal touch that helped him get to know Luce’s work (more on that later).

“With all the social media sites providing such an intimate level of interactions with fans,” Kent says, “anyone who doesn’t capitalize on it can easily get lost.”

Luce uses social media platforms extensively to spread his music, via Twitter, Facebook, Soundcloud and Instagram. His work is featured on popular music blogs like FreshNewTracks and Do Androids Dance.

The industry, in turn, is adapting to the ubiquity of social media in music.

“The more people that are talking about [your music], sharing it, listening to it, downloading it, those are numbers that people look at,” says Paul Song, a longtime promoter and DJ who has mentored Luce. “If I’m looking at booking an artist, that’s the first thing I go to is their Soundcloud page, Facebook page, see what kind of likes and numbers they’ve got.”

It’s a dichotomy for Luce. While he isn’t quite sold on aggressive self-promotion and like-mongering in the industry and keeps his success on the downlow, he’s making self-promotion work to his advantage. And while he might make big, brash electronic music and has recently had big success, friends say he still hasn’t lost his humble, quiet persona.

“When you see him on campus,” says Dominic Piccinini, a fellow student at Stevenson High School, “you wouldn’t think he was this up-and-coming DJ. He kind of keeps to himself, spends a lot of time in his room making music.”

Perception and personality highlight the second juxtaposition in the life of Luce: Even in an industry fueled by Internet kindling, there’s still a distinctive human element that makes everything possible.

Take, for instance, what happened this fall, when Luce was trying to win SnowGlobe’s Opening DJ Competition, which ranked contestants’ entries based on likes.

“Every night for probably two weeks, me, my friend Warren, my roommate, a kid from Turkey and a kid from the Bahamas personally Facebook messaged every single person we were friends with, asking them to vote for it,” Luce says, chuckling about the scheme. “It worked really well and I ended up getting to the number one-voted spot, and it was a huge shock.”

The human x-factor can be seen elsewhere in Luce’s path too.

Within the next few weeks, Luce will release a collaboration with Clark Kent – complete with original vocals and a melodic dubstep sound, Kent’s signature. Luce says they’re looking to land the song on a label, but also might make it a free download.

How’d a collaboration with such a big name, with the potential to get his name out to the multitudes who follow Kent, come to be?

A simple, direct, human message.

“Andrew sent me some of his music on Soundcloud,” Kent says. “I really liked the sounds and hit him back about working together.”

Getting physically seen – not just heard – at places like SnowGlobe also has a big impact.

“It’s hard to communicate that human element,” says Nick d’Alençon of FreshNewTracks, one of the major EDM blogs. “That’s where networking at festivals really works. People like the music, but people also like the face,” he says, pointing to big-name DJs like Steve Aoki, who’s known not only for music, but also for stage antics like tossing cakes into the audience.

A third key contrast is revealed in Luce’s musical style itself.

“HE’S BEING A MODERN DAY BRIDGE BETWEEN THAT KIND OF RAP MUSIC AND ELECTRONIC DANCE MUSIC.”

He claims he hasn’t found his signature – the grooves that will ultimately become known as “his sound.” But Luce’s most popular tracks, “OBEDEAR X GAS PEDAL” and “Don’t Lose Your Head,” both feature unique, California-tinged fusions, mixing previously disparate genres like gritty trap hip-hop from the South and eccentric hyphy rap from the Bay Area.

“He’s from the West Coast, Bay Area, which is really well known for its unique style of hip-hop and rap,” says Darby Bundy, a blogger at Dance Music Northwest. “What he’s doing that’s really exciting to see is he’s being a modern-day bridge between that kind of rap music and electronic dance music… It’s bridging together two totally different genres of music.”

Engaging in the world of electronic music is as close as your Internet connection.

Not familiar with electronic music? Andrew Luce offers up this quick list of how to quickly …

A final contrast: Unlike most other successful artists of this and past generations, Luce is just a kid, and for the most part, he’s on his own in the showbiz world. Not to be overlooked, Luce has allies in the industry – d’Alençon helps Luce as a sort of pro bono manager, sharing contacts, helping book shows, distributing music. And Paul Song, a promoter and DJ, has been more of an informal mentor, helping Luce put out an original on Song’s label, Red Cube Recording.

But much of the work for Luce is done by Luce. No PR team. No contracts. Just a kid and a laptop.

“You really have to market yourself. Back in the day, if somebody wanted to sign you, they’d have marketers and promoters to do that stuff for you,” Bundy says. “Nowadays, producers are also their own promoters, their own marketers, art designers, they’re their own mixers and masterers… you really have to do six jobs.”

So far Luce’s done these jobs to varying degrees of success.

He knows how to brand himself. He has a logo. He makes his own slick album art in Photoshop. He even launched a campaign, borrowing in concept from Kanye West’s G.O.O.D. Fridays, releasing a track every Wednesday for his “Humpday Heaters” series.

But not everything Luce has done has gone off without a hitch. Though he regularly DJs Stevenson dances, when Luce and friends rented a room at the Monterey Fairgrounds to put on a dance of their own, a friend forgot the key and they had to crudely set up a stage with little time. The result? Exposed cables spontaneously being ripped out of speakers by clumsy, dancing teens.

“Last time was a train wreck,” Luce remembers with a wry grin as he prepared recently for a similar event at the Fairgrounds called AN ANDREW LUCE VALENTINES.

Another memory had a similar theme: Luce is just one person, still navigating the game he entered about a year ago without much help. He says after years on the guitar and piano, he reached a point where EDM offered him far more creative possibilities. Now he’s presented with a whole new frontier to explore: self-promotion, by himself.

He was playing his set opening the SnowGlobe Music Festival on New Year’s Eve (where he got to play by winning that mix competition) and almost forgot to say his own name to the crowd.

Luce was starstruck as Dillon Francis, a big-name festival act who has already worked with the likes of Diplo, walked backstage.

“I was going to talk to Dillon Francis, but I didn’t have the willpower to do that or the confidence,” Luce remembers.

More confidence is one of his main goals. Piccinini, the Stevenson student, says despite the fact his friend was nervous at SnowGlobe, he killed it onstage.

“It was remarkable, slap after slap,” Piccinini says. “The crowd was getting into it every time he dropped the beat.”

There is one place where Luce’s life isn’t so unique: the sea of competition EDM producers face.

“The [EDM] market is just so oversaturated with people who think they’ve got it and they really don’t,” d’Alençon says, describing how any teen can turn on the computer, make a quick track, and share it with the entire world in minutes.

“I think the incredible amount of aspiring musicians really forces you to work as hard as you possibly can, because if you aren’t, someone else is,” Kent says. “The market saturation forces you to create a unique sound to stand out.”

To those in the know, Luce has something special that others don’t.

“He has talent and he has perseverance and he has the will to make it,” The Kollection’s Kian McHugh says, “so I think Andrew, if he keeps it up… I think he’ll be famous within a matter of months or by the end of the year. Honestly, I see Andrew being on the charts by the end of 2014 or early 2015.”

But right now, as he and I finish talking, he’s got to run to class, then he’ll probably, like usual, spend every other free moment making music.

You can follow Luce at www.facebook.com/AndrewLuceMusic or www.soundcloud.com/andrewlucemusic