Austin Collins, known professionally as Au5 (pronounced ay-yoo-five), is a electronic music producer and DJ from New Jersey. Au5's music encompasses a range of electronic genres such as dubstep, house, trance, drum and bass, drumstep and ambient, and he is known for fusing the characteristics of trance and dubstep in his music, something he labels trancestep. Au5 is best known for his releases on Canadian label Monstercat, some of which have received millions of views on YouTube. Born in New Jersey, Collins was exposed to music at an early age and began weekly classical piano lessons at age four. Collins's first experience with music software was Easy Beat by Ergonis Software, a multitrack MIDI sequencer for Mac, which he used at age eight to sequence out random music ideas. At age 11, he obtained a new Mac with GarageBand, which furthered his music production interest. At age 13, he began learning bass guitar and digital music production on Logic Pro. He later played in several rock and metal bands. Collins began producing trance music at age 15, around 2008. Au5's label releases began in 2012, and after winning a Seven Lions remix contest in January 2013, he joined Monstercat. Au5 had several successful releases on the label, such as "Halcyon", with American producer Fractal, "Snowblind", featuring Tasha Baxter, and "Crossroad", featuring Danyka Nadeau. "Halcyon" and "Snowblind" reached number one on Beatport's dubstep charts.