DJs and Streaming music via Beatport LINK discussion
303abuser As a bit of a walking one stop designer type (jack of all, master of non), I reckon I could box loads of it off myself bar the actual music / mastering / audio side of things. Dunno the costs on mastering or such things… how many units to be in profit you reckon? Thousand? Five thousand? Ten thousand?
Mad_Cyril I think getting a good UI that you are happy with, that tests well regards debugging and then with audiences for usability, plus a strong database / storage / server, you are looking at employing at least one full time developer / coder and one full time designer for a year… Please don’t find a better way of doing it, you’ll have me out of a job! 
303abuser maybe if you could set up a collective where you have several good artists, a mastering engineer, maybe a couple of people into graphics/video/etc. and you’re all willing to work for the greater good, it could be viable. maybe.
You just described a record label 
mono-stereo yeah, but my though is more a collective that’s transparent vs a hierarchical structure. probably semantics, definitely a pipe dream.
303abuser I was being facetious, I get what you mean.
mono-stereo honestly, i didn’t realize i did a good job of describing a label. 
It’s a tricky one, but my mindset is still the DJ being the selector , not an algorithm or glorified duke box . Having every track available means erodes the point of the DJ. Just have a service that takes requests and creates a mix based on popularity .
As a DJ you have X amount of money available to spend and it’s your taste to select the best tracks to fit your style . I can understand Vinyl purists as this takes this concept even further , with sets limited to the physical ability of carrying tunes to a gig or availability of tracks .
All these services that basically value music a fraction of its overall worth and homogenize the art of music sourcing make me sick to my stomach, and probably drive the "“Instagram DJ” culture so many of us deride .
So as you can tell not a fan of the concept . Call me a Luddite but that’s moi
It’s like what DJ Harvey said. DJs showing up to gigs with thousands upon thousands of tunes but still manage to play the same tracks as everyone else. Whereas he can go on tour with a crate of 100 records and make it work.
jonattonyeah it’s having the balls and the confidence with those 100 tunes, because you’ve spent countless hours researching/seeing how they work on a dance floor / making sure they fit in with what you want to convey .
Not everyone’s going to like them , but the people you want to appeal to will . Everyone one else go and listen to the latest Anjunadeep podcast
IndustryStandard Everyone one else go and listen to the latest Anjunadeep podcast
I don’t like how you’ve targeted Si Alistair and MC here.
zackster knew it would be a contentious statement for some
Joking aside, I’ve a few AD releases but they don’t half release a lot of similar sounding stuff.
- Edited
I find this perspective really interesting because when my mates were DJing on Vinyl in the early 2000s, DJing hadn’t crossed my mind. I couldn’t afford it, and I didn’t understand what the equipment was doing. I just saw buttons and decks spinning.
But I do remember all of those guys seemingly spending hundreds of pounds every month (as students, or in jobs for young people). Many of them didn’t have cars assumedly because they spent all of what would have been that money on vinyl.
I only learned to DJ digitally on CDJ-1000 mk3 7 years back so had to keep burning CDs and by that point the leading edge of DJing was already well past moving to loaded USB sticks but ultimately the cost was similar to buy tracks on beatport today - £1.30 ish is a fraction of what vinyl was (often £15-30)
I have a lot of respect for people who can memorise tracks (i.e. they hear one, and run to the next one knowing exactly what to play). To be honest, the reason I feel like the quality of my sets have increased in the last 12 months is because I’ve learned how to organise the music using Playlists and Energy ratings. Lately I’ve learned how to mix in key by reading information on the screen but I previously didn’t have much bother doing that by ear.
Doing that legwork (organise by type, and staring the energy level 1 to 5)when I first buy / load tracks takes extra time but it makes the performances more enjoyable for everyone else, and it works for my capabilities as a person. For various reasons my memory doesn’t work well with names/titles.
I know when I play in front of my mates and they’re playing on vinyl I have a lot of respect for what they are doing because they have absolute walls of the stuff in big garages, house extensions or basements and it’s something physical - they’re holding the music. They’ve chosen it out, put it in a bag, no key information, no BPM info. They just know. They take care of it, it can even get damaged!
It seems like the two types of DJing are totally different even if to produce the same result. I don’t think digital DJing is to be hated it’s just a progression but I do think the ability for digital production and sales means there are millions more tracks that are (IMO) below the par. When you’re a good DJ it still pays you to niche down and have a sound you’re known for and that genuinely does thin stuff out into smaller corners of beatport overall, once you’ve made that decision to do it. In my corner of Prog there is a lot, but also not ‘that much’ in the grand scheme of things because I’ve chosen to aim for a specific sound and vibe. Where a lot of DJs fall down IMO is they try to play everything they love across multiple genres - which is fine but when you’re trying to become something I think a decision has to be made about which direction to go.