Is It Just Me…

I know what your trying to say, its coming to a point where i will not buy any tracks online now or any music in that case unless its white labels because a lot of the music sounds the same and just doesn’t interest me.

It’s ashame to be honest.

Phil Morse, post: 1725 wrote: I think the trick is to look in different places for your music.

I totally agree with this, try hunting through free music blogs and stuff or paid music blogs and soundclouds/mixclouds etc etc.. white label records online if your a vinyl junkie. All examples.

Phil Morse, post: 1725 wrote: I think the trick is to look in different places for your music.

I wholeheartedly agree.

I also think DJs should not try to post a new mix every week. Take the time and seek out new stuff. Play multiple genres so you can amass a great playlist for each new mix. I just made a tech house mix and posted it today, but it’ll probably be a month or two before I even post another one. In the meantime I have music aside for some different old school mixes, a trance mix, and a deep house mix.

The big one is to learn scarcity. Just because you have access to 1000 new tunes doesn’t mean you should get them. Imagine you get locked in the record store in days of yesteryear. Now you can think you have all the music in the world at your feet, thus you go crazy. Imagine the store opens and you can only leave with 5-10 records purchased. Think of it like that with online shopping. Add 100 new tracks to your wishlist, then whittle it down to 10. Buy things you just love and/or would play for months…not play a few times and move on.

Also, I believe it helps to let someone else do the finding for you. Find a few DJs whose taste you really admire – selectors as opposed to club DJs. I’m talking people who have radio shows. Don’t worry that their overall output isn’t what you’d play in a DJ set – that’s the whole point. If you assemble a few radio shows (Mixcloud is good plus of course podcasts) of people who spend a lot of time sifting through music before choosing each week’s hour or whatever, you’re bound to find a few records each week that have that extra “something” you’re looking for.

Derrick May is probably the biggest proponent against the over-classification of music. In several interviews he’s gone off on how people seem to want to make a unique term for every kind of sound.

I agree with him when it came down to the subgenres that I’d see some people pushing as if it was their own “new thing”. I can see when you want to differentiate house from trance and those two sounds differentiated from jungle…but when I see variations of one sound being handed all these subgenre names, it’s ridiculous.

In the old days, DJs played across the board. House, pop, freestyle, rap, new wave, italo, industrial, whatever…as long as it had that beat, sounded good, and worked in the set…they would play it.