Not supplying track list in Mixcloud.

Personally I say imitation is the greatest compliment.

And if someone took an Armin van Buuren playlist and played it just like Armin does, he still would not be Armin.

If you are continously reinventing yourself, by the time others catch up to you, you have moved on and they will always be watery copies of the original.

I have found secrecy, protectiveness and getting upset about somebody playing “your” tracks is a waste of energy. Especially since when I play, it’s me standing in front of that crowd, not them and what’s more, playing live reading the crowd should determine your playlist, not what you posted on mixcloud or anywhere else.

And yes, a lazy DJ might find some tracks that you spent hours tracing down, but – unless you got the tracks from the artists themselves – those tracks are out there in the public domain to be found anyway.

My advice would be to focus on the positive (your own mixes) and don’t worry about what others do.

Greetinx.

I dont really mind at all to gave out my tracks title to other DJ’s, granted they will never have the same soul like I do, even tough they played the same tracks that I played, it will sounds different, the energy, the flow, the atmosphere
One of my friends told me its because I have this aura, lol, whataver it means

Another way to do this, if you one of those people who cant say NO if someone requesting your track title,
is to edit the original song yourself to your liking, add here and there, cut, chop paste some stuff on it, there is article in digitaldjtips regarding make your own edit somehwere, cant remembered which article
SO, you can just tell them the title of the tracks without them knowing its your own edit,
ANd they can shazamed it all nite long too, they may found the original title of the track but not with your own remix/edit type

I totally agree with Chuck and everyone should mark this day in their calendars 😉

This has been a really interesting debate to follow!

I totally agree that knowing what tracks a DJ plays doesn’t allow you to replicate their performance. A DJ is much more than a tracklist or a piece of equipment.

Saying that, I can understand why DJs can be protective of their tracks. Curation is one of the DJs greatest (and most time-consuming) skills and it can be frustrating to think that someone might bypass all of that, particularly when it’s so easy to Google or Shazam a track.

Ultimately I think it’s contextual. If someone comes up to you at a gig and asks for a track name, you’re under no obligation to tell them. Posting mixes online is quite different though as providing a tracklist is often the way that sites are able to host your mix in the first place. Mixcloud and Soundcloud are prime examples of this. I see many complaints online from people who’ve had mixes pulled from Soundcloud on copyright grounds and it’s very annoying. As you know, Mixcloud gets around this by paying a royalty to the artist – which I’m all for. Plus I’m really happy to support artists by advertising their tracks for them (don’t forget, this can sometimes lead to getting exclusives from that artist).

I guess my point is that I see a tracklist as the ‘cost’ of using a distribution mechanism such as the Internet.

If you really do have a track that you want to keep secret then there’s nothing wrong with (occasionally) doing the classic ‘Artist’ = unknown/Track = ‘untitled’ trick. The OP mentioned white labels and this is basically the digital equivalent. Best to use this sparingly though, for the reasons I gave above.

GP

OWWWWW!

Eliah, This guy sounds like that movie Single White Female!