Supersize Your DJ Set

Comments (Archived):

1. just in time for the après ski scene.

2. I used to DJ as a hobby when you had to use 2 turntables and a manual mixer.

   1. NFW!

      1. Yes way 😉 I used to have maybe 700+ LPs and maintained a “beats book” . It’s like a binder of songs sorted by beats/min and the trick is to match the incoming beats speed to the outgoing song by speeding up / slowing down the turntables speed, then mixing when you hear in one ear that they were synchronized. You also need 2 variable speed turntables. Fun days. I learned from professional DJs who were friends.

         1. I would love to see how you organized your beats book—that should be an interesting artifact. The amount of work (and lifting if you were going to shows) to DJ with vinyl really is remarkable compared to the pitch, key, and BPM references and automated sorting we now have through software, not to mention the near infinite access to tracks.

3. I can’t tell you how many times we heard a great DJ and then wondered “Damn, I wish we could get his playlist”. Might be a nice marketing angle for the them.

   1. InformationShield what

4. As a DJ this doesn’t interest me so much, although as SoundCloud’s “Go” service is not available in my country yet I’m unable to fully assess it. Perhaps Go has same digital distributors and therefore content as other services (and here I compare them to Spotify and now-defunct-but-soon-to-be-resurrected-by-Beatport Pulse Locker), but based on what’s available in vanilla SoundCloud, my impression of them is that SoundCloud: a) has a whole bunch of incomplete tracks from promotional use only (i.e., 3/4 minute snippets of tracks that are twice that long) and at sound qualities that are certainly not club-grade (I believe they are 64 kbps Opus).Essentially, I would say that the race is on to provide a solution to DJs that allows them to offline cache a library of 320kbps or better tracks. Pulse Locker got close to that but the usability was trash. DJay Algoriddim are also close with their Spotify integration but you need to be online. Plus they’re not considered ‘pro’ – that level is reserved for Traktor, Serato and Recordbox.Still, nice. This still an evolving space and as you say, SoundCloud does still have the street rep amongst DJs to be able to nail it with good sound quality and a comprehensive library.

   1. I am curious: does SoundCloud still have a positive rep among DJs? I know I wasn’t alone in abandoning the platform years ago when they started pulling mixes due to false rights violations that stemmed from their blanket waveform matching policy. At the time, this was a process that allowed labels to exert rights over music they did not have rights over or otherwise would not want to limit on a promotional channel, with many hoops for the DJ to jump through to get any erroneous rights claim rescinded.Of course, producers still use SoundCloud as a promotional consumer channel to release snippets and full length tracks, but I expect it’s been many years since it’s been a place for DJs of note (I don’t qualify in that category) to use as a mixing resource, or to promote mixes.To be sure, this is a nice throwback to the DJ origins of SoundCloud and a fine product integration idea, but I wonder how many DJs are Go customers and, yes, how to navigate the library for high quality tracks. The FAQ is unclear, implying that it’s a mixed bag of quality that tops out at 256kbps, and even then only when possible based on the source material.

      1. At least within the genres I am active within, SoundCloud still has a solid presence and is widely used, although as you say, for promotion.There was a backlash against them around the rights violation issues, and I think that more likely cost them the users that were more deeply involved with working with music from the major labels – either including it in their sets or creating bootleg remixes of it.The fact was, though, there wasn’t really a viable alternative. MixCloud was probably the closest, but they have never really come close to competing with SoundCloud when it comes to the breadth of content, and few people are keen enough to check around on multiple sites to sift through DJ sets to find something to listen to. They want a one-stop shop and even with the impact of the rights violations, SoundCloud still satisfied that.Today I see SoundCloud used for promotion for labels promoting snippets of songs, for live acts both reposting those snippets and promoting their own live sets, DJs sharing mixes (even top-shelf successful DJs), and more and more I see combinations, where DJs and labels are collaborating to produce actual radio shows where they mix and also speak to the audience, saying what the music is and a little bit of back story about it. These shows I’ve also seen starting to pop up on Spotify. It’s a trend that people like Armin van Buuren started, and many more have followed.A note on the sound quality – I researched this further and discovered that a) SoundCloud were on the record (at least speaking to DJ Tech Tools) saying that this service would be limited to 128kbps quality; and b) Tidal are also releasing a similar service, and including lossless in it. It will be interesting to see which of the two reaps more usage from this. Tidal is obviously more expensive, but few people are more sensitive to sound quality than DJs, so likely they’ll shell out the extra to go for Tidal. If Tidal can nail the offline aspect of it, they’ll capture that market.

5. Soundcloud needs to start a big brand boost among DJs and EDM (electronic dance music) producers, the vibe among these professionals is not good. I cannot judge this myself, but follow a lot of characters in the industry in an attempt to boost my amateur music creation efforts, just passing on what these people feel. https://www.youtube.com/wat…