Past mastered

This topic has been discussed in some of the forums recently, and it was something that I wanted to post about before I went away. The fact that I’m only getting around to it now says more about my poor time-management skills than anything else. Anyway, enough excuses, here goes; has anyone noticed the way that the same limited set of releases are getting played and charted all the time?
I’m not trying to diss the legal digital download sites - hey, I even work for one - but it seems like the opposite is now happening to what the gatekeepers of the digital revolution had originally predicted. Remember a few years back, all the talk about the unlimited choice that the availability of electronic music in digital formats promised, the way we’d be able to buy the most obscure release or that the staggering range that these groundbreaking services offered would make it easier for even an aspiring DJ to differentiate him/herself from the pack. Unfortunately, it hasn’t quite turned out that way, yet the sites can’t be blamed: even a cursory look at Beatport reveals an exhaustive catalogue of music, but the problem is that nearly all of the users seem unwilling to delve deeper than the current top 10 or recommendations from their favourite DJs.
Ironically, although it has never been easier to access electronic music, the range of what is being consumed, bought and played is getting narrower and narrower.
Why is the reverse happening of what was predicted? Some of it can be explained by laziness: broadband connections, combined with the proliferation of Beatport, Juno, Kompakt et al means that it has never been easier to quickly acquire the same collection/Top 10 as the Hawtins, Mayers and Clarkes (or insert your own idol here) of this world. Once you have achieved that goal and own all the same tracks in your hero’s top 10, why bother with anything else? With the use of Ableton, you can even replicate your chosen hero’s recent super-smooth set, track by track.
Another factor is that we live in a time-poor world, and having dealt with work, commuting and all the other menial chores that life demands, most people have a limited amount of time to source new (or old) music. The final factor though is the most important, and I’m sure many people who read the site will disagree with me, but it seems like in the constant search for the newest, most upfront music, a sense of history has gone out the window.
It never fails to amaze me that charts or sets only consist of brand new music, that there is no attempt to link or connect to the past, from where this music came. By its nature, electronic music evolves at a fast pace, but it’s still necessary to have an understanding of what happened in the past to fully appreciate what’s going on now. One of this year’s most original albums, ‘Restaurant of Assassins’, by Neil Landstrum is heavily inspired by old school rave and 90s bleep bass techno as well as dubstep and it sounds brilliant, a breath of fresh air in what I feel is an increasingly conservative, risk-averse techno landscape.
No one wants to deal with snotty record store assistants, but one thing that shopping in real-life stores instills is a sense of a curiosity, to look beyond any given week’s new arrivals and to explore the creaking shelves and dusty crates.
Ten years ago, it was much harder to find great new music: it meant that people looked harder, went to their local record store a few times a week, often pre-ordered release, religiously read magazines for any shred of information about their favourite producer’s future activity and generally behaved like proper trainspotters rather than sheep with broadband connections.
I’m not suggesting that we return to those bad old days, but the way things were made people hungry to find new music. Nowadays,that sense of hunger seems to be largely absent, both in DJ sets and shopping habits - but I still hope that in 20 year’s time, people will be listening to Ron Trent’s ‘Altered States’ rather than this week’s Juno top 10.

Comments

[Ronan]

where is the evidence for this narrowness in selection?

[Brophy]

in 90% of the charts I receive and 90% of the sets i hear in clubs and on the web

[Ronan]

whose sets? whose charts? it's easy to criticise without naming names.

have you considered you might be lacking hunger, given you say you're finding 90 per cent of everything boring and samey.

I think there's a world of great music out there lately, and the idea that it's somehow easy to keep up with it all these days is pretty laughable.

[Ronan]

plus the skill of a great DJ shouldn't be their ability to flick through heavy record racks...it's their ability to tell a good tune from a bad one and to collate those tunes

[Brophy]

whose sets? whose charts? it's easy to criticise without naming names. - it's even easier to hurt people's feelings by saying who i mean.

have you considered you might be lacking hunger, given you say you're finding 90 per cent of everything boring and samey. - that's not what i said - no, i have a huge interest in music. i said i find 90% of the charts and dj sets samey and boring because they copy the juno top 10. I'm snowed down with great music at the moment... no danger of my getting hungry soon.

I think there's a world of great music out there lately, and the idea that it's somehow easy to keep up with it all these days is pretty laughable. - exactly my point, see the par about the travails of daily life. I appreciate that people have less and less time and there is a huge load of music to be discovered - that isn't an excuse for copying everyone else though

[Brophy]

plus the skill of a great DJ shouldn't be their ability to flick through heavy record racks...it's their ability to tell a good tune from a bad one and to collate those tunes
- exactly, it's not to do with the physical act of looking, it's about the hunger to hunt, be it online or in a shop. i think you're taking the argument a little bit too literally.

[Ronan]

perhaps...my sole point is that these advances do improve DJing, they may make it easier for a crap DJ to become an okay DJ, but it's all evolution.

if crap DJs become a little more acceptable then perhaps acceptable DJs become good, and the best DJs have even more access to music. can only be good for techno imo.

[Brophy]

My point would be that it (technology) has made it easier to get loads of great music, but that most people underutilise it and just buy/download the well-known, predictable tracks... let's agree to disagree

[Scott]

On the one hand, I see what you mean. I live near Detroit, but I am not too connected with the techno scene there, so I mostly rely on the internet to find new tracks and beatport's top 100 definitely plays a major role. I also use Resident Advisor's monthly DJ listings, but I have found that the tracks listed vary considerably from DJ to DJ. In fact, scoping out all the tracks from all the producers and DJs I am interested can turn into a considerable project, so at least personally speaking, the internet has been a great tool in broadening my own taste and selection. Perhaps the problem isn't the availability of top ten lists, but rather DJs with a lack of creativity and interest in finding new tracks.

[Chymera]

One thing which I think has a major impact is that fact that when you buy records in a small, physical shop you are buying records which have been chosen by the shop buyer. And hopefully that shop buyer will have good taste. So although you're getting a narrow cross section of music, if the buyer has good taste there should be a lot less crap to wade through. (I'll take the dublin example of simon conway in selectah - I bought 90% of my physical records there over the years.. now its gone unfortunately)
That's my biggest gripe with beatport at the moment, along with their hopeless mis-labelling of genres, is that there's so much stuff up there, from great stuff to ok stuff to shite stuff, that's it's easy to get disillusioned listening to the pages and pages of crap. I haven't found any of the beatport charts helpful however so far. Too many of the tracks are "too cool for school". (this ties in with my posts I made on bodytonic and dancemusic about over-production in music - but that's another debate)

[Mike-2]

The sites like Beatport can absolutely be blamed. In fact, Beatport especially should be blamed. Let's say that I found a hot new track on Beatport that I want to share with a friend -- how would I tell them about it? "Go to Beatport, search for the artist/label/track name, click on it, etc..." You can't simply copy and paste a URL like you can with Amazon.com, and this greatly inhibits the kinds of social networking that is required in order to produce a long tail effect. Other features that are lacking or absent: the ability to create a social network on the sites themselves, the ability to create wishlists and charts that other people can subscribe to and that I can publish on myspace or a blog, the ability to parse a tracklist and automatically insert links to the track on the download site, being able to rate tracks and have the site intelligently recommend other tracks based on other users' feedback, etc.

[Beat]

It's funny, a lot of my friends think they're wonderful for ignoring the pop music they hear on the radio and turning to internet download sites instead.

The ironic thing is, as you said, that they still only listen to the top 10 or whatever is pushed their way on a particular site.

When I can find time, I love clicking to a random page on beatport and just listening to anything; I've found many good tunes that way.

[Paul Chillage]

I think this phenomena Richard writes about shows us the buyers' lack of confidence in their own taste.

[Ronan]

buyers having a lack of confidence in their own tastes is hardly a phenomenon.

I worked in a store for 2 and a half years and people would constantly come in and look for help, that was the entire point of a store.

If anything, they're less spoonfed with the net as they can spend as much time as they like listening to records.

Plus as was already pointed out, even if you look at Beatport today, there's charts by Chaim/Ripperton/Michael De Hey/Thomas Schumacher/Dave DK and Dennis Ferrer and there's one track that appears twice.

That's 59 different tracks in their charts today, even if people are just buying all the DJ charts that's quite a lot of music.

[Kenny]

I have to agree with richard. ive witnessed people first hand who won't shut up about tracks cause they are in such and suchs top ten. or mocking someone for playing a track they thought was new but was actually 2 months old. imo a good dj does not just play brand new music, they mix it up between new, old, known and unknown. it gives the dj a much larger selection of music to choose from, keeping them more interested and makes the dance floor more exciting too. most music produced is crap, always has been always will be, limiting yourself to the newest of the new or to what a bunch of charts say is in, lessens the scope of your sets imo, and as such makes them less interesting, and less full of quality music and also less individual.

[andi]

"I still hope that in 20 year’s time, people will be listening to Ron Trent’s ‘Altered States’ rather than this week’s Juno top 10."

does anyone happen to have that tune?!.
I've been trying to track it down for ages since i heard it the amazing "10 years at rex club" mix by l garnier.

[gmos]

Chymera: "One thing which I think has a major impact is that fact that when you buy records in a small, physical shop you are buying records which have been chosen by the shop buyer. And hopefully that shop buyer will have good taste. So although you're getting a narrow cross section of music, if the buyer has good taste there should be a lot less crap to wade through."

this is an excellent point, and for this reason I still try and check out the physical record shops as much a I can. Also, I think you can still get that same effect with online shops by not always just buying from Juno or Boomkat. Shop around, there's hundreds of smaller record shops out there and they still offer that level of quality control that may encourage you to check out some more obscure stuff because you trust their taste.

[gmos]

oh, good article by the way

[tom/pipecock]

"altered states" is pretty much always available on the doublepack pressing on DJAX, its basically essential for every person who plays techno or house music.

but moving on to this article, i honestly dont think 99% of deejays have enough taste to be playing music for other people. this is not really a new concept either, its been that way as long as ive been down with dance music. what has happened though that the internet is definitely to blame for is that instead of garbage DJ X biting the tunes of the big local deejays, he is not biting the tunes from the big name deejays from wherever he prefers. and its not like they are just getting a tune here or there that they can recognize, thanks to the internet you can get entire tracklists for any mix that shows up and basically just go beatport yourself into oblivion. the non-limited nature of the mp3s makes it so that even the difficulty of finding a more obscure tune from back in the vinyl days is now gone. you can sleep on something for years and still get it for $.99 or whatever. which is fine, in principal i am all about good music always being available legitimately. but this also makes it harder and harder for people to differentiate themselves with their selections. this is one reason i like to play so much older stuff that is just not available on any format other than difficult to find 12" vinyl pressings.