Don't Listen to the Luddites. Ever.
Today we call them Luddites and gatekeepers. But back then they were just a bunch of d*cks.
For me, I listened to music in the '70s and '80s, and then became a teenager and found my own music (the Police). It was fine, but generally, all the classic rock people would never not let you know that their music was actually and exclusively real music. Whatever you were doing at the time, and listening to, was just not it. (With a little pat on the head.)
(Kansas? Really?)
The amount of this in both listening to music and the way music is played and consumed and made is so rampant, and it has always been like this. It will always be like this.
I don't know whether it's a good thing that more music is being listened to, but it's absolutely a fact, given Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Music. So many more people are listening all the time.
I don't know whether that is a good thing or a bad thing. Who knows if anyone knows.
What I do know is that it's easier for people to find your music, no matter how new or crusty and old. And the line that the old guard is feeding everyone is that it's much harder to monetize.
I don't know that that's at all true. It's not like bands used to make money. I still have a garage full of CDs to prove it. You guys can have them. Come over and get them.
Please.
But I do get a few odd listens here and there on streaming. And that's something. I used to get a lot of listens on YouTube when I was concentrating on posting there. Back in my electronic music days, let's call them.
I'm super mindful of all this as I start to change my DJ setup a little bit.
I used Denon stuff for a long time, but it's not industry standard, which may cause future problems. The software is pretty good. So I've taken a long look at Pioneer's Rekordbox, which is industry standard. Truly horrible.
The best software is actually Algoriddim's djay Pro, which runs on your phone, computer, and iPad and syncs itself. I can't get to all the helpful features. But I am trying.
You don't get very good controller options. Mine currently is the MixTour Pro.
But the software does all the sh8t work, which is timing the track, putting it into time. It's called setting the beat grid, which times one song with another.
And the gatekeepers are predictably insane about stuff like this.
They want you to do it the hard way. They want you to get two turntables and match them exactly, and line them up, and learn how to do it, and do it the right way, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But I'll tell you this.
I did a pool gig this weekend. Nobody cared how I was playing and mixing the music. Zero sh*ts given.
I was using an iPad and a MixTour Pro, with no battery. I plugged in the cables wrong. And I had a three-hour set with about three hours and five minutes of battery. Zero gear appeal.
I'd planned, if I ran out, to mix my phone into the mixer to see if I could kind of replug in everything. I would have been fine.
Amazingly, I was saved by a kid making a doody in the pool, so I had to wrap early. That has never happened to me, but it sure was hilarious.
This is all to say that all this crap doesn't matter (although I guess the kid's crap really mattered--BOOM!).
No one cares if you're coming out of the headphone port on your computer or going through a $10,000 audio interface.
This weekend's gig: they supplied mixer and speakers, so everything I did only sounded as good as those speakers and the mixer. And they sounded great.
So DJ-wise, the only thing in the world that matters—not even your mixing skills matter over the playlist—you have got to get the songs right. 100% right.
That's it.
I was really questioning playing one song, "Stuck in the Middle with You." The song became hugely popular in the '90s because of the Reservoir Dogs movie soundtrack.
I felt the need to play it. It was on my list, and it seemed like a good summer afternoon, kind of balmy track.
A guy who already tipped me came back over to tip me again, saying, "You're killing it, but that song means a lot to me. Thank you."
Do you know how often you get thanked at a gig? Come on!
You have to be able to reach out into the universe, and then listen to what it is telling you. And trust it. Then, take all the listening you've ever done and put it together and make a playlist for whatever day and place you find yourself in.
This is 99.9% of what matters.
The equipment's for you, the DJ.
I'd love to switch to the new AlphaTheta CDJs and a mixer. And I may do it. Or the AlphaTheta OMNIS-DUO. I really want to check these out.
But what works is my iPad and the MixTour Pro I bought secondhand. It feels all right, and I finally figured out how to adjust tempo without awkwardly dragging my fingers all over the iPad.
Maybe I need a bigger iPad for just being able to see in the sun, but otherwise...
No one cares.
They do care that you've done the listening and you've listened to music all your life and can make a good playlist and just know how to figure out who's there and what to play for them.
And those guys who want you to do vinyl decks, spinning and manually syncing? They typically don't go to paying gigs.
And when they do show, you think they tip!?
P.S. End of summer playlist here