News
Why Does a DJ/Producer Need an Alter Ego?
For many mainstream performers prior to 2010, careers arched from the highly-sought after club residency to the single topping the Beatport charts to finally making it to the main stage at a major festival like Electric Daisy Carnival or Ultra. But throughout this decade’s long path, one factor remained: The [...]
Numark Unveils NV Controller
Premier DJ manufacturer unveils the first intelligent Serato DJ controller with integrated software feedback screens. Cumberland, RI, USA – July 14, 2014. Numark (numark.com), the world’s leading innovator of DJ solutions, announces NV, an intelligent controller for Serato DJ. Featuring high-resolution color screens that provide extensive visualization of Serato’s flagship DJ [...]
Dance Music Made a Major Economic Jump in 2013
Last year, electronic dance music, as a global industry, was worth $4.5 billion. Now a follow-up report from the International Music Summit in Ibiza reveals that figure grew nearly 50 percent over the past year, now bringing the total to $6.2 billion. With figures coming from the Association for Electronic [...]
Moonrise Festival: Second Try, Different Approach for 2014
Last year, promotion for the Moonrise Festival began with high hopes. The successor to Baltimore’s long-running Starscape event, which the city banned after the 2012 show resulted overcrowding and multiple drug arrests, appeared to be better organized, but was canceled three days before it was about to start. With EDM [...]
Learn How To DJ: A Starter Guide
So you want to learn how to DJ. It can’t be that hard right? According to Techno producer Joel Zimmerman, aka Deadmau5, “...it takes two days to learn, as long as you can count to four.” Really?! Not so much. Mr. Zimmerman is referring to the most elemental of DJ [...]
Mallorca Club DJ Angel Costa Talks About Summer Season, New Single
The summer season of clubs and festival, in Ibiza and the rest of Europe, started last month, and one DJ who has been a regular performer there throughout the years is Angel Costa. First a DJ spinning at local clubs in Mallorca and later a producer with his own label, [...]
Where Them Girls At?: What Factors Hold Women Back in Electronic Dance Music?
Women are making headway in dance music, both through mainstream and underground roads, but a recent report from THUMP highlights that there’s still much to be done. THUMP examined 2014 festival lineups, noting the number of actual female performers on the bills for Electric Daisy Carnival, Electric Zoo, Mysteryland USA, [...]
Are Remixes A Good Way of Getting Your Name Out There?
Almost every EDM artist, big or small, has tried their hand at making a remix. Taking a song that is recognizable and putting a new twist on it can be fun and enjoyable for the producer and for the listener every once in a while, but is it actually a [...]
What Makes an “EDM Hit”?: Defining Dance Music Success in 2014
Mixmag recently put out a list of four “big room house” albums that are expected to be huge hits this summer. Although the list excluded Deadmau5’s While (1<2) and Calvin Harris’ follow-up to 18 Months, the dance music publication coined one term: “EDM Blockbuster.” Just days after Mixmag’s article, La [...]
Production Gone Mobile: Why mobile software is worth checking out
The use of mobile devices has skyrocketed in the last few years, and with that comes plenty of new, scaled down adaptations of computer software for mobile. With tablets and smartphones becoming more powerful and more prevalent, mobile software is also seeing a boost in quality and some companies are [...]
The DJ’s in the Club: Are Club Tours What a Big-Name DJ Does for Credibility?
By now, you’ve heard that Kaskade is doing a nine-city club tour called “It’s You, It’s Me Redux.” The producer born Ryan Raddon went onto explain his vision on his Tumblr, saying, "My intention: to play small clubs, and for all who participated to be taken back a decade, when [...]
Biting the Hand That Feeds You: Is Hating on EDM The Latest Dance Music Trend?
All mainstream trends go through a familiar cycle: A buildup, in certain cases from the “underground” to a place more visible; popularity for any given period of time; backlash from the “real” fans, who often claim they liked this trend before everyone else did; and finally being something that’s “cool” [...]
The Lost Art of Record Storage
If you have fully embraced the latest technology, you probably aren’t worried about where or how you are going to store your thousands of songs. Being digital, they, and many more, fit conveniently within a little black box that you can throw into your backpack. For the rest of the [...]
No, I’m not a DJ: What is the difference between a DJ and a Producer?
“So you produce music on your computer… so you’re a DJ, right?” NO. This is something that is commonly misinterpreted in the EDM world, especially for new listeners. While a DJ can be a producer, and a producer can be a DJ, there are often times where someone specializes in [...]
Beatport Awards and IDMAs: What The Mainstream Doesn’t Get
For those that don’t know, March is informally the season for dance music awards. Newcomer the Beatport Awards ended its poll at the end of February and announced its winners earlier in the month, and the long-standing International Dance Music Awards (IDMAs) revealed its lineup on March 27 during the [...]
Welcome DAW Newcomer: Bitwig Studio 1.0
The long-awaited Bitwig Studio has finally come out of its beta stages and into its first official release, but does this cross-platform digital audio workstation offer enough features to jump ship? For Linux users it most certainly does. Gone are the days of getting a DAW to run in an [...]
My Totally Obscure Dub-Glitch-Tech-Bahton is Better Than Your [Insert Mainstream Subgenre]: Elitism in EDM
We’ve all been on both ends of music elitism – and not just in the electronic dance music community. For those of us interested in electronic music and have been at least a casual fan, there likely has been at least one instance in which you likely witnessed someone tell [...]
Quintessentially Corporate: When EDM Hits the Stock Market
If you had already thought EDM got as corporate as it could possibly get, from festival sponsors to Live Nation buying up Insomniac, guess again. Early in March, Forbes writer Jesse Lawrence recommended investing in EDM stock, specifically SFX Entertainment, which went public last year. Lawrence lists multiple reasons investors [...]
Dance, Dance, Dance on the Radio?
Digital music’s takeover resulted in the record store’s demise – a downside on the hand for DJs, as it takes away the experience for finding a new record, but puts thousands of new tracks at his fingertips. But digital files didn’t just obliterate this once-keystone aspect of listening to music [...]
No More Mainstream: What AFTER Las Vegas’ DJ List Could Mean
Arguing over whether top EDM producers are true DJs has become a cliché at this point; at large scale events slanted toward “mainstream” audiences, producers and their labels expect exposure, festival promoters want money-making performers, and audience members respond better to familiarity. Still this overall amalgamation has spread across top-tier [...]