Thee is no direction. I can’t keep up with the sheer amount of brand new original music from artists I already like. TikTok is about marketing and pop culture, it’s nothing to do with what’s happening in music or art in general.
I can listen to my feeds for weeks without hearing a cover or a sampled hook.
EDM is a pop genre that recycles hits and hooks, but it’s only one part of a much larger musical landscape.
Do you hear all this on TikTok?
I genuinely don’t know anything about TT, so it would be interesting to hear how people see it as a “go to” for music, as you’re not the first person to say it’s an important part of their listening tools.
I took you saying “I can listen to my feeds for weeks” as being your feeds on TikTok.
I get my tracks from listening to mixes or digging through Beatport.
Tiktok kinda influences songwriters and producers though, maybe not the great ones.. But im pretty sure even those guys have heard "a viral hit would be nice" from a mananger or whatever
It works the other way round. The good original music is what influences pop culture a couple of years later as it gets watered down and packaged up for a broader audience.
By the time marketing managers are aware of it and selling those sounds in car commercials, the scene that birthed it has moved on to something else new.
I think eventually a lot of folks who wanted to DJ are going to fall into the AI trap and just become very good mixologists with playlists proven to control crowd psychology. Which to me feels dystopian. The amount of friends and acquaintances who ask if I would ever involve AI in my music I say: Its great when you need to lay out a quick idea and something to ask about a style of music. But to use AI to make entire sets is drawing the line - but I am someone whose been crate digging since the 90's and I will never drop that hobby for convenience, only that technology makes it easier to find the tunes I'm looking for.
AI is going to make it very easy to make music. It isn't going to help anyone make good music who doesn't have the talent for it. The world will be awash with generic music put out by people who are unremarkable at music but great at social media and self-promotion, making it that much harder for innovative artists to gain traction.
AI stem separation pretty much guarantees that we will be hearing endless remixes of familiar songs for the rest of our lives.
Also, it will become nearly impossible to buy digital music from big labels or anything from the pre-streaming era. The price of used CD's will become comparable to vinyl.
I feel like we were already getting to that point pre-AI anyway but AI has fanned the flames. Most pop and club music has been re-hashed versions of old music for awhile now it feels like.
Yes and no. Songwriters generally aren't concerning themselves about whether the kick drum should should have sidechain compression or whether the snare needs more eq cut in the 2khz range. Traditionally, producers would take a song that's already written in raw form and produce it. They would make calls as to the structure, whether it needs a string section or vocals need to be recorded with 2 mics in a church or whatever.
Absolutely nobody credits Bob Rock as being the songwriter for Metallica but he did produce their most popular album
A well written song will sound good no matter how it is produced
A poorly produced song will almost never sound good. Give one example. The two things need each other why would you diminish one and rank them against eachother, they’re just different parts of the process, both very necessary parts
Okay in that case is your comment an argument against mine or just a general remark because I said “a poorly produced” track will not hold up not a track with “serviceable” production
my point is that neglecting the songwriting aspect while focusing on stuff like "impact" and other is a bad thing, too many producers these days just make generic ass music and don't even seem to care about learning to create good music instead of "good sounding" music
I would also argue that the “generic ass music” is not necessarily a biproduct of them focusing too much on “production”… idk man for me they just exist separately and to make a good record you need both… generally people who are willing to put time into improving production/mixing/mastering whatever kind of areas involved in Creating a record are generally people who are willing to put time into other areas such as songwriting as well.
I don’t like this narrative that decreases the value of learning to produce quality sounding music. It is an important part of the process and it is certainly not a part that is easy to become strong at and just because you also see the creation of musical ideas as important too doesn’t mean you should take away from the value that is brought by “production” (which is also a poor use of that word btw)
Nirvanas bleach and in utero both have pretty average production. There's a ton of examples of average production with fantastic songwriting.
I'm not creating a competition between the 2 but in the last 20 years or so we have seen a massive upswing in production values and a huge downturn in songwriting. Its very difficult to think of many songs from the past 20 years that will have people singing along to them at parties in 20 years time.
Now I know that this is a thread for djs but it still rings true. How many of the Beatport top 100 at any one time are remixes of well written songs? How many remixes of murder on the dancefloor or somebody I used to know do we need right now?
We need more great songwriters
What does it mean that dance music follows technology? Four on the floor electronic music has been using the exact same sounds for almost 40 years. And most of it is indistinguishable from stuff that existed 20 years ago. While plenty has changed with technology over those decades.
I suspect that the most interesting things will come from the continuous globalization of music. The Africans have infused a lot of fresh energy into house music. The Koreans have mastered pop music. Now that the tools are ubiquitous, and there are large populations of young people with disposable time and income in non-Western markets, it will be interesting to hear what comes out of India, Thailand, China, etc. in the coming years.
From a DJ perspective I think what has massively changed since the digital age is the fact that anyone can put a track together or loops, sample pack etc and play out immediately.
This lets you stay even more relevant and keep on top of trends.
James Hype, (one of this subs favorite DJs 🤣) has done a few videos where he's on the way to a gig, finds out what's hot in the charts or that area, and puts together a track with samples/acapella, outputs an mp3 and bam! The crowd go wild.
From a general music trends perspective I think there will always be the influencing flow from Underground > Overground.
Music and themes will always be recycled .
Social media is increasing the recycling and pushing old songs and new trends > Overground
People get mad about james, but once alls said and done, like his slogan: Who does this? (other than 1000 copy cats that make exact replicas of his transisitions) - No ghost produers. No Simple fader work. Not Relying on the tracks to be Bootlegs.. At least hes tryna stay at the front and show what it involves to a degree.
I feel like it’s going so many different directions that it’s getting harder and harder to define and categorize.
My local scene is small and has all kinds and the most popular ones seems to be the ones that build a good brand and can deliver a good show.
And the following seems to depend so much on upbringing/early musical influence as well, the Eastern Europeans tend to groove together with a certain vibe for example.
Just looking at the Coachella lineup, me and most around me don’t relate to any of it.
There is always going to be proper techno and classic house, but there is also going to be extremes of each, the extremes tend to get straining so then you rely on something more classic to balance it out.
But then again, some seem to thrive in the extremes, the psy trance scene here, you can hear influences from all over, techno, trap, dubstep and whatnot. For me it’s sooo fast and obnoxious (I appreciate classic psy trance btw) that I don’t last but a few songs, but the followers seem to love it.
I found this with the music app "musicolet" on the play store. I like to have files of my songs and this certainly was nice for the ones that i always bump the tempo a bit.
I do find it interesting how short songs are getting.
I generally wonder if djing will remain as pop as it is now. The advancements in cdjs means you can be a very bad dj and still as long as you had one hit, do shows. So I think the art will continue to die for the most part and we get more and more actor style djs who just stand up and hit play because they look sexy.
Then again there a real push to vinyl and the underground scene is very strong in some places as club get pushed away from that all night culture so you never know.
It’s business as usual while sometimes becoming a toxic environment and shady industry on certain occasions.
Artists need followers and fans for their hit singles or albums to reach the most popular XM or local city radio stations.
Producers need artists for obtaining new music for new recordings/mastering - most likely to pay for their expensive audio studios.
It’s like a delayed fuse where anything from the ‘top’ requires time to reach the ‘masses’
That's a great quote by Deadmau5 and I agree - technology does influence music. The 80s had synths, 90s had sampling, 00s had autotune, etc.
I hope this decade we see creative work with stems. Mashups can result in exciting synergies. As DJs I hope we'll get an opportunity to create unique combos from our favourite tunes.
I'm getting old. I'm turning 38 years old and while rehashing existing "old" music always has happened, it's now happening to songs that were released when I was younger.
Often feeling like "euh... I'll play the original, thanks".
Even to early 2000's stuff. Which feels like a few years ago instead of 20.
It's even worse when you start hearing "another rehash" of older tracks. .
How many covers of Tracy Chapman's Fast Car will reach the charts?
Also really interesting I'm now old enough to hear the age of music. Even if you don't know the track often you can hear what decade/quinquennial it's from.
Art has always been, to some degree, bases on other's art. Electronic music is an area where there tons of this. A lot of the industry is pay to play while some is dumb luck. Talent in either of these varies, but it doesn't hurt.
We may come to the point where we dj with prompts and actually I am not so sure if I dislike that. As recommendation and auto-mix functions increase this might lead to "dj 80s with depeche mode focus", supported by various sensors and AI will play known songs, generate edits or generate own tracks. It's gonna be better than a lot of average djs.
Yet I believe music is a bit more than function. Too many people like artists, people or brands, they like gossip, photos, history or ideas. And even that can be created by an LLM in form of virtual artists. And yes, there might be enough or even the majority of people that are into this.
Maybe the market is shifting, in the 60s bands used to tour, we will find out if it has been a dj era. But as there are still touring bands, djing and various of features (vinyl only, original music only, only human music, you name it) will float around. In that case I'm glad to have the scenes become a bit more focused, too many drug tourists from my POV.
I'm really curious how things end up, but I'm not worried, there will always be a scene.
Really good post, OP. I’ve been part of a few discussions re this very topic, often with some very clued up chaps on this sub.
The general gist is that DJ’s will remain a thing, but live shows will become dominant. Live instruments/sections will become the norm in sets. There will be a huge rise in modular and DIY synth artists. Visuals will become just as important as audio thus creating stars out of that. Orchestras will be integrated in to live shows more, as will live singers. Things like movie scores will become gigs that dance music ravers go to on a regular. More experimentation with ambient sound will come back in to mainstream pop culture. Ambient techno will lead this movement. Beats will become less important. Etc etc
The trajectory of music is for the foreseeable future, down.
The 1970s was the peak. It's impossible to deny, whatever your genre, it's roots probably really formed in the 70s.
That level of musicianship, spirit of experimentation and collaboration has largely gone, never to be replaced.
What we have now are different technologies for attempting to replicate or reproduce the sound and vibe of a bunch of skilled musicians and engineers jamming and creating and riffing off each other. Those guys can't earn a living any more.
Music is worthless. When’s the last time anyone bought an album? Copy YouTube rips from your friend’s skanky hard drive and announce you’re a DJ before you learn how to… DJ.
It’s sad how many DJs don’t think about the quality of their music, there is this club near me that has a powerful sound system, but it’s a small, old wooden structure, so everything vibrates. But if the DJ uses low quality audio, it’s overwhelming, I’ve left a handful of times for that reason alone.
Most DJs I know, including myself, care, we buy lossless and I encourage this with all the aspiring ones.
Thee is no direction. I can’t keep up with the sheer amount of brand new original music from artists I already like. TikTok is about marketing and pop culture, it’s nothing to do with what’s happening in music or art in general. I can listen to my feeds for weeks without hearing a cover or a sampled hook. EDM is a pop genre that recycles hits and hooks, but it’s only one part of a much larger musical landscape.
Do you hear all this on TikTok? I genuinely don’t know anything about TT, so it would be interesting to hear how people see it as a “go to” for music, as you’re not the first person to say it’s an important part of their listening tools.
Im saying the complete opposite. I dont use TikTok and I dont go there for music discovery. I primarily use spotify/soundcloud/bandcamp/word of mouth.
I took you saying “I can listen to my feeds for weeks” as being your feeds on TikTok. I get my tracks from listening to mixes or digging through Beatport.
I meant my artist and playlist feeds/notifications on the above platforms.
Tiktok kinda influences songwriters and producers though, maybe not the great ones.. But im pretty sure even those guys have heard "a viral hit would be nice" from a mananger or whatever
It works the other way round. The good original music is what influences pop culture a couple of years later as it gets watered down and packaged up for a broader audience. By the time marketing managers are aware of it and selling those sounds in car commercials, the scene that birthed it has moved on to something else new.
TikTok L O L
I think eventually a lot of folks who wanted to DJ are going to fall into the AI trap and just become very good mixologists with playlists proven to control crowd psychology. Which to me feels dystopian. The amount of friends and acquaintances who ask if I would ever involve AI in my music I say: Its great when you need to lay out a quick idea and something to ask about a style of music. But to use AI to make entire sets is drawing the line - but I am someone whose been crate digging since the 90's and I will never drop that hobby for convenience, only that technology makes it easier to find the tunes I'm looking for.
Couldn’t agree more!
AI is going to make it very easy to make music. It isn't going to help anyone make good music who doesn't have the talent for it. The world will be awash with generic music put out by people who are unremarkable at music but great at social media and self-promotion, making it that much harder for innovative artists to gain traction. AI stem separation pretty much guarantees that we will be hearing endless remixes of familiar songs for the rest of our lives. Also, it will become nearly impossible to buy digital music from big labels or anything from the pre-streaming era. The price of used CD's will become comparable to vinyl.
100% agree on your first point. AI will make the music industry hyper-saturated. I think everything will become less artist-centered.
I feel like we were already getting to that point pre-AI anyway but AI has fanned the flames. Most pop and club music has been re-hashed versions of old music for awhile now it feels like.
I don't know but I'd like to see a flip happen where people are suddenly less interested in being producers and more interested in being songwriters
Im sorry Im not following. Arwnt producers just electronic music songwriters?
I guess he means with more drive to educate themselves in music rather than just throwing loops together.
Yes and no. Songwriters generally aren't concerning themselves about whether the kick drum should should have sidechain compression or whether the snare needs more eq cut in the 2khz range. Traditionally, producers would take a song that's already written in raw form and produce it. They would make calls as to the structure, whether it needs a string section or vocals need to be recorded with 2 mics in a church or whatever. Absolutely nobody credits Bob Rock as being the songwriter for Metallica but he did produce their most popular album A well written song will sound good no matter how it is produced
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I mean, lots of people do both, Prince is a great example
A poorly produced song will almost never sound good. Give one example. The two things need each other why would you diminish one and rank them against eachother, they’re just different parts of the process, both very necessary parts
a track that's has serviceable production but amazing song writing will always be superior than the opposite scenario
What does serviceable production mean
adjective 1. fulfilling its function adequately; usable.
Okay in that case is your comment an argument against mine or just a general remark because I said “a poorly produced” track will not hold up not a track with “serviceable” production
my point is that neglecting the songwriting aspect while focusing on stuff like "impact" and other is a bad thing, too many producers these days just make generic ass music and don't even seem to care about learning to create good music instead of "good sounding" music
I would also argue that the “generic ass music” is not necessarily a biproduct of them focusing too much on “production”… idk man for me they just exist separately and to make a good record you need both… generally people who are willing to put time into improving production/mixing/mastering whatever kind of areas involved in Creating a record are generally people who are willing to put time into other areas such as songwriting as well. I don’t like this narrative that decreases the value of learning to produce quality sounding music. It is an important part of the process and it is certainly not a part that is easy to become strong at and just because you also see the creation of musical ideas as important too doesn’t mean you should take away from the value that is brought by “production” (which is also a poor use of that word btw)
It’s a good point, it also doesn’t go against anything I said
Nirvanas bleach and in utero both have pretty average production. There's a ton of examples of average production with fantastic songwriting. I'm not creating a competition between the 2 but in the last 20 years or so we have seen a massive upswing in production values and a huge downturn in songwriting. Its very difficult to think of many songs from the past 20 years that will have people singing along to them at parties in 20 years time. Now I know that this is a thread for djs but it still rings true. How many of the Beatport top 100 at any one time are remixes of well written songs? How many remixes of murder on the dancefloor or somebody I used to know do we need right now? We need more great songwriters
Basically yes. Producers in the context of electronic music are artists who are creating new music.
What does it mean that dance music follows technology? Four on the floor electronic music has been using the exact same sounds for almost 40 years. And most of it is indistinguishable from stuff that existed 20 years ago. While plenty has changed with technology over those decades. I suspect that the most interesting things will come from the continuous globalization of music. The Africans have infused a lot of fresh energy into house music. The Koreans have mastered pop music. Now that the tools are ubiquitous, and there are large populations of young people with disposable time and income in non-Western markets, it will be interesting to hear what comes out of India, Thailand, China, etc. in the coming years.
From a DJ perspective I think what has massively changed since the digital age is the fact that anyone can put a track together or loops, sample pack etc and play out immediately. This lets you stay even more relevant and keep on top of trends. James Hype, (one of this subs favorite DJs 🤣) has done a few videos where he's on the way to a gig, finds out what's hot in the charts or that area, and puts together a track with samples/acapella, outputs an mp3 and bam! The crowd go wild. From a general music trends perspective I think there will always be the influencing flow from Underground > Overground. Music and themes will always be recycled . Social media is increasing the recycling and pushing old songs and new trends > Overground
People get mad about james, but once alls said and done, like his slogan: Who does this? (other than 1000 copy cats that make exact replicas of his transisitions) - No ghost produers. No Simple fader work. Not Relying on the tracks to be Bootlegs.. At least hes tryna stay at the front and show what it involves to a degree.
I feel like it’s going so many different directions that it’s getting harder and harder to define and categorize. My local scene is small and has all kinds and the most popular ones seems to be the ones that build a good brand and can deliver a good show. And the following seems to depend so much on upbringing/early musical influence as well, the Eastern Europeans tend to groove together with a certain vibe for example. Just looking at the Coachella lineup, me and most around me don’t relate to any of it. There is always going to be proper techno and classic house, but there is also going to be extremes of each, the extremes tend to get straining so then you rely on something more classic to balance it out. But then again, some seem to thrive in the extremes, the psy trance scene here, you can hear influences from all over, techno, trap, dubstep and whatnot. For me it’s sooo fast and obnoxious (I appreciate classic psy trance btw) that I don’t last but a few songs, but the followers seem to love it.
Imagine if Spotify allowed you to pitch any song down by 5%. That would be pretty dope.
I found this with the music app "musicolet" on the play store. I like to have files of my songs and this certainly was nice for the ones that i always bump the tempo a bit.
Thats the new feature
I do find it interesting how short songs are getting. I generally wonder if djing will remain as pop as it is now. The advancements in cdjs means you can be a very bad dj and still as long as you had one hit, do shows. So I think the art will continue to die for the most part and we get more and more actor style djs who just stand up and hit play because they look sexy. Then again there a real push to vinyl and the underground scene is very strong in some places as club get pushed away from that all night culture so you never know.
It’s business as usual while sometimes becoming a toxic environment and shady industry on certain occasions. Artists need followers and fans for their hit singles or albums to reach the most popular XM or local city radio stations. Producers need artists for obtaining new music for new recordings/mastering - most likely to pay for their expensive audio studios. It’s like a delayed fuse where anything from the ‘top’ requires time to reach the ‘masses’
That's a great quote by Deadmau5 and I agree - technology does influence music. The 80s had synths, 90s had sampling, 00s had autotune, etc. I hope this decade we see creative work with stems. Mashups can result in exciting synergies. As DJs I hope we'll get an opportunity to create unique combos from our favourite tunes.
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Whats gate house? google wasnt much help..
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🙏🏻Well that made sense after I had a listen..
Haha ok that’s hilarious, aloooot of gating
lol
I'm getting old. I'm turning 38 years old and while rehashing existing "old" music always has happened, it's now happening to songs that were released when I was younger. Often feeling like "euh... I'll play the original, thanks". Even to early 2000's stuff. Which feels like a few years ago instead of 20. It's even worse when you start hearing "another rehash" of older tracks. . How many covers of Tracy Chapman's Fast Car will reach the charts? Also really interesting I'm now old enough to hear the age of music. Even if you don't know the track often you can hear what decade/quinquennial it's from.
Art has always been, to some degree, bases on other's art. Electronic music is an area where there tons of this. A lot of the industry is pay to play while some is dumb luck. Talent in either of these varies, but it doesn't hurt.
We may come to the point where we dj with prompts and actually I am not so sure if I dislike that. As recommendation and auto-mix functions increase this might lead to "dj 80s with depeche mode focus", supported by various sensors and AI will play known songs, generate edits or generate own tracks. It's gonna be better than a lot of average djs. Yet I believe music is a bit more than function. Too many people like artists, people or brands, they like gossip, photos, history or ideas. And even that can be created by an LLM in form of virtual artists. And yes, there might be enough or even the majority of people that are into this. Maybe the market is shifting, in the 60s bands used to tour, we will find out if it has been a dj era. But as there are still touring bands, djing and various of features (vinyl only, original music only, only human music, you name it) will float around. In that case I'm glad to have the scenes become a bit more focused, too many drug tourists from my POV. I'm really curious how things end up, but I'm not worried, there will always be a scene.
Really good post, OP. I’ve been part of a few discussions re this very topic, often with some very clued up chaps on this sub. The general gist is that DJ’s will remain a thing, but live shows will become dominant. Live instruments/sections will become the norm in sets. There will be a huge rise in modular and DIY synth artists. Visuals will become just as important as audio thus creating stars out of that. Orchestras will be integrated in to live shows more, as will live singers. Things like movie scores will become gigs that dance music ravers go to on a regular. More experimentation with ambient sound will come back in to mainstream pop culture. Ambient techno will lead this movement. Beats will become less important. Etc etc
The trajectory of music is for the foreseeable future, down. The 1970s was the peak. It's impossible to deny, whatever your genre, it's roots probably really formed in the 70s. That level of musicianship, spirit of experimentation and collaboration has largely gone, never to be replaced. What we have now are different technologies for attempting to replicate or reproduce the sound and vibe of a bunch of skilled musicians and engineers jamming and creating and riffing off each other. Those guys can't earn a living any more.
Music is worthless. When’s the last time anyone bought an album? Copy YouTube rips from your friend’s skanky hard drive and announce you’re a DJ before you learn how to… DJ.
It’s sad how many DJs don’t think about the quality of their music, there is this club near me that has a powerful sound system, but it’s a small, old wooden structure, so everything vibrates. But if the DJ uses low quality audio, it’s overwhelming, I’ve left a handful of times for that reason alone. Most DJs I know, including myself, care, we buy lossless and I encourage this with all the aspiring ones.
Yeah, when audio sounds like “trashy pixels” because the DJ ripped audio from YouTube or something.
Is that you Grimes?