Secrets of DJ research
A question that I get asked all the time regards where I find the material that I use in my shows. On one hand the answer is short and easy, while on the other it’s a matter of putting in the time and following my nose where it leads me. It’s no secret that the internet is a wonderful tool for learning about all kinds of stuff, including music both new and old. There are all kinds of blogs about music, some of which are linked on this very blog. These DJs and enthusiasts willingly share the fruits of their research and even provide some free downloads of songs that are not copyright-protected. This is really just an extension of how we used to find stuff before the internet age — talk to people whose taste and judgment you respect and find out what they’re listening to. The other aspect of internet music-hunting, and one which is particular to that forum, is to use the automated suggestion generators available on a variety of sites. These come in slightly different forms on different sites, but they all use the input provided by you the user to connect you to other things which may interest you. As you can probably guess, these robots do not always get it right, but they do give you a slew of leads to investigate. In the end, whether you are using the suggestions of humans or robots, fruitful research takes time. Casting a wide net means collecting a whole bunch of stuff that may end up being useless, but it also means that there is a greater chance that you may catch something beautiful and unexpected.
Before the internet became so prevalent, many of my greatest finds came from simply going to record stores (remember them?) and digging through the crates. I used various heuristics in judging what I might want to buy. First and foremost was looking for artists I recognized and following the thread of their work through solo projects, collaborations and compilations. It may go without saying, but compilations involving artists you already like are a great way to find new music. Comps can be organized around record labels, genres or charitable causes, among other things, and they can help to put music in a context that leads to further discoveries. Brick and mortar record stores were useful because they often specialized in particular genres themselves. One store might be stocked be someone who liked punk, or jam bands, or jazz, and so you knew that when you went digging in that store you were likely to find leads of a certain kind. This kind of specificity is often lost on the internet, where retailers like amazon.com don’t have to restrict themselves in any such way. One major exception that I have found is dustygroove.com, which specializes in funk, rare groove, and jazz of just the sort I find interesting. I know that when I go aimlessly browsing on that site that I am going to find stuff with a certain bent. Also, Dusty Groove has great little editorial reviews on most of their titles which help pin down the sound even though they do not offer listening samples the way many sites do these days. The general feel of the site is very similar to what it used to be like to physically browse in a store, probably due in part to the fact that they still run an actual brick and mortar retail outlet in Chicago.
I mentioned Amazon, and they are an easy first step into the world of automated recommendation systems. Most people are already familiar with the site, so using it will not involve a very steep learning curve. First of all, use the recommendations list that the site generates. When appropriate, use the “fix this” button to fine tune your recommendations. You can tell them when you aren’t interested in an item, or that you already own it. These features, combined with the rating system, will help the site create suggestions that have a better chance of being useful. In general, all of the sites with automated lead generating devices require a fair bit of input from the user before they can really hone in on the good stuff.
Another site that is a lot of fun and that a lot of people have heard of is Pandora. Pandora is a radio station that you tailor to your own taste. Tell it a few artists that you like and the site will play those artists plus others that it deems to be similar. Every time it picks a song, you can tell the site whether you like the song or not. That feedback further influences the choices the site makes for you. The up side of this is that you can create a radio station that only plays songs you like. You can skip any song you don’t like. Genius. Also, you will get to hear songs that you have never heard that are in the same musical family as songs that you like. The downside is that it is not a very efficient way to get new tips. After all, you can only listen to one song at a time, and the site doesn’t give you advance notice of the things it is likely to pick out for you. One of the ways that Pandora has been allowed to exist by the powers that hold copyright is that the user has no direct control over the playlist. For a time, it looked as if the major labels and their henchmen were going to try to extract an inordinately large rights fee for playing music on the internet, but thankfully that dispute was resolved in a way that allowed Pandora to rock on. One more instance where the rights holders thought that the best way to promote their product was to make it inaccessible to potential consumers, but that is a rant for another day.
A site that allows much more user control over the play list along with a bunch of social networking features is last.fm. I found this site a couple of years ago and I have become absolutely addicted to it. By downloading a piece of their software, the site tracks what you play on any of a variety of music players. It automatically generates a history of your listening and calculates charts of your top plays. You can see how often you listen to a given artist or song. That’s nifty, but it also comes up with recommendations based on your history that you can scroll through and stream off of the site itself. The streaming capabilities of the site are also useful if you just want to listen to a tune that you don’t have in your own library. The online library is not as complete as you might want, but there is definitely enough there to keep you entertained for quite a while. Furthermore, the site will build a radio station based on your library or one based on the site’s recommendations for you. Because the site knows what you have been playing off of your own sources, it can use that information to play things from that list that also exist in the cloud. You don’t need to have your hard drive with you to listen to the stuff that you have already logged on last.fm. Very cool. Unlike Pandora, you do have the ability to directly control the song being played. Like Pandora, you can always skip any song you don’t want to hear. Last.fm is often the first place I go when trying to fill a request on WOMR that I don’t have on my hard drive. You can find me on last.fm as username mattycdread.
The other main resource that I use for finding new music these days is emusic.com. This is a music retailer of mp3′s based on a subscription model. For a variety of reasons, I avoid iTunes as much as possible (although my new iPhone has broken that resistance a bit). emusic has a recommendation generator very similar to amazon’s, but their catalog is much more limited. In some ways this limitation is a positive, because the site started out with strictly independent, non-major label releases. This suits the majority of my musical taste just fine, although I have to go elsewhere if I’m looking for a specific title likely to be on a so-called major label. As with other online retailers, you can listen to a sample before deciding to download. One bonus of the subscription model is that I end up paying less than 50 cents per song.
So that’s how I use the web for research these days. Last.fm, emusic, amazon, pandora and blogs. I also subscribe to many of the artist and label newsletters that I find appealing. In the end, there is really no substitute for spending time on one’s hobby and simply following the links where they will take you. It’s relatively easy to find out what others are listening to and to see if it fits your taste. If you have any tips for me, I am always open to suggestions. Happy hunting!
