What’s a DJ To Do?
It’s been a while since I’ve seriously loaded up on new music and my DJ’s urge, my “funkological clock,” if you will, is screaming for fresh sounds. I was already behind the new music curve this semester, having bowed out of DJing for the UMBC radio station for a bit. My hard drive crash set me back further, as I was desperate to recover what I had, much less find new sounds. But with most of my old collection recovered I’ve been compiling, from reviews and such, a list of songs, albums, artists, and labels to look into. But I’ve run into a problem: getting them.
Obviously, the music I’m after is for sale: you can buy it from a physical record store, an online record store, or direct from the labels. That first option is pretty much out, as the DC metro area has nary an independent record store left, much less one with a good electronic selection. Not much of what I’m after is at the local Tower. Amazon and other online record shops have a fine selection, of course, but physical music is expensive, and shipping costs drive the price of CDs and vinyl out of my student budget’s reach. Buying direct from labels is no cheaper, and slow as anything.
I’ve been known to use a P2P network or two, but even this questionably legal/ethical means of finding tunes is tough these days: SoulSeek is the only P2P service that caters to the quirky music I enjoy and it’s become so crowded and unstable that I haven’t been able to download so much as an Underworld remix in months. On the old-skool filesharing front, Hotline used to draw digital DJs by the dozens to share dubplates and direct-from-vinyl rips, but it’s long since been left behind. I hear that something like the old Hotline scene exists on IRC, but that it’s dragged down by the same cliqueshness and other IRC annoyances. BitTorrent sites cater mostly to mainstream tastes and suffer from availability issues: seeders leave behind old downloads for the latest torrents; if that posting of the new Matthew Dear album was last week, forget it. P2P is seemingly not an option.
As I lamented a couple days ago, the iTunes Music Store and other for-pay download services have bupkiss in the way of electronic music, much less the experimental sounds I spin. Even if the iTMS starts offering indie electronic music, their protected AAC format doesn’t jive with Final Scratch, and I lose fidelity in the conversion process to usable MP3. That $0.99 per track looks a lot less appealing for stuff I actually want to DJ, but with the understandably pop-centric focus in the iTMS offerings it’s not an issue.
The alternative to the options above is to find independent music offered legitimately for download online. I used to find tracks engaging enough to drop into mixes at Electronic Scene but it’s become crowded with mediocre material – the usual complaint about free indie music sites in the MP3.com mold. There are always netlabels to scour for online audio offerings but quality is still a concern; say what you will about the label process but even for eclectic music it separates the wheat from the chaff. I expect to spend a lot of time looking for good free/netlabel stuff, and at least I’ve got a lot of time to spend over the holiday. Freely licensed music broadens my options, but it’s hardly the end-all solution to my empty crate woes.
So clearly I’m looking for some recommendations and answers, particularly from DJs and other off-beat music fans: where are you finding your music, online or otherwise? Is it possible for a DJ to maintain a fresh and engaging music library without a quality record shop nearby? Is it all about dropping cash on boutique records via mail order, even in this digital age?
Speak up, soundboys and girls.