DJing
On encouraging people to listen to your living room playlist by demanding that they pay for it
February 3, 2015 — August 7, 2023
Yet our sounds are also a vocabulary for those who detest the walled-off concentrations of wealth and steal property back: the collectives that build their own sound systems, stage free parties, and invite DJs to perform. The international DJ becomes emblematic of global capitalism’s complicated cultural dimension. On flights and at the free Continental breakfasts in hotels, often the same soul-destroying hotel chains in each city, we get stuck chatting with our fellow Americans and Western Europeans, the executives eager to find compatriots. We make small talk with these consultants and deal-makers in the descending elevators in the evening—then go out to the city’s dead-end and unowned spaces or its luxury venues to soundtrack the night of the region’s youth, hungry for something new. DJ music is now the common art form of squatters and the nouveau riche; it is the soundtrack both for capital and for its opposition.
I think the moment when DJing-as-curation was a continental philosophy thing has passed.
1 DJing software
So many choices now. For actually playing tracks, I personally use Ableton Live or Bitwig, which is not really what it was designed for. Actual designed-for-DJs software includes Rekordbox, Traktor, and Serato. They are rather expensive; some cheaper alternatives are also listed below.
- Traktor Pro is the DJ software I learned to mix with. AUD149. Includes good tempo detection and GUI but boring effects, which is why I use Bitwig instead.
- Serato DJ Pro is similar to Traktor. They are famous for supporting input using actual turntables, which is great if you are a turntablist and a colossal wank if you are not, but seem to be a good bit of kit regardless.
- Rekordbox is a more-or-less equivalent thingy from Pioneer that seems pretty polished these days. C&C serato.
- xwax: Digital vinyl on Linux
- mixxx is an open-source one.
- Algoriddim djay (AUD80) runs on iPad, macOS, and Windows and claims it can stream tracks from Spotify, and demix tracks via clever source separation [USD??/month)
- virtualDJ also offers demixing. USD19/month
- mixedinkey (analysis) and flow8deck (playback) are a pair of apps which automate circle-of-fifths key transitions, which they call camelot mixing because they want to copyright the circle of fifths.
- RaveDJ: Music Mixer is a cute AI-led auto-mixer
See also organising music for analysis-driven search-and-retrieval, and relatedly machine listening.
2 Hosting mixes
Tedious, for IP reasons. See How Do I Legally Upload Mixes To YouTube?, which basically suggests pre-auditioning all the tracks and then seeing which are permitted.
Alternatively, there is mixcloud but at USD15/month I am not keen. DJing is not a real job for me; it is an already-expensive hobby.
You can see a small number of mixes of mine there on my cheaprase free mixcloud.