In my last post, I talked briefly about how technology has changed the way we listen to music as well as with my history of DJing. In this post I’ll talk about the state of DJing today and what the future holds for DJs.

You Can Do What?

Djay Pro

Now that I am settled in St. Catharines I started sorting through ten years of stuff from my travels to Alberta and back, I came across a bag of my mixed tapes. Shortly after that, I watched the last Apple keynote when someone from Algoriddim demoed their DJ software – Djay Pro – on the new Macbook Pro with the new Magic Toolbar. I was amazed how cool it was. So I decided to download the app and try it out.

First of all, the work of manually counting the beats in your head to determine the BPM (beats per minute) was gone. The software automatically does that for you. I was sometimes lucky in figuring out if two songs mixed well harmonically. It does that too by taking the guesswork out of the equation. So I started broaden my research and see what other cool DJ Tools that are out there. I was speechless watching YouTube videos of the latest Pioneer gear  for DJ Pros. Not only were they capable of the providing BPM and Musical Key, you could set a cue point on where you want the next song to mix into and it would automatically sync the two songs together. Starting as a vinyl DJ, this was jaw dropping stuff. The same way I felt when I got my CDJ-100 CD players. Just as you can manipulate the CD player to act like a turntable, you could do the same with audio files like MP3s. Man, technology has come a long way.

During my research, I also came across music streaming sites – like SoundCloud and MixCloud – where DJs can upload their mixes. MixCloud being the preferred site as they pay royalties to the artists. SoundCloud used to be the preferred site until record companies forced uploads to be taken down because of copyright infringements. A week ago, SoundCloud made an announcement that they struck a deal with a copyright clearance company and it wouldn’t take down mixes anymore. Now I could write a long post about copyright and its impact on DJs.

Third Time a Charm?

I was reminiscing while listening to all my old mix tapes and miss mixing music and DJing. So I bought a used Technics tape deck from Value Village for $10 and transferred the tapes over digitally. I am in the process of uploading those mixed tapes to MixCloud. I will post links to each mixed tape on this blog.

I am kind of excited recording some current stuff once I build up my music library again. Let me tell you that organizing my existing library and ripping CDs was not fun and took a long time. With the advent of MixCloud and social media, maybe I can get some DJ gigs. It would be great to earn extra money doing a profession I have always loved even if it ends up being part-time.

The Future of DJing

After reading some DJ forums, a few DJs, especially mobile ones that do weddings and parties; are packing it in. Seems apps like Algoriddim’s Djay 2/Pro for iOS/Mac and cheap controllers that are a couple hundred bucks make it so easy that anyone can DJ. By-passing hiring an expensive professional DJ.

The other catalyst is streaming services being embed into DJ software such as Djay 2/Pro. It includes integration with Spotify. You can call up a song from Spotify with its BPM and Key analyzed on the fly. It is pretty slick if you have a good Internet connection. Most DJ Pros wouldn’t use this type of integration, unless to call up some obscure song that was someone requested.  But it is a cool feature for someone just starting to DJ or someone that is getting back into DJing and has a limited library.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the mixtapes or mixed streams I have recorded that are post here.