Keeping tabs on the world of electronic music this week
It was a big week for Techno
The Mayor of Detroit Declares Techno Week 2016 in Honor of Movement
In honor of Movement and Detroit’s special role in the worldwide techno Movement, Mayor Mike Duggan has declared this year’s week beginning today May 23rd and ending May 30th as Official Techno Week for the City of Detroit, encouraging residents and visitors to, “come out and celebrate the festivities, as it creates local and international awareness of Detroit’s rising creative culture.”
Techno overtakes tech-house as the best selling genre on Beatport
International Music Summit Ibiza’s Business Report for 2016 has just been released, revealing that techno is the most popular genre on Beatport.
Congrats, Techno.
Robots get ready to replace producers, but not quite yet.
Google’s Project Magenta is teaching robots to make music
So what does it sound like? At this week’s Moogfest, Google showed the AI jamming on a synth, and frankly it wasn’t great. However, like most machine-learning projects, Magenta will get better the more data is uploaded and analysed. Google is pretty confident that Magenta will improve, and suggests that Magenta could be used to generate music for the public.
The EDM Industry just keeps growing
Global Electronic Music Industry Worth $7+ Billion
Valued at an impressive $7.1 billion, up 60% from just 3 years ago(!), there is no denying that the business of dance still has not quite reached its ceiling. Still though, deeper in the report you will see that the 2015-2016 growth percentage was 3.5% (increase of $200 million), the lowest its been over the “boom” of the last 3 years.
Pioneer DJ Launches CDJ-TOUR1 & DJM-TOUR1 System
Pioneer DJ just unveiled its brand new CDJ-TOUR1 and DJM-TOUR1 system meant for large scale events and festival use. Each CDJ-TOUR1 and DJM-TOUR1 unit comes with a full-colour 13″ touchscreen monitor with built-in CPU that folds out for viewing waveforms and selecting tracks in Rekordbox.
The cases of both the CDJ-TOUR1 and DJM-TOUR1 are sturdier, with reinforced sides built to stand the rigours of repeated set-ups and strikedowns, as is the case in live events. They also come with locking LAN ports for Pro DJ Link, as well as gold plated RCA connectors.
And the online music landscape keeps changing
Spotify licenses streaming DJ mixes with Dubset
Spotify and Dubset have reached an agreement allowing unlicensed mixes and remixes to be hosted on the streaming site.
There have been many reported cases of SoundCloud, which has recently sold equity to major labels like Sony and UMG, taking down unlicensed material. Dubset has attempted to create an alternative, making deals with Apple Music and now Spotify. Dubset uses a piece of technology called MixBank to identify rights-holders in a mix who are then paid royalties.
Founding Partner Jonas Tempel Pens Open Letter to Beatport
Definitely worth a read the full way through, here are some of my favorite parts:
“My hands were literally shaking from adrenaline making it hard to get the needle on my first record of the night. I’d worked my ass off for this moment, practicing endlessly and curating my set of tracks that literally no one had ever heard before. This was my start. DJing was my art form and I shared it with anyone who would listen.”
“Everything we did was a labor of love because all of us cared so deeply about representing dance music and the culture of DJs the correct way. Looking back, this was probably some of the best times in all of our lives. We were literally changing the world from our little office in unlikely Denver, Colorado.”
“Our goal was to be the most important brand in electronic music uniting the world around the sound we loved. We believed that content was king and that our jobs were important. Today, Beatport feels like a playground for ravers.”
Go see the Juicebox Music Showcase on Saturday!
And read what Praveen Achary has to say about it.
Have a great weekend everyone!
