Your Favourite Place to Discover music

[tpain]

Thank you all for the replies. I wasn't looking to be policed for the ethics of my music acquisition so to all those that gave me good responses- I appreciate it.

[exokinetic]

I wasn't looking to be policed for the ethics of my music acquisition

What one looks for, and what one find, are often two vastly different things.

[Chris Macom]

Beatport's artist charts can be good for finding new music and turning you on to new producers also. Find a DJ you like that has a chart and search through it. Or just look through everything. I was in a record shop in Detroit the other day and looked through hundreds of records and then had to wait for an open turntable to check out my stack. So as you can see things used to be much more difficult. Finding music online is not difficult. Go to Beatport or Traxsource. Check out Soundcloud and Mixcloud as you can see tracklists that DJs include with their mixes. If you look then you will find it.

[Eliot Han]

... browsing through soundcloud may get you some free stuff sometimes but i do recommend you just saving up a bit and go to beatport.com or junodownload.com find artists you like, follow charts you may also find different tracks that you can say is "unique" to your collection. you can find some coupons and whatnot by signing up for their newsletters and that can help with your purchases. good luck on your ventures.

[00DJC]

CDpool.com

They have a couple of different genres of music (but mainly house stuff).

You can also listen to a portion of each track. Its a great way to listen to lots of stuff pre-release, see what you like and then go get it when it comes out. Or you can subscribe to the genres you like and you get a full compliment of CD's each month with music of the genre you're sub'd to.

I dont subscribe to them yet... but im tempted.

Theres also a "six pack" service which is a little more mainstream with popular chart remixes if you're into that...

[photojojo]

Everybody has pretty much said what I do.

But, the "newness" of a track has absolutely ZERO effect on how good it is really going to be, for your dancefloor, at that moment you select it.


I can GUARANTEE there is a massive amount of tracks, released before you ever started DJing, that would drive your crowd nuts, you just have to find them.


And that is YOUR job, as the DJ.

Agreed you should always be dropping songs that are at least a couple of years old and were hits back in their day. People will love you for it and shows you have depth as a DJ. So don't discount those when digging.

B I was in a record shop in Detroit the other day and looked through hundreds of records and then had to wait for an open turntable to check out my stack.

OMG, I HATED waiting for the open turntable!!

[Spawnafunk]

I'll be honest with you, I USED to do the same thing. But then I found better ways of finding music.

I generally have (or had) a lot of blogs that I used to check on a weekly basis. I'd follow different record labels on their websites/facebook/myspace and check them out fairly often. Just dicking around clicking links in youtube has found me some good stuff. Spending time digging around soundcloud has also been golden for me. Facebook groups and friends/other DJs who post music often, and listening there (though it does get spammy at times). Digging around on beatport looking up certain words, artists, similar artists, checking the charts....

The list goes on.

Finding torrents and downloading a shitload of stuff is easy to do. Chances are most nubs getting into music are doing the same thing, so you won't have anything particularly worthwhile. It will be a lot of leads on stuff that everyone knows about. Doing the read digging is where it's rewarding.

I'm not saying drive 100 miles to the closest record store and live in there. But doing your OWN homework is satisfying, and really builds your collection to be personally attuned to what you love.

It's hard to put into words really, but doing the dirty work is half the fun for me.

agreed i used a few torrents once and ended up with with crap that i never use anymore

[farhanashraf]

here u go:

http://www.djforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=45914

[sobi]

Moral issues aside, Torrenting music (at least EDM) is generally a bad idea for a digital DJ. Why? A big part of DJing in the digital age is being able to properly find your tracks on your computer or CDs. This was a lot easier with records IMO. Proper cataloging, gridding, cue points, etc. is essential because it helps you find your music quicker, and helps you know what you have.
Where that all ties in to why torrenting to find new music is a bad idea is due to the influx of crap. It increases the possibility of missing great stuff because it's mixed into a giant pile of new tunes. For the most part, people just don't get rid of them. That's my take on it anyhow.
On the moral side, I also find that to be a horrid excuse as to why you torrent. If this were 10 years ago with only a hand full of online sources for EDM, I'd understand, but with the amount of online stores that specialize in EDM, it's no longer valid. Sites like beatport let you preview the track, and have much better tools to point you in the direction of similar tracks/artists/labels. You think their preview isn't long enough? Look up the track on youtube and get the whole thing. Then you also get similar artists. Don't like those? Go to Satelliterecords.com. They have a preview player that lets you hear the entire track from beginning to end, and you can save a history of everything you listen to.
Torrents only stifle the way you find new music at this point as far as EDM is concerned. Not only that, but it hurts a lot of artists that already don't really make money doing this. That hurts us all. I personally know people who stopped making music for a while because they could no longer afford to due to illegal downloading. How big of a deal was it? That person was having a lot of is tracks being licensed for mixes and played live by some of the biggest circuit DJ's in the world.