Hey how's it going everybody. I wanted to dive more into the article from Ean on the future of DJing (http://www.djtechtools.com/2013/08/1...-intelligence/) If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. To quickly sum it up, Ean speculates that eventually robots/computers will be capable of doing the job of a DJ, i.e. mixing 2 tracks and "entertaining" the crowd.
I've been doing a lot of long term thinking recently and I always end up coming to a similar conclusion (eventually DJ's will be widely replaced by auto mix software). And really when you look at all the current tech and software on the market, everything is already in place for this to happen, but the only thing holding it back is that all the pieces are disconnected. So first lets look at all the necessary pieces.
1) DJ/Mixing software: Traktor already has a cruise mode where it'll auto mix between tracks, not without some help (with fade in/fade out points) but with some refinement I think it'd be incredible easy for a programmer to set up more sophisticated transitions. Right now most programs basically have everything they need to create flawless mixes (they have key info, auto gain, energy levels in the case of FLOW). Really at this point how hard could it be for a programmer to create a transition that triggers song B to either start playing at a breakdown/vocal/or chorus. With Flow they've already been able to assign a value to various parts of the song. All a computer program would have to do is reference that number to determine where to go. Basically in this auto mix software the computer would run off one massive schedule. 9-10 could be considered open time so the tempo would be slower, 11-1 would be peak time so over the course of these 2 hours the tempo would gradually increase automatically. Now again people may wonder where will the software get the music from or how will it know what to play next. This brings us to the second piece of this puzzle
2) People/mobile apps. As discussed in the article the software could detect people's tastes from their iPhone. Even if they're not the kind of person that actively listens to music they could go to an app for that particular bar and request songs for the night. Based on how many requests a song gets, the song will move higher/lower in the song queue. To prevent the same song from being played over and over, the program would basically have a rule that a song can only be played once per hour or something. Ever heard anyone tell you to change a song? Well the app would have an option for that too, play the next song! This again is just collecting more useful data as the app/software will learn how long a song should be played for. If this is all coming from a centralized database then it would be collecting this information from multiple sources/venues. The next question is where would the music come from.
3) The cloud: This is where I thought DJ's would still have an edge. We'd have the edge by having a human touch for what's hot and what the best sections of the song are. But again one massive database could be gathering more info than we'd ever hope to. And if it's all coming from one place the song could simply contain pre assigned cue points for the all best parts of the song. So it could have the fade in/fade out cue points available and all the tracks would be gridded as well so that there isn't any errors. How could you beat a computer that has millions of songs available compared to your curated selection?
Again all the tech and software is already there, it's just no one has connected it all.
Now I have to agree that I don't think it's a matter of if but when this could happen. And although it got me a little frustrated I started to think about it from a different perspective. If this were to happen I don't think it'd be the end of DJ's, if anything it would present an opportunity to have a healthy DJ niche. Although a large majority of people may accept the computer dj, there would be those that reject it. In this scenario going to a club with an actual DJ would become the cool thing to do. If being hyper connected was the theme of the mainstream club then the underground club would be all about disconnecting. You'd pay with cash, you wouldn't be allowed to take your phone. You go there to socialize and interact with other humans, not be catered to by technology. Ah it's 3 AM and i'm tired so this rant isn't really connecting or having the impact i'd hope. To be continued.
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