Weekly Music Mix - Buzzcast Progression 06

Buzzcast Progression 06 out now.... 

Tracklist: 
Masanori Yasuda – City Of Lights (Original Mix) 
Andy Tau – Homeland (Original Mix) 
Tsukishiro Hikari – Entanglement 
Entis – Synesthesia 
Insight – Endless Summer (Original Mix) 
Onez!e – Without You (Original Mix) 
Roald Velden – Without Regret (Original Mix) 
Airdeep – Memories (Original Mix) 
Dallonte – Let Me Stay (Original Mix) 

Music Is One Love Irrespective Of All Genre

Being an open mind listener to music 

is an essential mindset for every growing dj. Avoiding various genres and sticking to favorite ones is a slavery act in music culture. As a dj music should be your first love, irrespective of genres. Also avoiding specific genres of music limits your creativity and gig scheduling opportunities. This is a known problem in beginning djs. You are on your profession for your public view along with personal love and your personal love i.e. music has to be up with professional standard. During our baby stage we generally tend to stick to those tunes what other members in our family hear. Throughout our growing stages of life, taste of music has also changed a lot by our surroundings, friends, family, influencers etc...

Music forms a part of our identity and we always strongly defend it irrespective of any issue. Sometimes we subconsciously set our mind to love every musical genres those come across our life. But in reality our mind is set to perceive the goodness about only those music which we think suits our tastes. This actually is a serious issue as a dj because you are not sure about your career professionally and you have a doubt regarding your preference for other genres(excluding your favorite ones). In the djing world this is maturity obscurity. We always look forward to favorite tunes in the internet; something tremendous, and always feel proud to put those songs in our collection. This is the reason for downhill progression as a dj.

When as an ambitious person by a dj you start visiting local clubs/festivals, you most of the time see pro dis playing their sets. It may be 2, 4, or 6 hours.  They are getting strong appreciations for their sets from the crowd. You feel those djs as your idols so you check everything about them. You start listening to their tracks and you seemed to enjoy those sounds like never before and you just want to stick to those tunes. Isn't what you wanted to be like those dis? It's basically a fan activity, an ardent desire that is so true but as a dj this activity does not sound true to the profession. Its all about playing great music. Those Djs have a bigger picture than you. They already gone through your various stages of passion and now you are just getting the splice of their music what you thought to be great.

There are so many records and so many different genres of music are to be listened. Sometimes you may find that one track which you think would have been great if I became like that dj. By listening to broad genres of music you will develop yourself as a prolific listener of music and it will make you a better person as a dj. You give an open mind to creativity, you interact with a variety of audience, switching genres in your sets. These all things go a long in one’s career. Follow other dj’s successful sets and have a clear mindset about how and when you should switch genres in a dj set. Connect with more people and therefore be preferred for more gigs.

There are plenty of good music are available to listen and more is being added on daily basis. In real you are not sure which track is your favorite? You listen plenty of sounds, you find some of them are excellent. The reason is you are not quite adaptive to other music beyond your comfort. Listen to wide variety of music and don't expect anything from it. You just need to find happiness in every music you hear. The thirst for the best sounds is never-ending and it will go on throughout your whole life. Every music has some quality in itself and its upto djs to believe on it. The more variety you hear the more you will be adaptive and improve.

Listen to the podcasts of some great djs. For example, ASOT(A State Of Trance). At one time you will hear progressive, main room trance, extending beats, and the other time you will be running with 138 bpm strokes. It's an ability that has developed over a longtime and its nothing less than a reward in itself...as the owner of ASOT (Armin Van Burren) says ‘Don't BE A PRISONER OF YOUR OWN STYLE’.

Always Carry Your EPK While On The Go

EPK – Electronic Press Kit. Whether you are a dj, music producer, or vocalist, to get into the stage of big playings is natural and its not going to be worthy in long run without EPK. EPK is essentially a document normally showcases a discography about an artist or agency, links to your music, latest releases, links to your social profile, links to your website etc... These things must be presented in an epk. When preparing an epk you should care for it from a viewer's prospective. Let's have a look at in detail.

Wherever your music is, whether its in soundcloud, youtube, mixcloud or spotify, make sure you have listed all your links in detail on epk. Short links don't act professionally here. Everyone wants to hear what your music sounds like, specially when you are trying to get professional in music. Being an individual artist always mention about your latest release of singles or album and give a free download link to them, also links to the all sites where all you have posted that.

For any EPK Professional pictures are minimum requirement. The promoters/club manger if they feel verified at their best about your profile, chances are they will use your image for advertisement. Don't just shoot photo just for the sake of profile picture. Come up with a concept and try to think of something creative. Hiring a professional photographer will be helpful here. Tell them about your creativity and then let them do their work. If you don't have a professional picture right now, then use your profile picture instead. Make sure to upload it in high quality. As your picture will be used in promotional campaigns, it has to look good and attractive to the best possible quality.

Your website is a great resource to your EPK. Show your depth information about yourself there. All the clients, managers, promoters will first checkout your website. So make sure to list it in your epk. Promoters as well as record labels wants to keep a track of your level of hard work and how much you are willing to push forward the scene to a better level. In social media you need an engaging audience to turn them up for your shows. Also don't forget to update your website, social sites from time to time. An EPK will not be a valuable thing if you don't update them effectively.

Mention your past roles as an artist, list of shows (specially recent ones), types of achievement(if any). Talk about some experiences with your creative live visual aspects, working with club promoters to set a new standard of clubbing, fan love etc...(special moments). These are the things needed to be done to know about you in detail. Language and grammar should be set at professional level.

Videos are on fast track these days. A great way to bring people to your circle is to have a good quality video footage. Live performance, live music, some euphoria moments, footage of these videos will definitely be eye catching attraction in itself. Any type of videos related to your profession will bring positive value to your EPK. You can also upload those videos to your website or social sites or to your youtube channel by linking to them on your epk. But a straight video (website upload) is better than a referred video.

Lastly make sure to mention your contact details. Once you have prepared your epk, make it automatically a dropbox link through which you can send your epk or if you can upload it in your website, so that organizations can download it. While for physical distribution keep a bunch of catalogues of EPK in your bag. You shouldn’t loose any opportunity related to your EPK. Have a good time....

Weekly Music Mix - Buzzcast Progression 05

Buzzcast Progression 05 out now.

Tracklist:
David Broaders & Density Fuzion – Breathe (Forerunners Remix) 
Axxound - Pavilion (Original Mix) 
Firas Tarhini - Eternal (Original Mix) 
Fast Distance – Safari (Original Mix) 
Magnus Mykleby & Terry Da Libra – Flight1 (Original Mix) 
Lumidelic – Healing Energy (Original Mix) 
Shingo Nakamura - Whither (Original Mix) 
George F. Zimmer – One Last Dance (Original Mix) 
Taival – When Words End (Original Mix) 

Music industry should be based on satisfaction of its community as a whole

 

It can freely be guessed that most of the people who entrances to the world of electronic music are driven by the excitement to the fullest of electronic music products, Specially music and festival. Its also a factual thought to be believed that its an industry that drives money. But along with it one should also believe that there are some people who earn their livelihood because of this industry. Employing thousands of people across the world, many other business decisions are also dependent on it, specially sponsored things.

The music industry always wants graceful and refined people for its operation. More money means more risk and also pressure along that comes naturally. Pressure is in the form of people working in the industry. They needed to be hard enough for their job and being true by nature to one another ultimately always contributes to the whole success of this industry. The human aspect of this business side has always been focused to the action of success, which has been the root cause of growth of music business.

A music industry is a collective effort of nightclubs/festivals, event organizers, talent-buyers, promoters, artists, vendors; without which there would be no festival and no money. But along with it people.... the festival goers, the music enthusiasts also play the vital role to roll the industry in moving forward. While we have artists, music producers, dj, vocalists are out there on another side to keep the electronic music scene to the fullest of artistry satisfaction.

The greatest fans are the music listeners and ticket buyers, who decide for whom they should spend their hard earned money and to whom they should back with honest opinion. So as music enthusiasts we can like it to be an okay thought to pass negative comments to artists for their performance, as ultimately we are the Paying audience. We can throw our disgracefulness as fans right on the dancefloor, if a dj didn't perform upto the expectations. Music performances are very subjective and any dj can experience bad sets. Specially if he/she is playing nearly 200 times a year. Big djs always have a busy schedule and wrong things may sometimes happen but we should not let down the artistic ability of him/her just because of one wrong case, forgetting the best ones.

As artists we should admit our mistake politely and its always good to hear honest feedbacks from fans. Obviously being a dj its completely a moral to accept the audience feedback in both ways. You may hate the failure words in the feedback, though you are one of the biggest names in this industry but an open mind listening will make you better and you constantly will grow as a musically armoured person.

Sometimes you may feel floated by yourself with the thought that 'last night your set was extraordinary', but believe it with the honest scenes i.e. live performance. You can get the real notifications there in the form of energy in the crowd. Social feed is also great but truth can only be felt through the live visual audience. Artists should carefully read negative social feeds and they need to analyze those feeds by thinking about various factors like ‘wasn't my track selection upto the expectation’? Why I didn't get momentum on the last night? Is there any programming error in my computer and unable to do the job? Maybe you do have a hectic schedule and you missed the mark. It's ok as a human to make error but it should not be in a repetitive manner.

Its important to deal with criticisms which are born out of the love of prospective fans. Any lacking here will prevent the personal progress. Remember, bad news travels faster than good news.

'UNDERGROUND' is not a discrete word of thought in music events

There is always a hidden intention behind
the word ‘underground’. It just feels like a 

signature of approval which is being impended 

on behalf of the music played in underground 

festivals. Generally we mean underground to 

be an illegal venue for festival, but the music played out there can be heard in other surrounding open localities. The word 'rave' which we people think as an impure, unpolished, dangerous, dirty has drowned the respect of underground events. The word ‘underground’ has nothing to do with the above words i.e. unpolished, dangerous, dirty... It's just like any other festival with the music being honoured. Let's separate this ‘underground’ musically.

(I) Some people may have a thought that being into the channel of commercialization music can't be considered as underground. There would be many artists now who must be uploading some sort of tracks into the streaming platforms to generate some royalty for himself/herself. This thing doesn't lead to opencast/underground. If the artist chooses a medium to boost this news i.e. about a new track release on spotify or promises that specific track to be played in specific festivals (notify to people by himself/herself through respective social updates) then its fall within underground. The word 'underground' supports personal commercialization not public commercialization.

(II) Some persons may also think that the time and era of underground scene no longer exists as globally now everything is accessible and there is not even a stance of underground which can be termed itself which was usual in the past. There is no doubt that people are gradually changing and so does the music industry and we often change our tastes for music. But still underground exists and people are still available for it. People give different names but the act is same. Some call it rave, others choose PLUR. From the artistic side here artists just like to stay independent and don't bother about record labels. Djs like adriatique, len faki, Moodymann have a great following despite not being active participants in mainstream scenes. People know them and they know their people and that is sufficient to go for underground. They just want to stick to their places of audience and market among them. There is no primacy to promote them knowingly.

(III) Many people in music industry and concerned fellows of dance floor believe underground to be that part of clubbing which is unseen in open eyes. It's true, detail things about mainstream acts are easier to find but to find a longtail about underground acts you have to dig deeper through your contacts. Yes internet is there, you can be informed about the location but you won't know about the actual happenings out there. Techno and house music have been playing a role of grandeur in it. These two styles of music are actually a part of the culture of underground while edm and trance represents the culture of dance music or opencast scenes. Both underground and opencast are big events inculcated by music but culture changes the definition of these two from each other.

(IV) On the other side a thought can also be considered i.e. “Whatever we define ‘underground’, its a part of electronic music, as techno and house both genres are produced mostly electronically these days.” Yes it is true but the underground was there in the world even before the electronic music and its still there and will be beyond of it. Underground is actually the deepest form of electronic music as mostly tracks played here won't be found in mainstream radios. 

Hidden to the eyes, hidden to ears of most, underground is actually a musical coast and will remain in the realm of dance music in the coming future.