<blockquote class=”instagram-media” data-instgrm-permalink=”https://www.instagram.com/p/C0meaIfR8uK/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading” data-instgrm-version=”14″ style=” background:#FFF; border:0; border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width:540px; min-width:326px; padding:0; width:99.375%; width:-webkit-calc(100% – 2px); width:calc(100% – 2px);”><div style=”padding:16px;”> <a href=”https://www.instagram.com/p/C0meaIfR8uK/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading” style=” background:#FFFFFF; line-height:0; padding:0 0; text-align:center; text-decoration:none; width:100%;” target=”_blank”> <div style=” display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;”> <div style=”background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;”></div> <div style=”display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;”> <div style=” background-color: #F4F4F4; 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Becoming a DJ has become a bit of a meme in itself.
Signifiers of taste have been increasingly necessary amidst an era defined by its summarizations. With platforms such as TikTok and Pinterest learning “us” so intimately that it can determine our interests for us, it has rewired our foundations of how to form a palate for media and art.
Talent vs. Work
The DJ career is often criticized for not requiring any real talent or artistry. This might be one of the reasons why so many people feel like it’s an accessible hobby. It also does not require technically making a product: rather, DJs assemble auditory collages. These are more signifiers of taste than personality (which is an important distinction to acknowledge).
We have placed a lot of faith in the technological optimization of work giving us the time to engage in hobbies instead of labor. If specialized skills can be developed by nonhuman intelligence, then the creative can be readily explored by those that might not have previously had the freedom. People have kind of lost the plot when it comes to creativity, though.
Where are all the creators?
We are in a drought of creative pursuits. Many hobbies are consumption-based rather than output-based. People like to watch movies and TV, read books, and listen to podcasts. The next level in the “hobby” chain are those that are those of arrangement. Although “creator” and “creative” are familiar Instagram bio inclusions, they often lack an actual product to reference or for the audience to orient their thoughts around.
Pinteresting and DJing are similar in that they both require lots of time spent consuming to put forth something recognized as “good”. Having taste now is more defined by how much someone knows within a given category rather than the artistic merit of the individual works, or even their depth of knowledge about particular works. I hope the pendulum will swing in the opposite direction, because social media algorithms and artificial intelligence can already handle databases of knowledge. However, they do not engage with them on a deeper level. That is something uniquely human, and that can be indicative of someone’s identity, rather than just their interests. The current social climate has given way to many people misattributing them for passions, embedding emotion into material (and immaterial) things without actually engaging with it.
This discrepancy reveals the third level of hobbies, which is connection: first consuming lots, then compiling these consumed pieces together, and finally weaving a cohesive narrative throughout them. Think of a montage sequence in a movie: even though these short shots stand independently of each other, they contribute to a greater mood than just the summary of its parts.
DJing can fall anywhere on this spectrum. People often do not want to make anything, and would rather just organize. A solid set now is less a depiction of the soul and the internal self and more a depiction of what one is engaging with and what side of the internet they frequent. This is what separates the masses of self-proclaimed DJs from the actual creators. Reddit user Sebastian_Crane notes, “DJs are like rats. There are way more of them than you think but most of them are underground.”
<blockquote class=”instagram-media” data-instgrm-captioned data-instgrm-permalink=”https://www.instagram.com/p/C5j36KRvdm4/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading” data-instgrm-version=”14″ style=” background:#FFF; border:0; border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width:540px; min-width:326px; padding:0; width:99.375%; width:-webkit-calc(100% – 2px); width:calc(100% – 2px);”><div style=”padding:16px;”> <a href=”https://www.instagram.com/p/C5j36KRvdm4/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading” style=” background:#FFFFFF; line-height:0; padding:0 0; text-align:center; text-decoration:none; width:100%;” target=”_blank”> <div style=” display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;”> <div style=”background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;”></div> <div style=”display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;”> <div style=” background-color: #F4F4F4; 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overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;”><a href=”https://www.instagram.com/p/C5j36KRvdm4/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading” style=” color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;” target=”_blank”>A post shared by ZULAN (@zulannnnnnn)</a></p></div></blockquote>
Barriers to Entry
Another contributing factor is the progressively lowering cost of streaming music. Buying physical media, like records and CDs, used to be the stratifier between who was capable of mixing and who wasn’t. To be able to make sets as fruitful and dynamic as one would want would require a massive initial investment, and continual purchases overtime to solidify the potential of novelty. Even having to buy iTunes songs for $1.29 a piece was an exponentially higher price point than what Spotify memberships (because no one uses Spotify without a membership anymore) or Soundcloud Go offer.
Many popular apps have become more musically oriented than before. Vine and Musical.ly in the mid 2010’s built platforms around short form content, but with the ability to use audio bites and song clips other users had posted with. This premise made trends much more likely to develop, as people often repeated the same actions in their posts with the song as the original. This almost mirrors song sampling, but in a more comprehensive, fleshed-out audiovisual way despite the video length limitations.
Streaming platforms have completely revolutionized music consumption. Spotify’s recommendation algorithms, whether through their multiple Daily Mixes for premium holders or their AI DJ, encourage discovery as much as they do interacting with what you already know you like. However, Spotify has also been under fire for making profit-based recommendations rather than taste-based ones with their services Marquee and Showcase. Artists can pay for their releases to be included on user’s home pages and woven into For You playlists, despite being low taste matches, and often in lieu of other, more similar artists with less of a financial tie to the Spotify company.
Soundcloud employs a more symbiotic balance between streamer and artist. It has become one of the most popular ways for DJs to amass popularity because of the lower risk of royalty infringement and the collective emphasis on sampling. Even though it has suggestions of other songs and artists that streamers may enjoy, their algorithm is much less pushy than Spotify’s. People can post full, cohesive sets on Soundcloud containing music from a variety of artists without having to worry about copyright infringement. The biggest downside is the lack of reach compared to Spotify, but given the potential consequences of not clearing a sample, it is often worthwhile to settle on Soundcloud as a primary platform.
Motive
My hypothesis is that the same amount of people choose to start DJing because they love people as those that start because they love music. I think at the intersection of these two is the category that simply loves performing.
To be recognized as having good taste now, when the curves of interest are so flattened and hyperindividualism has pigeonholed people into “communities” with no depth, is a bigger deal than ever before. Collective engagement used to be the marker of a populace, but now it’s collective engagement with content rather than the other members of the group.
So, for DJs, mapping that good taste back onto their audience and being well received for it is virtuous (even if not necessarily a talent). Charisma is definitely an asset for a DJ.
Fostering a good experience is about reading the room and selling it back to the audience. So, just as you must recognize the beats and mix the songs accordingly, being receptive to the social frequency of the crowd is equally as important.
The “group leader” is a Gen Z buzz term coined in reference to the silent, but recognized, chief of a friend group. Even if only a figurehead, they are representative of the network. Your friend that’s a DJ operates on terms above this: they are the group orchestrator. Popular people are not necessarily those that are the loudest, but often just the most in tune (no pun intended) with the rest of the assembly.
@Aviewfromabridge on TikTok theorized last year that social media “positioned everyone as being a potential producer of culture, and it kind of made everyone forget that you produce culture just by existing in it.” To be at the forefront of culture does not necessarily mean you must constantly signify that you are, and simply residing and engaging generally rather than only with specific media or music will solidify you as a member and actor in this time.
<blockquote class=”tiktok-embed” cite=”https://www.tiktok.com/@aviewfromabridge/video/7397353686315306273″ data-video-id=”7397353686315306273″ style=”max-width: 605px;min-width: 325px;” > <section> <a target=”_blank” title=”@aviewfromabridge” href=”https://www.tiktok.com/@aviewfromabridge?refer=embed”>@aviewfromabridge</a> Ethan's View From A Bridge Ethan @Ethan Filmed, interviewed + edited by @Joe Bloom Production @atilla.the.hunty Original music @Lala <a title=”dj” target=”_blank” href=”https://www.tiktok.com/tag/dj?refer=embed”>#dj</a> <a title=”culture” target=”_blank” href=”https://www.tiktok.com/tag/culture?refer=embed”>#culture</a> <a title=”panopticon” target=”_blank” href=”https://www.tiktok.com/tag/panopticon?refer=embed”>#panopticon</a> <a title=”goingout” target=”_blank” href=”https://www.tiktok.com/tag/goingout?refer=embed”>#goingout</a> <a title=”london” target=”_blank” href=”https://www.tiktok.com/tag/london?refer=embed”>#london</a> <a title=”aviewfromabridge” target=”_blank” href=”https://www.tiktok.com/tag/aviewfromabridge?refer=embed”>#aviewfromabridge</a> <a target=”_blank” title=”♬ original sound – A View From A Bridge” href=”https://www.tiktok.com/music/original-sound-7397353832482671393?refer=embed”>♬ original sound – A View From A Bridge</a> </section> </blockquote> https://www.tiktok.com/embed.js
If a DJ starts mixing just to be seen, or rather, heard, then they are foundationally flawed in their mission. There is a bilateral relationship between audience and performer: putting on a good show is just as much about creating a positive atmosphere as it is just playing good music. Even if DJing is quite literally performative, authenticity (and good DJ FX) will almost certainly guarantee success.