Cupe

Dat rack

Why is this news now anyway? Twitter has made proper sourced journalism die in the ass

They banned drumming sessions? wat

Lulz

Deadmau5 was at it again on Twitter yesterday, slating Lady Gaga for posing naked in a Marina Abramovic-inspired video. Although this time he was forced to delete his tweets after receiving death threats from the singer's fans, a global clique affectionately known as Gaga's Little Monsters. The Monsters bared their fangs after the controversial Canadian shared his annoyance about the 'NSFW' vid, in which Gaga hugs a giant ice cube completely naked, promoting the performance artist's 'Abramovic Method'. After watching the video, Deadmau5 wrote: "What the actual fuck? If some idiot howls in the woods and noones around, does it make a sound? MYTH BUSTED." However, he later deleted the message when he received a heap of abusive tweets from a fleet of Gaga-loving nutters. One Twitter user went to extreme lengths to make their opinion of the Mau5 clear: Another, using the handle @MigueAscencio, reiterated the above, but in simpler terms, after someone claimed the DJ was fame-hungry: Before removing his tweet, Deadmau5 responded, saying: "All these tweets telling me to kill myself. The Little Monsters are pro suicide or something? Not sure what to make of that." This obviously isn't the first time a horde of pop trolls have gone batshit crazy in defence of a chart topping sensation. A legion of One Direction fans recently sent threats to British magazine GQ after the title insinuated the group's Harry Styles had slept with tens of girls. And Justin Bieber's followers have been known to attack random teenagers online with full force. Deadmau5 can be very outspoken, but surely no one deserves this kind of online bile?

StarDust chandeliers are made of old records and their still amazing covers. The arms of the chandelier are cut out of the vinyl record LP’s. The construction elements are made from beautifull cardboard record covers. Each chandelier is unique. They are made in various colours. The StarDust Chandelier has an old fashioned flat-iron electricity cord of 2 meters. Socket: large Diameter: 50 cm. More information at Studio Yip Shop website.

Vinyl sales have exploded over the past six years. They grew by 44% in 2010, 39% in 2011 and 19% in 2012. At first glance, this seems huge — Especially when you take into account that music sales in general have dropped over 60% from their peak. But here’s the dirty little secret you probably haven’t read so much about: Look more closely and you’ll quickly realize that vinyl isn’t so huge at all. Vinyl can still be a meaningful supplement for some niche bands and audiences. If you can make money selling it, please do. I may buy it. But in the grand scheme of making music sustainable in the 21st century? It doesn’t really matter much at all. It is most definitely not going to ‘save the music industry.’ And if we continue to tell a false story about vinyl, we might just end up hurting musicians far more than helping them. On a personal level, I like vinyl. I own far more of it than most people do. I listen to it, I enjoy handling it, and I get the appeal. I just know that I’m in a tiny minority. I can’t deny the true scale of the format, or what really has to be done to make musicians’ incomes grow to a sustainable size again. Here’s a hint: It has nothing to do with selling discs. How Big is The Vinyl Market? Recently, a marketing agent for a vinyl-by-mail company called Feedbands wrote an Op-Ed for Digital Music News. I can accept that marketing agents and PR people sometimes write “news” stories, so long as they reveal who they are, and they stay accurate and intellectually honest. But this one raised my rankles. With a misleading title like “Why Vinyl Is More Important to Artists Than Streaming, Touring, and T-Shirts“, it was just begging for an honest, no-BS reply. In the story, the author writes that “musicians tend to make about 2 percent of their income from the sale of non-­musical physical merchandise like t-­shirts, hats, and posters.” But to suggest that vinyl is more significant than this (or any other stream of revenue) is ludicrous on several levels. It’s not just misleading, it’s flat out wrong. First, let’s look at the larger numbers: The total music industry revenues for 2012 were about $16.6 billion. (That may sound like a lot until you realize that at their peak they were over $50 billion, adjusted for inflation.) Meanwhile, vinyl sales in 2102 were around $160 million. This is a lot less than 2% of the total. In fact, it’s less than half that — A bit under 1%. So even if vinyl defied any sense of scale or reason and suddenly grew by 100%, It’s still not going to touch merch as a percentage of revenue. Ever. But it doesn’t stop there: The claim that musicians only make 2% of their income from merch sales isn’t even right to begin with! To come to that figure, the author cites a small survey that includes responses from teachers, composers, symphony performers, wedding band musicians — All sorts of people who make $0 in both merch and vinyl sales. In fact, 88% of them made no money from merch and 66% of them made no money from CDs, downloads, or streaming, let alone vinyl. If you unpack the numbers and look at the portion of musicians who made any money from selling merch, it turns out that they made more than 16% of their income that way. For bands that sell any merch at all, it turns out to be the second largest slice of the pie after live performance. It was bigger than recorded music revenue and songwriting royalties combined. It’s also worth mentioning that all of the bands who contributed the most to vinyl sales last year are on labels. Many of them are on major labels. This means they have to share a large portion of that revenue, just like with CD sales. Which means the author’s follow up statement that “500 records sold at $15 each means $7,500 in extra income for you or your band” is so misleading, that I don’t know where to start. Most self-released bands are simply not going to sell 500 copies of their record on any format, let alone on vinyl. Of the 75,000 CDs released in 2010, 60,000 of them sold an average of 13 copies each. On any format. To make this even more clear, we should compare sales of vinyl compared to other major formats. If we look at CDs alone (which are dying but still make up more than 40% of the paid music market) they currently outpace vinyl sales by a factor of roughly 3,000%. If we wanted an increase in vinyl sales to merely make up for the 13% loss in CD sales this past year, then we’d need them to grow by about 350% next year. This is not going to happen. Vinyl growth is already slowing, and CD sales are going to continue to shrink much faster than vinyl could ever grow to make up for it. I’m sorry to say it, but I think that whole article, and so many others like it, are what the kids call a “logic fail.” Why Are We Shooting Ourselves in the Foot? The people at FeedBands aren’t the only ones causing us to ignore the real problems and real solutions. We mislead ourselves, unwittingly, all the time. Recently, a friend of mine who works hard to get people back into the idea of re-valuing music wrote: “If we change the perception, do we change the result? Have we forgotten how to market music? Is the low sound quality of most digital a turn off?” These questions speak volumes. Yes, we do need to change the perception. Yes, we’ve probably lost most of the inspiring marketers to other, more profitable sectors. (Computer technology anyone?) But — Is the “low sound quality of digital a turnoff”? There are two possible answers to this: A ) “Yes, if by ‘turnoff’, you mean ‘people are listening to more music than ever before.’ (They’re just not paying for it)” or B ) “Yes, but only because our perception is dead wrong.” Here’s the reality: Modern digital doesn’t have low sound quality. By any objective standard, it’s actually far better in terms of raw sound quality than vinyl is! We’re not just talking about CDs here. This statement includes any good resolution downloads or streaming files. The problem is that music marketers have effectively been lying to listeners by telling them that modern digital doesn’t sound good. And we’ve got to stop. Now. Perception affects enjoyment more than anything else. That’s where the failure is. Right now, by any objective standard, we have the best listening formats and equipment ever made, and at prices that are mind-bogglingly low. In reality, modern digital actually sounds f*ing great. A 320kbps stream from Spotify, eMusic or MOG sounds indistinguishable from a CD when heard by the ear. This has been confirmed in countless blind tests. Meanwhile, within the spectrum of human hearing, a CD is unquestionably closer to the original master than vinyl is. We can prove that with measurements and we can prove it with listening tests. There is no doubt. Zero. In terms of raw sound quality, what’s available today is provably higher-fidelity than vinyl, cassette, 8-track, reel-to-reel, wax cylinder, AM/FM radio, and just about any other consumer format ever invented. But we’re failing to tell that story. At this point, we don’t need to convince the engineers to design better digital. They’ve already done their jobs. The technology is there. Now we’ve gotta do our jobs and convince people to start paying for it again! Unfortunately, my friend went on to write: “I’m embarrassed to admit that it has been years since I heard vinyl. That all changed 2 nights ago when I was at a friends house. I was sitting there and noticed the warmth, the sonic space, the timbre of the instruments. It was…sumptuous, sensual, dare I say, intoxicating.” I believe my friend. Wouldn’t doubt him for a second. But here’s the thing: What really happened was that he sat down and listened to an amazing-sounding recording on a friends’ stereo… Which was far better than his own. Of course you’re going to notice new things! Yes: Great speakers sounds amazing. Hanging out with friends, listening to albums and feeding off of each others’ enthusiasm is awesome. No question. These things can make a huge difference in perceived audio quality. Vinyl on the other hand? Not so much. Don’t get me wrong — Vinyl can be great. People actually can hear a difference under blind listening conditions. There can even be something so subtly familiar, ‘so soft around the edges’ about the medium. It’s just that with good vinyl, those differences are not that dramatic at all. And, when we prefer it, it’s because we like the measurably less pristine sound of the format. It may be counter-intuitive to some vinyl promoters, but pretending that digital can’t sound as good or better than vinyl is a major part of the problem facing musicians today. Not only is it untrue, but it reinforces the backwards notion that today’s recordings just aren’t worth paying for. When we lie to kids and tell them digital is lousy, we’re effectively saying “that sucks, you don’t have to pay for that garbage.” While in fact, ‘that garbage’ is among the best we’ve ever had. The problem of musicians’ income in the 21st century is not going to be solved by singing the praises of vinyl. It is going to be solved by developing great streaming services and making sure they pay fair rates. It’s going to be solved by reasonable and effective crackdowns on piracy. And it’s going to be solved by information campaigns that tell people the truth, inspiring them to put value back into the music that is already right there at their fingertips. That is all that can save musicians. There is no way that vinyl can do it alone. So spread the truth: If you want sound quality, we’ve got better sound quality today than ever before. If you want convenience and access, that’s here too. If you want low prices, my God are they low. Perhaps too low. If you want physicality and ritual, you can get that too. Buy your CDs, buy your vinyl. As long as you’re buying, those things are not going to go away. Come to think of it, you could say the same thing about good music. So: When was the last time you bought some good music? As a consumer, it doesn’t matter if you’re paying for streams or downloading, buying LPs or CDs. As a consumer, all that matters is that you’re contributing and not just leeching. Oh yeah: And that you enjoy it. The rest of it is for us to figure out. Source: trustmeimascientist.com

They're a sexy looking speaker though

Better to keep it on the public forum so others can learn from it too!

Rich Lee was a mild-mannered salesman from St. George, Utah until one day he was bio-hacked to have headphones installed into his head, thus increasing his ailing vision with the sonar power of a bat while enjoying his own soundtrack through the power of magnets. It might sound like the crazy origin story of a comic book superhero (perhaps a scrapped version of Daredevil?), but its all true, with 34-year-old Rich Lee becoming the first human to have headphones surgically implanted into his earbuds, as The Guardian reports. Lee is a self-described “grinder”, a group that believes in the enhancement of the human body through technological modification – or ‘biohacking’. The Utah resident’s surgical procedure was carried out by “the godfather of body modification,” Steve Haworth, who has been experimenting with biohacking since 1998. The 34-year-old salesman had Haworth implant magnets into his tragus (the flap of the ear that hangs over the ear opening), which act as invisible headphones, picking up frequencies from a copper coil necklace which transmits music played through a standard quarter-inch jack-equipped device, such as an iPod – as Lee explains in his how-to video. While it may raise a lot of questions (can he go swimming? What happens when he goes through airport security?), the chief one audiophiles interested in surgically implanted headphones want answered is ‘what is the sound quality like?’ Brace for disappointment. “The sound quality is decent, maybe comparable to a cheap set of earbuds,” Lee explains to PopSci. “It exceeded my expectations. I would have been happy with a muffled hum, since listening to music was not my primary motivation.” Blasting his favourite tunes directly into his head is a nice side-effect to Lee’s primary purpose for the new body-mod; he is beginning to lose vision in his right eye and doctors have warned that his left eye could soon suffer too. But with a cornea transplant being “a bit out of my budget at the moment,” says Lee, he plans to broadcast his new (literal) earphones to an ultrasonic rangefinder, essentially giving him echolocation – like a bat or dolphin’s sonar. “I figure learning to navigate with echolocation is a good thing to develop now. Not that I’ve resigned myself to blindness or anything,” he adds. That’s not all, he also tells Techno Buffalo he could also broadcast his magnetic earbuds to wireless mics for a little homemade espionage. “I plan to hook it up to a directional mic of some sort (possibly disguised as a shirt button or something) so I can hear conversations across a room,” says Lee. It’s all part of the grinder ethos of self-enhancement, who refuses to be “caged by [his] DNA” as he tells The Guardian. “If I see a way to eliminate the need for sleep I will never sleep again. If I can have x-ray vision through some cybernetic technology I will have it, even if it requires an ocular prosthetic that leaves me looking like a monster,” he says. “If I discover a gene therapy that will give me super strength, I will augment my very DNA to do so,” he says. “I do not abide by the restraints imposed by ethics committees who attempt to regulate human enhancement. Their arguments will be obsolete 10 years from now.” Source: tonedeaf.com.au

We scarcely go a week without reading a story about the renaissance of the vinyl format, and although I’m sceptical about whether the amount of units being sold, as opposed to money being made, has risen in quite the way that we’re supposed to believe (it’s worth reading former Cargo employee Bill Dolan’s comments in Arron Merat’s recent piece on the subject for FACT, for a start, and a comparison between the units being pressed by a fledgling record label in 2013 compared to even 2008 would make for depressing reading) it’s pretty obvious that the format’s more hip than it was a decade ago. So why are the same independent labels that should be spurred by this development using it as an opportunity to take advantage of their fans? Some recent examples: the triple-vinyl version of Zomby’s With Love retails between £27.99 and £30 at most retailers. Yes, 4AD’s vinyl releases come with a code that gives buyers access to a free mp3 version – a norm in the indie world, and something that the dance music world has yet to fully embrace – and are high quality products, but a little perspective here: that’s close to £30 for an album whose creator, by his own admission, barely bothered sequencing it. By comparison, Border Community’s recent triple-vinyl release of Holden’s The Inheritors usually retails at £17. It’s not just releases in the £30 bracket that have become overpriced. Powell’s recent EP for Boomkat’s Death of Rave label is one of my favourite records of the year, but it’s hard to not feel hard done by when paying £10 (direct from Boomkat, with download code) or £11+ (once another retailer has marked up; no download code) for a single vinyl record with no artwork and a plain plastic sleeve. Compare that to Werk Discs’ recent EPs by Helena Hauff and Lukid, which retail at £6-£7 with full sleeves. Or, a personal comparison point: last weekend I spent £45 across a pair of second hand London record stores on around 30 records, including a Drexciya EP that averages £20 on Discogs’ marketplace. In some cases (for instance, Vakula’s You’ve Never Been to Konotop, roughly retailing at £30 on triple-vinyl, and Audio Fidelity’s reissue of the Blade Runner soundtrack, £25-£30 on single-vinyl), that wouldn’t even buy me two new albums. Any record label that still presses vinyl in 2013 when countless artists are getting rich off free downloads and digital releases could hardly be easier for a label to organise, deserves a level of respect, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that some of them are starting to take the piss. There are elements of vinyl production – including the price of paper stock – that have risen in recent years, but we’re still a fair way off justifying the sorts of prices that unfortunately seem less and less exceptional by the day. The collectors’ market will always be there, and I have no problem with it: if you like House of Balloons enough to drop $199 on a signed (well, sort of signed) collectors’ edition of it, then more power to you. These products will always be overpriced to some extent, but they’re also part of a different market, with a different target audience to regular singles and albums, and often their unique status justifies an inflated price tag. Likewise, imports from the States will always be priced higher in European stores, and until the world’s postage costs drop that will continue to be the case. But when local labels are overpricing their products for seemingly no other reason than because they can, it leaves a bad taste – and that’s when Discogs and second hand stores become more appealing than supporting a label, and the matter of who your money’s going to stops being a priority. Source: factmag.com

3D Printing is already making waves across the manufacturing industry with the new technology potentially paving the way for cheaper methods of production and replication, and following on from introducing the world to the first 3D printed guitars, a music and technology boffin has now gifted the world the first 3D printed vinyl. Along with researcher and Instructables DIY project site team member, Amanda Ghassaei can now potentially add ‘inventor’ to her roll call, having used 3D printing to enable a method that transforms a digital audio sample into a physical plastic record that plays on a standard turntable. As Ghassaei writes on her website entry for the 3D Printed Record: ”In order to explore the current limits of 3D printing technology, I’ve created a program for converting digital audio into a 3D model of a record and printed some functional prototypes that play on ordinary record players.” While the audio quality is still sketchy, an introductory video shows that with a little bit of coding and tinkering with the Objet Connex500, an industrial line 3D Printer, a three dimensional model of a song’s audio waves can be printed as physical peaks and troughs, that just so happen to resemble the grooves of a vinyl record, onto a UV-cured resin. Or in the creator’s words: “It works by importing raw audio data, performing some calculations to generate the geometry of a record, and eventually exporting this geometry straight to a 3D printable file format.” The video shows what the world’s first 3D printed record being played, featuring a gravelly, but nonetheless recognisable medley of Daft Punk’s ‘Around The World’, New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’, and Joy Division’s ‘Disorder’. As Ghassaei writes for the more technically minded, “the audio on the records is very low resolution, it has a sampling rate of 11kHz (a quarter of typical mp3 audio) and 5-6bit resolution (less than one thousandth of the resolution of typical 16 bit audio), but the result is easily recognisable.” The grooves of the 3D record are shaped by extremely fine layers of plastic resin that are added in layers based on the blueprint of a digital model, such as those available on the Instructables website; the entire process demonstrating a new form of additive manufacturing, layering sheets in a 3D model built from the ground up rather than regular manufacturing that relies on cutting, shaping, and refining material – a subtractive process. The new LP is one of many working prototypes that have sprung up in recent months, including a series of custom guitar bodies – including working electric and acoustic instruments in a variety of personalised designs – and, controversially, the world’s first working handgun (as Forbes reports). The 3D record was made with an Objet Connex500 which has “incredibly high resolution: 600dpi in the x and y axes and 16 microns in the z axis, some of the highest resolution possible with 3D printing at the moment,” according to Ghassaei. But despite this fine detailing, the 3D printed records are still some ways from the resolution of a real vinyl record – thus the poor sound quality. There are other limitations too, the 3D printing process only allows one side to be played and being cast onto a resin means they’re less flexible than vinyl records also (which could lead to a few more cracked LPs in packing and transit or simply tearing up a record’s needle), but it’s a dramatic first step to a personalised and potentially much more efficient form of record production. Imagine being able to turn your own digital playlists into a physical vinyl ‘mixtape’ for a loved one? Or turning that bootlegged live audio into something you can chuck on the platter? DJs could conceivably create their own vinyl samples for use in their sets, or allowing bands to sell off the digital blueprints for a 3D records for fans to then print them from the comfort of their homes. This leap in technology could, however, inadvertently lead to another mass form of music piracy. While very few can afford or have access to 3D printing technology, the aim is that they one day will soon be, and if people are able to use Ghassaei’s personalised code, which she has already made available on popular torrenting website the Pirate Bay, for their own use, the ‘drop in the ocean’ repercussions become pretty clear. As a recent report from TechCrunch demonstrates, concerns over peer-to-peer networks for shared ‘physibles’ – the digital designs for 3D printed objects – have the potential to emerge online, demonstrating a new wave that echoes that of Napster and the mp3 boom, except this time it would be through the sharing of real-world physical objects, such as the aforementioned guitars and records. Despite the more sinister implications, there’s no denying the exciting potential for Amanda Ghassaei’s breakthrough and it seems that it’s the first of a whole slew of experiments, with the Instructables creator now turning to laser cutting on other industrial formats to craft other vinyl-style records using a similar process to the 3D printing model – including Joy Division’s ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ on laser-cut acrylic, Radiohead’s ‘Idioteque’ on laser-cut wood, and Velvet Underground and Nico’s ‘Femme Fatale’ on laser-cut maple – which you can watch/hear below. Source: tonedeaf.com.au

Do me a favour and 'Like' some of the designs uploaded on the Overture page. https://www.facebook.com/overtureclothing That way it'll get some more exposure etc +Thanks to all who like/share

Daft Punk's 'Colbert' Cancellation: Was The Duo Ever Scheduled To Perform? The reclusive "Get Lucky" pair's "scrapped" performance may have been part of a ruse. Daft Punk cancelled their appearance on Tuesday night's episode of "The Colbert Report" due to contractual obligations to the MTV Video Music Awards… or so the story goes. However, new information suggests that the notoriously press-shy French electronic duo was never supposed to actually show up on "Colbert," and that Robin Thicke's "replacement" performance was a pre-planned event instead of a last-minute save. Sources say that Thicke's "Colbert" performance of his No. 1 hit "Blurred Lines" was actually taped last Tuesday (July 31), when the singer was in New York promoting his new album "Blurred Lines" (Thicke also stopped by "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" last week to perform his single with Fallon and the Roots). On last night's telecast, Colbert positioned Thicke's appearance as a replacement for Daft Punk's no-show, which he claimed to not know about until "two hours" before Tuesday's taping. Instead of Daft Punk stopping by to perform "Get Lucky," Colbert ran a pre-taped segment of various celebrities, including Jeff Bridges and Hugh Laurie, dancing to the hit single. The host also eviscerated Van Toffler, the President of MTV Networks Music & Logo Group, on-air for allegedly stealing Daft Punk away from the Comedy Central program so that they could exclusively appear at the VMAs (both Comedy Central and MTV are owned by Viacom). Colbert even shared an e-mail from Toffler in which the MTV head oddly commented, "Checked with my peeps and will check again but they're feelin funky on this one." Was it all part of a larger ruse? Was Daft Punk snatched away from Comedy Central by MTV, or was the group, in fact, never planning to grace the "Colbert" stage? Reps for MTV and Daft Punk did not immediately respond for comment. Thicke's appearance on "The Colbert Report" preceded news that the singer's "Blurred Lines" album and song ruled this week's Billboard 200 chart and Hot 100 chart, respectively. Source: billboard.com

Posted on @ausdjforums facebook/twitter.

Posted on @ausdjforums facebook/twitter.

I've never learnt anything to do with keys but I have a midi keyboard and (in my opinion) can produce stuff without a problem.

Of every rapper that fought their way through hip-hop’s genesis, there is rarely any dispute that ‘Kool’ Keith Thornton was the most unpredictable, and for many operating in the genre’s experimental fringes, the most influential. Back in the late ’80s and ’90s Keith was a formidable force, with his twisted, abstract flows acting as the blueprint for Wu Tang’s RZA and Ghostface Killah, MF Doom and a laundry list of young rappers with a penchant for the surreal or the disturbing (we’re looking at you Necro). These days you’d be forgiven for thinking nothing has changed – it’s hard to imagine that the current generation’s horde of rap weirdos, from prolific Berkley outsider Lil B to Odd Future figurehead Tyler, The Creator with his vivid, often shocking rhymes would have been able to thrive without Thornton’s crucial early groundwork. Keith shot to notoriety thanks to his tenure as the figurehead of golden age innovators the Ultramagnetic MCs, and his unique style was a breath of fresh air in a climate that almost encouraged the ‘respectful’ regurgitation of ideas. He was progressive in a way that most emcees simply weren’t, and next to Ced Gee’s equally prominent productions the band were an unstoppable force, for a time. With a barrage of boastful rhymes and a cadence and rhythm you could recognize a mile away, Keith’s chants made the band’s debut album Critical Beatdown an enduring success, and one that surprisingly still sounds essential 25 later. It was around this time that Keith began perpetuating the rumour that he had been committed to the notorious Bellevue psychiatric hospital, a sliver of trivia that sat well with fans captivated by his distorted personality. Occasionally performing in a straightjacket, he later claimed that the whole thing was simply an inside joke, but the hospital’s records still note that a Keith Matthew Thornton was indeed committed. This concept bled into a solo career that granted Keith’s manic personality – or personalities – the opportunity to really shine, and that career blossomed with the invention of murderous alien time traveller and gynecologist Dr. Octagon. Here was the point where Keith fully embraced the unusual surrealism that would become his calling card, and the point where we were granted access to the exemplary Dr. Octagonecologyst, an album that still stands as one of the rapper’s most fully formed statements. Hailing from Jupiter and entertaining a voracious sexual appetite, Dr. Octagon was fleshed out with a rich tapestry brightly coloured rhymes that drifted from the conceptual to the outrageously psychedelic. The success of this record, albeit critically rather than commercially at first, was something of a shock to Keith, and in a typically off-kilter move he laid waste to the character not long later by using another alter ego (Dr. Dooom) to murder him. This push and pull, and the continuous drift between the streets and the stars has characterized Keith’s career since the very beginning, and grants his seemingly endless catalogue with a rare edge of impulsiveness. It would be incorrect not to recognize that Keith’s form was dented significantly in the early ‘00s with a run of average if not out-and-out awful releases that he never really recovered from. Still, amongst the clutter of unnecessary compilations and half-realized concepts there were always moments of brilliance if you looked hard enough. Keith’s still plowing away, operating just outside his despised record industry in 2013, and his latest album Magnetic Pimp Force Field, a collaboration with Memphis producer Mr. Sche is his finest in far too long. The following list is a selection of Keith’s most outstanding moments, and while it’s predictably a little bottom-heavy (which let’s be honest, the Spankmaster himself probably wouldn’t mind) it’s charted chronologically to allow you to follow Keith’s sprawling narrative a little easier. Source: factmag.com

How the fuck do guys get so large in such a short space of time

We love Tiesto and his music, and all he’s done to bring EDM to the masses. We do not literally think he is crazy. We’re just wondering what’s up with all these publicity stunts! If somehow his immense stature in the EDM world has eluded your vision; Tijs Michiel Verwest, born 17 January 1969, known as Tiësto, is a Dutch musician, DJ and record producer of electronic dance music. He’s ascended to a god-like status in the community after smashing crowds behind the decks, and creating gems such as these: Flash forward to 2/3 of the way through the year in 2013 — AKA now, Tiesto has begun behaving… oddly. First he released this on Facebook accompanied by the image that you see above: Shortly after that monogamous announcement, he took to Twitter to let us know that he would produce an album that contained only trance. But, under one condition. That condition being that he wins the DJ Mag Poll. We’re really hoping that he was joking and trolling the Twitterers, but after the previous ego-flex mention, who knows!? The final bonkers piece of recent information is that he will be launching a freaking 24 hour deep-house radio show. Thats’s 24 hours of deep-house, which is way out of the realm of “normal” Tiesto. We’re not opposed to this happening, and honestly love to see artists genre-hopping, but damn! That’s a huge leap. What do you all think? Is he making all these moves for the publicity, or what? Source: betherave.com

I read an article on Dödselectro that struck me. Not so much for their description of blogs as “the new gossip tabloids,” but for the fact that we as curators and writers are quickly shifting away from the reason we all got into music. Sure, we give detailed accounts of Diplo’s war of words with Flo-Rida and speak on the breakup between Deadmau5 and Kat Von D. But it’s what the 99% wants. Our stats prove that you react more to this than music. Brandon Stanton of Humans Of New York explained people’s participation in media perfectly during his TED Talk by listing the reasons we watch movies. Violence, danger, sex, conflict, and puppies are the reasons he listed that keep viewers coming back. The only difference between movies and music is that we could care less about puppies. We love cats. The reality that shock value has more merit than representing real life is quantifiable though. It’s sad, and it’s your fault. You are the reason that websites post what we post. Whether or not anyone wants to speak honestly and openly about it, drama equates to ad dollars. If you clicked our article on Martin Garrix (conflict) or Crunk Bear getting fired for twerking (sex) or clicked any one of our articles on artists getting beat up or shot (violence), you were one of the people that would sway any writer with college debt into catering their content to you in hopes of making it rich in this industry. Or at least paying their bills. You should know though that if we posted nothing but the things that generate the most results, we would only focus our articles on drama. I suppose it would also be beneficial to report news on Daft Punk. You clicked on these dramatic posts tens of thousands of times. Did you furiously share any of the hundreds of great records that we posted? Is the SoundCloud account that we run going viral due to the stack of original (and exclusive) mixes we’ve hosted? Nope. But the drama is pulled from our hands and placed on a pedestal the second we post it. The new and unique music was all but ignored in comparison. Remember MTV Jams? MTV Unplugged? The Grind? Alternative Nation? 120 Minutes? Amp? Headbangers Ball? Yo! MTV Raps? If not, you either didn’t have cable as a child, or you are too young for these references. All of these shows were staples in the lives of anyone that cared about music at all, and none of them exist anymore. The reason these shows matter isn’t because of branding or nostalgia. It’s because each show was represented by a set of voices that actually knew what they were speaking on, and because they all put music first. Stats undoubtedly showed that consumers cared more about reality and celebrity television, and music is all but dead at MTV. EDM is moving in that direction faster than anyone should be comfortable with. Websites are currently flooded with content that you will find on most other sites. There is more than one reason for this. First and foremost, most platforms are being run by fans of music that have no background in music beyond, well, liking it. They never got into production or spun records, can’t differentiate between genres or find records that are unique, and are stuck when forced to explain what they like about a record. And as a ridiculous amount of sites are accepting money for placement, we are sitting on a market where not only do platforms not know what’s good, but they are also taking money or collecting favors in exchange for favorable placement or opinion. We are seeing flat write-ups about flat records that land on every other site in the world. Tobias at Dödselectro (who wrote the original article that inspired this one) called it the “arena house culture” in another article. (I think I like this guy.) This is because corporations and companies are putting music before business. We can add the fact that PR firms package your favorite artists up, hand them to every site imaginable, and shape the market to post what is relevant to them. We’re still out here scouring SoundCloud for new artists, checking Bandcamp for original releases, and listening to each and every submission that lands in our inbox. Why are we working so hard? The thing about music is that the fans shouldn’t have to look for originality. The fans trust our opinions. If those opinions were unbiased, this world would be perfect. And as Complex is giving us the rare opportunity to write pretty much whatever we want in exchange for regular checks, we don’t have to deal with all of the shady backdoor shit that every other site has their hands in. All we need to do is keep our numbers up. You should all know though that doing so would actually be EASIER if we focused on Twitter beefs and slam pieces. Posting unique records from little-known producers doesn’t produce clicks for us. If you want music to thrive over drama, it’s your duty to share the shit out of a record that you love on ANY website that you go to for music. If you “Like” nothing but the juicy stories about headlining acts, you are forcing writers to cater to it and should hold yourself responsible as music is being removed from EDM. Source: doandroidsdance.com

way to make it annoying

Uploaded Cheers