As a DJ, people often ask me where I get my music, and answering is never easy. Back in the day I used to run around town, scouring record shops and thrift stores for old vinyl. These days however, more and more of that running around has turned to surfing around, and not in the way that involves Bermuda shorts and bleached dreadlocks.
I still make the occasional trip to ye olde record shoppe, but since the DJ performance itself needs digital files for the most part, it’s way easier to go crate digging online. I still agree that the sound produced by vinyl is slightly preferred to its digital counterpart, but most music these days have been through digital processing prior to being pressed to vinyl anyway. I’ll leave it to the purists like Jack White to keep that battle alive.
Anyways. Most of my music shopping goes through Juno or Beatport these days, even though there are plenty of indie solutions (like art on earth), i seldom end up using them.
But still, the paid solutions stand for the bulk of my music intake, blogs are more of a tertiary musical income, third to paid mp3’s amd real vinyl. But they are easier to share!
Music blogs get a lot of flak these days, but like eating out, you have your McDonald’s and your Stragiotti’s, you gotta spend some time and look around if you want to find the best spots. Following are a short list of my preferred places to hang out and get free music:
Beat electric
These boys have been selecting, remixing, editing and uploading some serious disco for a long time now. As one of the few places out there that still actually goes into used record stores and rips the records, they don’t get caught up in the old Re-upping game that 99% of the other blogs are doing. A lot of my secret (not anymore) weapons and crate staples come from over this way.
Discodust
These are among the real troopers of the blog house wave, equally hated and loved. They do get some gems, but refrain from over indulgence, a few of these tracks will get you laughed off the block.
Djnodj
these guys keep some eclectic mix between low-down, olskool hiphop and the regular blog house thing going. makes me remember the good’ol’days, when everybody I knew except me wanted to be a rapper, and everyone sucked.
Palms out sounds
Palmsout could claim to have invented the blog house wave (together with fluokids).
At some point it went a little bananas and everyone forgot about it as they were busy burning all photographic evidence of themselves in palestine scarves and pink tights, but nowadays they serve up a really nice buffet of deep house and other nice treats. Palms out sounds 2.0 is a lot more hype-proof, a great thing.
Hejven
Scandinavia got blog love! This is a fresh take on a regular music blog, as you get some really interesting stuff thrown in the mix with the local perspective. If you wonder what’s keeping Copenhagen dancing, check here.
Disco delivery
Classic disco, like god wanted it. DD delivers obscure facts and music trivia that would give any autistic DJ a run for theit money. Like Beat electric, they do mainly vinyl rips, to keep things interesting.
I have plenty more blogs and sites i frequently visit, but I won’t rat out the links, since they require a lot of work to sift through to get to the good stuff. As a general music nerd i read create digital music and DjTechTools, and so should you, if you’re into that stuff.
Do you have any go-to places for your musical fix? Share in the comments!
