Information is not a scarce resource. The scarce resource is attention. That is why we all use these amazing new technologies like RSS readers, tags and search engines. The same happens in music, and, above all, in electronic music.
The economics of electronic music deserve more analysis, but you don't need to be Greenspan to realize that producing an electronic track is cheaper than paying a band of musicians plus renting an expensive studio. Among other important reasons, this is why so many electronic dance records are released per year. For instance,
dancerecords.com claims to receive 250 new titles a week. You need 20 hours just to listen a 5-minute track from each of those records. You need more than 4 days to listen those 250 records, assuming 25 minutes per record.
And here comes the role of the DJ as aggregator. Of course, not all those records deserve to be listened, and surely most of them are mediocre. A DJ, based on his/her taste, and the knowledge of his/her audience, selects the quality records and tests them in live mixes. The DJ, of course, does not listen everything, but searches for particular styles, labels, artists, etc. (these act like tags in
technorati or
del.icio.us).
That's why we strongly need this role of the DJ's, at least in electronic music. They are the aggregators of the "music feeds" we are interested in. For example, for me, Laurent Garnier was my "aggregator" for the best Detroit Techno ever. DJ's were less needed in the past, where the number of published records was smaller in comparison. The only problem is that, at a high growth rate, soon we will need DJ's for finding DJ's. For now,
trust the DJ!
Tags: djing, detroit, dj, electronic, IDM, dance, tags, techno, music, RSS
