On the Mixmag-site there is an article about how Steve Angello is defending his style of djing without headphones.

If you remember, there was a lot of noise on the net after a video showed how Steve had his last 15 minutes of a show prerecorded and he just faked the mixing. He later explained on Twitter that it was the festival that had asked him to do that so they could match the fireworks with the music.

Obviously he should have refused to do that. I’m sure he got loads of cash for playing there but I’m also sure he doesn’t have to do it for the money anymore. With all the money and all the big gigs, I think Steve has looked for a way to make his job easier. With todays technology, mixing tracks you have heard a 100 times, or produced yourself, isn’t that hard without headphones. If you use Traktor on a laptop, there’s no need at all to use headphones if you know the tunes well. And complaining about djs not using headphones is just silly.

I watched all the guys from Swedish House Mafia when they started to play out together. I might even have been the one who told them that Mafia isn’t spelled Maffia in english. They are, all three of them, great djs. Have always been.

But since they have become such superstars, they are closely watched and a lot of people would like to push them off their world dominance throne. You can hate their style, the music they play, the way they are acting like superstars. But when people say they can’t mix, they are just wrong. There is no way they would have gone on to be superstars if they couldn’t mix properly. They have djed their way to stardom.

This image (removed – technical issues) has been doing the rounds on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Even by fellow djs. But there are so many wrongs in this picture. First, Jeff Mills isn’t djing where the cover at the door is $10. I’m sure he never has. He’s a superstar as well and have been for 20 years. He has always demanded huge amount of money to dj. But he do have mad skills.

SHM often plays on three, or four decks. Sometimes four decks and two mixers. Usually they use USB-sticks or SD-cards. Not laptops. But I guess a lot of the djs that are saying this stuff about the swedish house dudes, have never seen them live. So easy to talk them down.

So, great djs, great producers.

This reminds me of my favourite Axwell-quote, from Svenska dagbladet 2009, in an article about the Kings of Ibiza. (In swedish)

Förr blev vi knappt insläppta på Grodan för att spela…

We couldn’t even get in at Grodan to DJ…

I was a resident DJ at Grodan when they wanted to do their thing there. They obviously played there, and had big success, but at the time, Grodan played more of a deep house, minimal techno style.

Photo, Swedish House Mafia @ Future Music Festival 2012 Perth, Arena Joondalup: Michael Spencer (CC BY)

This is my first remix ever. It’s a remix of the Coca-Cola olympic song, Anywhere in the world, by Mark Ronson feat. Katy B, for a remix competition here in Sweden. The winner will go to London for a big party.

A simple deep house track. The drums are mine, the rest is from the stems provided by Coca-Cola. Loads of fun doing it, not any big expectations of winning.

Looking forward to hearing the other participants remixes. Those I have heard so far are really good.

Here are some interviews with Mark Ronson and Katy B.

A few weeks ago I pulled out my credit card and started paying €9 / month to Soundcloud again. Last year I pretty much only used Mixcloud, but now I might be ditching Mixcloud for good.

Why going to Soundcloud instead of Mixcloud?

Let’s take it from the beginning, which means we can do a comparison between the two biggest services for sharing DJ-mixes on the net.

I jumped on the Soundcloud bandwagon early. They had good services for free, but I chose to pay €9 a month so I could upload loads of mixes. A feature that was great was that you with Feedburner could use Soundcloud as a host for podcasts on iTunes. When I started with this, I must have got my mix on some featured list or something cause it got more than 700 plays in a few weeks. Never figured out what happened.

The fact that Soundcloud was founded by swedes didn’t hurt either.

When Mixcloud showed up, I thought it was just a cheap brittish copy. Without the download of mixes. But I still switched to Mixcloud from Soundcloud for more than a year. Why?

Record labels scanning my mixes

Soundcloud started to, with a little help from some major labels I presume, to scan all uploaded mixes for copyrighted songs. If the software detected a song that belonged to one of the participating labels, you couldn’t upload the mix. Soundcloud was leaving the djs and focusing more on the producers.

At the same time, the connection with iTunes was removed, without any notice. It hasn’t come back yet.

Mixcloud were a free service, no copyright restrictions. You have to fill out a complete tracklist, but I like that. It’s a good feature. Mixcloud is also pretty good with the social stuff.

Back to Soundcloud

So, why am I going back to Soundcloud? I get even less for the €9 a month now, than before. The podcast feature is still missing. I only get 12 hours of upload.

The thing is, even when I really promote the mixes that I have uploaded to Mixcloud, I get very few listens. With Soundcloud, the listens stack up. It might be the more open API and the hundreds of apps that uses Soundcloud. It might be the beautiful HTML5-embed that I can use on my blog.

So the only thing missing is the podcast to iTunes-connection. There’s a beta version, but I haven’t got it yet. I have uploaded the mix to my webserver, but it has some disadvantages, like no proper streaming and not that good statistics.

I think the problem with Mixcloud is the interface. Finding a mix that isn’t featured on the starting page, is hard. Their iPhone-app sucks. There’s no way to skip ahead in the mix, so you have to start it from the beginning if you close the app.

Also, on Soundcloud, Soma Records has 53 000 followers. On Mixcloud? 332. (At the time I wrote this.)

Anyway, here you can find my dj mixes:

Soundcloud

Mixcloud

Fredagsmixen.se

iTunes

A lot of users has reported that the new upgrade to Traktor Scratch Pro 2 has been full of bugs and problems. Audio dropouts and other problems.

Last night I tested TSP 2 live for the first time. I had no problems at all.

My setup:
Macbook (late 2006, 4GB RAM, 500GB HD)
Traktor Scratch Pro 2
Audio 4 DJ
Traktor Kontrol X1

I played for 3 hours, 2 decks only, external mixer, no sample decks, used some effects. No problem. I even downloaded some tracks from iTunes while playing.

No problem.

We’ll see if extended use of 2 decks and loads of sample decks and effects will manage the computer to knee. But I don’t think so.

Photo: Iban Nieto (CC-BY)