Mar122010
I Am A DJ Where Can I Get Rare Remixes Online?
My email inbox is often a great source of inspiration for writing blog posts. Sometimes the occasional wacky and weird email comes in just like the one I received the other day. It simply read “I am a DJ, where can I get rare remixes online?”. What? Do I look like your own personal DJ Google?
Although the email was short, abrupt and rude, it did honestly get me thinking. Where can a DJ go to get those highly sought after remixes and mash-ups to make their set stand out on the dancefloor and in their podcasts?
Of course its easy to go to your typical online DJ music stores like Beatport, TrackitDown and DJDownload but as these are, in my opinion, the most popular online stores there is a very real chance you could end up with exactly the same music crate as everyone else. No, what I see this question as asking is this: Is there a good place to get hold of those tracks that are not so readily available… tracks that are hard to find and are a rareity?
Music that can be labelled as rare in this day and age is virtually non-existent. The digital media that we all consime today lends itself to be copied so very, very easily and therefore supply is practically unlimited. Several years ago (and perhaps still true today) the music genre I played was only ever available on vinyl. CD decks were still in ther very early infancy and MP3 decks weren’t even conceptualised. The music back then was a phsyical product that you could hold in your hands, you could see it, touch it and smell it - perhaps even taste it. YUMYUM.
“DJ-only” pressings of records would be released in very limited numbers which was the mothod of releasing your music to those in the know, a service which has now been replaced by online promo services. Getting your hands on a DJ-only or “promo” vinyl record was like discovering goldust and having a test press or acetate in your record box was way cooler than having the actual commercial release of any tune.
For those of us desperate enough we would import records from other countries and wait weeks if not months for our music to arrive. Italy and Germany used to get some of the best cuts from way back when. In today’s industry, ordering of music across differing countries is immediate and taken very much for granted.
So with an abundant supply of tunes available in an instant from anywhere to anywhere in the world is there really such a thing as a rare tune or remix anymore? How can something be classified as rare if muliple copes can be made in just a few mouse clicks and distributed globally just as effortlessly?
Music stores like HTFR.com and VinylSearcher.com are still trading and specialising in those hard to find vinyl records, even eBay is littered with thousands of records all up for sale with some pretty serious bids going in which leads me to beleive that there are still some avid vinyl junkies out there - those people that really won’t sleep at night unless they finish their collection, or until they get their hands on a remix that was originally thought to be just an urban legend.
I don’t think you will be able to find rare remixes of contemporary music in any one spot from any one vendor. No sooner is a track put online, its then copied and re-distributed en-mass which in itself negates the ‘rare’ value first put upon it.
With the closing of Xpressbeats, a little bit of exclusivity died too. Often Xpressbeats would have exclusives listed alongside their other general release tracks which definitely in my eyes set it apart from any other online DJ MP3 store. Beatport will on occasion have a couple of exclusive tracks on their site that can not be found elsewhere but I have not found the quality of these to be that great.
Vinyl was definitely my first love and I’m sure it’s no different for many thousands of other DJs in their late-somethings today. I don’t beleive that the move to digital DJing is a bad thing per se, it’s just a natural progeression of music and the technology that powers it. I’ll still miss the vinyl days and that slight crackle of static you would get from sliding the vinyl out of a brand new dust sleeve for the very first time, but the game changes over time and things have to move on. Music and technology are not exceptions to this rule.
I think the true rare value of a record comes from the ability to physically own it, to hold it in your hands and this is most definitely something you can only get from a limited edition, DJ-only, black circular piece of plastic enscribed with one long continuous groove.
I’ll still miss the vinyl days too….
Comment by kolt — May 6, 2010 @ 2:58 pm