Now that anyone can be a DJ, is the art form dead?

Well I'm not disagreeing with you, but "learning chord progressions on a guitar" isn't that hard either. But that doesn't mean you are as good as The Ramones. So I don't think the article is making an incorrect statement.

Both that and beat syncing are basic prerequisites and the real journey takes years to master and most of it isn't technical per se.

source: I can beat sync in about 6 seconds flat. 2s if it's techno or house.

I was taught to beatmatch on CDJs a few years ago. Going from having never touched a CDJ before to being able to beatmatch two (fairly straightforward) house tracks reasonably well if given enough time took about an hour. Learning the basics is fairly easy, but that doesn't make you a DJ.

> DJing has always been about selection, and crowd reading.

Splitting hairs, but there's an assumption there that you're trying to react to the audience, often intending to please them. Coming from a background of DJ's playing "difficult" music, sometimes the audience's reaction is incidental.

Beat matching becomes natural after a while, its like riding a bicycle or driving a car - you hardly think about it. A lot of DJs do play a pre-set mix. They pre arrange the tracks they will play but make changes as they go along.

I used to DJ myself and when I was playing on a residency I hardly prepared, I just had CDs with the latest tracks burned and carried around all my past CDs along. Then i'd continue where the previous DJ left off and depending on crowd reaction plan the next couple of tracks. Gave me a chance to experiment, and see crowd reaction to the newer tracks - if something put the crowd off, i'd discard it. In a club it's sometimes a good idea to give a chance to people to visit the bar etc (some DJs from eastern european countries I talked to said the club owners demand this!) As you get to know your music you know what 2-3 tracks match nicely together - this is what you gain from experience but new music is constantly released so you need to evolve with it. At the time when I quit, more tracks were being released every day than you could listen in a day - it became a full time job picking tracks to buy. On the other hand when I got invited to play to a larger crowd usually outdoors, I took more care of what I was going to play and had in mind in advance how the set would work.

[never mind]

Exactly right much harder than DJing every was. Effectively you're a one man band and knowing the skills of both a drummer and a pianist can help. You really need to have great music chops and knowledge to be a great controllerist. But here in Los Angeles there is no love for controllerism we need an outlet for this amazing art form, here people are still obsessed with vinyl but controllerism elevates the art form far past what is even possible with vinyl.

In fact. Although on some genres, digital is still very disregarded. This happens a lot here in Berlin, specially on the techno scene. I can understand how for non-techies digital is somewhat alienating---vinyl is more sensorial and helps having a more intimate relationship with the music.

However, I find that as a developer for me digital is less alienating. I play with Mixxx, a libre DJ software, and I have dug in the guts of its code... its digital wires feel intimate to me. I have also built a framework for scripting it [1] and tweak or rebuild the scripts for a specific event. Analog is for me more rigid and limiting.

I expect that as coding becomes more common in the general population, digital will be perceived less and less alienating and the current elitism around vinyl will fade...

[1] https://github.com/arximboldi/mixco

So now that anyone can be a writer, is writing dead?

One could read this as description of how digitalization trivializes the algorithmic parts away, thus leaving pure human skill on the play. So, not a totally void article, I would say, as it goes to some depth in explaining the parts that have been digitized into non-issues.

Not a very good analogy. It's more like "Now that anyone can use a word processor, is type-setting dead?", to which the answer is yep, pretty much.

Or "Now that anyone can cut a vinyl sign, is sign-painting dead?" Same answer.

Betteridge's law in action.

Can't really be a pure function if it's changing state

> If you boil the question down to art: "anyone" has been able to do art for a very long time, and art is not dead.

No, but it can change. Centuries ago, there was a certain magnificence to seeing a famous work of art. Reprinting was difficult and there was no internet. Now, I can load up everything in the Louvre on my laptop.

The growth of DJs post digitalization is not necessarily good or bad, but it does change the experience.

>> You cannot buy new stuff on a constant basis

Uh, yes I can. Play de Record, where I live here in Toronto alone would have more than enough to satisfy my lust for both brand new releases... I have 'Views' by Drake, I have 'To Pimp a Butterfly' by Kendrick Lamar, I have 'A Moon Shaped Pool' by Radiohead...I haven't been able to find a new release that I have lusted after for I haven't been able to get...not to mention the scores of breaks and house/techno I'm able to score that would be hard to find online...

>> you don't have friends that only know vinyl

Again, not true at all. Not 'only' vinyl, but a lot of our friends are really getting into it and don't consider a lot of other stuff, especially in conversation.

Vinyl has made a huge resurgence in the last 5-10 years. Our band is looking at pressing ourselves. <3

> DJ-ing with decks has died.

This is not an accurate statement.

Not only that, but this article's claims are nonsense:

  "Such advances have made it easy for those with limited talent to sound
  professional. YouTube videos abound that purport to show DJs miming
  their mixes—their hands a whirl of activity over the controls, but
  never actually alighting on any of them. For many, this confirms a
  long-held suspicion that some now simply turn up with a pre-recorded
  set, press play, and rake in the cash."

Nobody cares if the DJ's beat-matching. Any paid DJ can do so. It's about the production and entertainment.

P.S. Alighting's not a verb.

edit: Alighting CAN be a verb! ("to settle or stay after descending")

I don't think that's quite true.

When I first started in the early 1990s, it was pretty expensive to get into as a hobby. I could have been fairly economically comfortable in my college years, but was constantly making myself broke by pouring every dollar I could spare into records.

The flipside of this was that the people who did take it up tended to be serious about it. From time to time there would be some rich kid who would blow a few grand of daddy's money on gear and music, declare himself a DJ, and then get bored a month later. For the most part, though, the financial burden meant that new arrivals would take it seriously and were interested in improving.

As CD decks and CD-Rs became common I thought we'd see a lot of fresh talent from people who wouldn't have been able to afford starting out when I did. Instead there was a flood of people who just wanted to call themselves a "DJ" but had negligible interest in learning much about their music genre or developing any technical skills. Instead of stronger wheat, we got buried in a ton of chaff.

The other underappreciated change was to how clubnight promotion works. In the olden days, the promoter would take care of making flyers and getting people in the door. They'd seek out DJs that they thought would keep this crowd happy. So as a newb DJ, if you would work yourself up the ladder by impressing the local promoters and developing a good reputation with them. They would provide the crowds that you'd make your name with.

Today, with effectively all promotion being done online the biggest thing that a rookie DJ can bring is a built-in audience. There is a huge advantage to the social butterflies of the world, who can now effectively self-promote their appearances to a wide circle of acquaintances, saving the club promoter work.

That might seem like a small shift (or just sound like sour grapes from an old geezer), but it has been a striking difference in who gets started. For a long time a lot of DJs fit a certain archetype of music nerds.. often the most introverted people at the nightclub. Once when I met rookie DJs I felt like I saw a younger version of myself in them. Now I don't get that feeling... it's just a different set of people who take it up.

It's certainly possible that there could be a renaissance. The technology available today lets DJs do live manipulation that the best turntabilists a generation ago couldn't have dreamt of. However, I'm not optimistic -- I think that realistically 95% of the people showing up simply don't care about what part of the process is being done live. I think increasingly clubs are just going to move to playing livestreams or pre-recorded sets and avoid the cost of an onsite DJ entirely. As long as people still show up and buy alcohol that works fine for them. I think ultimately the notion of a nightclub paying someone to haul in music, select what to play, and mix it live will be an anachronism.

Feel free to argue why you think it's not an art form, otherwise your snarky opinion is of little value other than to highlight the likelihood of you being both ignorant (of the topic) and closed-minded (in general).