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Comment by beefoo | Hacker News Reader

Creator of Citizen DJ here. I made this project almost 5 years ago during my residency at the Library of Congress. I had such a great experience, I actually work at the Library now. I am happy to answer any questions about any aspects of the project!

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If you could build it in 2024 what would you do differently and what would you keep the same?

Great question! One of the big changes between 2020 and now is the popularization of generative AI. If I were to make this project now, I'd probably feel pressured to either use genAI or justify why I am not using it for the music-making aspect. Though honestly I'd probably keep it the same since being a child of the 80's and 90's I am nostalgic for samplers and sequencers.

Another big change since 2020 is the Music Modernization Act (MMA) which started to actually move (quite old) music recordings into the public domain. This adds significantly more audio to our collective crate of free sounds (I actually added a bunch more audio to Citizen DJ since my residency ended: https://citizen-dj.labs.loc.gov/public-domain-2022/ ). Given the leaps in easier-to-use ML tooling in the past few years, I could probably do a lot more around discovery and visualization of large amounts of audio.

I agree, this is one of the rare occasions one has an abundance of samples and content to work with. No generative ai required to have a lot of fun. Good job.

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