In many cases, the place you research what tunes to buy and where you buy them from are exactly the same place. Online download sites and high street stores can all give you lots of information about the music available. Follow these DJ Tips…

1. INCREDIBLE! MORE TIPS:
Researching And Buying
Your TunesDJ TIPS

2. — In many cases, the place you
research what tunes to buy and
where you buy them from are
exactly the same place. Online
download sites and high street
stores can all give you lots of
information about the music
available. Follow these DJ Tips…

3. — BUYING MP3S
— MP3s have taken over as a music format, not only for the
DJ but also for a huge amount of the population, for the
simple reason that because you most commonly buy them
online, they’re easy, instant and cheap to buy.
— Downloading iTunes software from www.apple.com/
and accessing the iTunes store is a fantastic way to
purchase and download a wide variety of popular and rare
genres of music. The great benefit is that you can buy
single tracks on an album you like instead of the entire
album. Spending 0.99 on one track you like instead of
$15 on an entire album saves a lot of money in the long
run.

4. — For a similar approach aimed more towards the
electronic dance music DJ, download sites such
as Traxsource http://www.traxsource.com or DJTUNES
http://www.djtunes.com
— Most online music download sites enable you to
preview the track before buying it, just to make
sure it’s the tune or mix that you want to buy –
and that you like it! These previews are usually a
small snippet of a tune, so if you haven’t heard
the entire thing, be careful – you may be running
the risk of it going somewhere strange!

5. — AVOIDING MUSICAL HOLES
— If you’re relying on a review or recommendation to
pick out a tune you haven’t heard, or have only
heard a preview of online, try to find a way to listen
to the whole thing to make sure that it doesn’t have
a ‘musical hole’ in the middle. (Radio shows, clubs
and Electro WOW may help with this.)
— What I mean by a musical hole is that a tune can be
beautiful for the first couple of minutes, but then
turn to musical mush in the middle. For some
ungodly reason, the artist decided to kill everything
and play 20 seconds of a car alarm going off.

6. — This point has further implications if you’re
buying tunes to play that evening in a club
or at a party. Unless you really trust the
person who’s recommending the record, be
sure to listen to it from start to finish.

7. — CHOOSING WHAT TO BUY
— You can find a lot of music on the market, and you
need a way to find the good eggs and avoid the
bad. Start reading music blogs and DJ magazines
and pay particular attention to the record reviews.
— You may make a couple of mistakes and go on wild
goose chases, but eventually you’re likely to find a
reviewer with the same taste as you. You can trust
what he or she says about a new record so you can
pay particular attention to that tune next time you
go shopping. You needn’t die by a reviewer’s advice,
but write-ups are a good place to start.

8. — Try listening with an open mind to specialist radio shows, such as Pete Tong,
Judge Jules and Zane Lowe on Radio 1 www.bbc.co.uk/radio1 where you can
listen again to the show online and read the tracklist. Going back and
listening to the show again is a good idea because you can get distracted the
first time around and miss the little hook in a tune that turns it from okay to
wahey! And face facts, sometimes the DJ says the title or artist a bit too fast
to catch so you need to hear it again, or read an online tracklist.
— Online DJ charts such as those at www.dmcworld.com/charts can give you a
great deal of information about what’s popular in a variety of different
genres. DJ homepages, online forums and MP3 download sites like Beatport
contain charts from popular DJs too, so you can take a look at what your
favourite DJ is currently playing and pick out tunes you might like to play.
— Eventually, to supplement the advice you get from radio shows, magazines
and websites, you may end up standing in front of a huge rack of records or
CDs, or navigating an online MP3 store library, reading the blurb the store
has written about a tune and trying to decide whether you’ll like it or not.

9. — You can supplement what the store writes about a tune by
considering the label and artist. When you’ve bought enough
music, listened to enough radio shows and read enough
magazines, you’ll start to show an affinity toward certain
labels and artists. If most of the records you like are released
on a similar range of labels, always focus on them first. Even
the big labels sign a few turkeys, but going back to a familiar
label is a good way to thin out a lot of rubbish that gets
released.
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