In short, it’s simple: you take the tracks, mix them, and put them out – that’s it. You don’t need any special permission or anything fancy. But as always, there are nuances.

First of all, some DJs think that if they buy music, for example, on Beatport, they can do whatever they want with these tracks: mix them in podcasts, put them into videos, or play them in cafes. But in fact, this is not quite true: speaking specifically about podcasts (videos and cafes are separate topics), from the legal point of view there is no difference between music that you buy and music that you download for free. I myself am all for buying music legally whenever possible, but you have to understand that in this context, buying music doesn’t give you any special rights compared to free downloaded music. Commercial or non-commercial use also makes no difference in this case.

Secondly, in general, you don’t need permission from artists and labels. However, if you want to put a podcast on YouTube and monetize your channel, in this case, you do need permission from the rights holders (they are usually labels, not artists), but this is a complicated and often unsuccessful process.

Third, you’re free to do whatever you want with the tracks themselves: trim, cut, and layer, or leave them as they are. It’s up to your DJ skills and what you want to do with them. You can do any length you want, too.

Finally, I would like to advise you to watch carefully the sites where you upload your podcast. In my experience:

• Soundcloud can block a track in the mix and hide the entire podcast episode from public access. In my ten years of using the service, this has happened once.
• Mixcloud accepts DJ mixes and podcasts, but only them: you can’t upload individual tracks or even use several tracks from the same artist in a row there.
• Apple Podcasts, according to my observations, are not moderated in any way, that is, mixes can be posted there (or at least not prohibited). Important point: Apple Podcasts is basically a directory of links, but not a repository. In other words, to add your podcasts to Apple Podcasts, your audio files must be stored somewhere – such a place on the Internet is called hosting. But typical web hosting services have a number of limitations and inconveniences, so it is easier and more convenient to add your podcasts to Apple Podcasts via some service – again Soundcloud, for example.
• Spotify Podcasts, on the other hand, are designed exclusively for talking podcasts: DJ mixes are not accepted there. That is, you can talk in the episodes, but you can’t play music. It seems like Spotify is working on making it possible to upload music mixes there as well in the future, but that’s about it for now.
• YouTube allows you to upload mixes, but with restrictions: you can’t monetize channels that use other people’s music if you want to in the future. Here you can either try to get permission from the rights holders to whitelist your channel (which is exactly what I wrote about above) or just give up on monetization.

I hope it helps.

How I keep my important files convenient and stored safely

I have three computers: a large desktop for home, a laptop for travel, and a smartphone that I always carry in my pocket. And I have set everything up in a way that allows me to work from any of them at any time. There is no such scenario where the file I need is left on another computer because I sync files using cloud services.

Most readers probably won’t learn anything new, but in 2021, I still meet people who, when they lose their phone, worry that they lost their address book with important numbers along with it. So let me tell you how it works for me.

Why syncing anything at all

It may seem that cloud sync is some kind of geeky or hipster thing. So here are some real-life examples of when it is useful:

Have a long commute? Start writing a blog on the phone and continue it later on the desktop computer at home.

Bored on a plane? Start making a track on a laptop and then I finish it off later in the studio.

Need a screenshot that you took on a desktop computer? No problem, open it on the phone.

Lost a phone? It’s undoubtedly unpleasant financially and morally, but not a problem from the point of view of information: you buy a new phone, log in with your credentials, and it becomes exactly the same.

Stand in the queue at the groceries store, and the promoter needs your high-resolution press photo for the poster right away? Just send it over from your phone since everything is in your pocket.

An hour before your DJ set at the club, you realize it would be cool to add a track you left in the ‘Downloads’ folder on your computer? Just access that folder on the laptop and make the dance floor happy.

These are just examples, but in general, the main principle that I try to use is simple: always have access to the necessary files so that I can do my business at any time and in any place.

Easy access to important files is the ability to do business anywhere

Photos, notes, to-do lists, calendars, contacts

I use iCloud to sync my photos, text notes, to-do lists, calendars, address book, and phone backups.

How I use to-do lists

Apple iCloud

iCloud is Apple’s cloud service, and I love how conveniently and seamlessly it works within their product ecosystem. Maybe there is something similar for Windows computers and Android phones, I don’t know. iCloud comes with all Apple’s devices by default, so you don’t have to do anything to make it work – it just works.

iCloud comes free with a small capacity, but you can pay extra and increase its space:

The free plan is enough for syncing text files, to-dos and calendars but not enough for photos. I use the 200GB plan because I have an extensive photo archive – about 22,000 photos and 1,300 videos. This plan (and above) can be used for a family of up to five.

iCloud is incredibly cool with photos. I have a 128GB phone, and most of this storage is constantly occupied by music, yet I can browse almost two hundred gigabytes of my photos. How so?

The thing is that if I don’t open some photo for a long time, iCloud leaves only a low-res version of it on the phone, thus freeing up space. However, as soon as I need this photo, the high-resolution version is unnoticeably downloaded from the cloud in the background.

Music library, personal and shared project files

I keep my entire twelve-thousand music library, Ableton projects, samples, design layouts, web, graphics, and other stuff in Dropbox.

Dropbox.com

Dropbox is a cloud storage service that integrates into your computer’s operating system. It looks like it’s just a local folder, except that all of its contents are accessible on all my devices. And that’s awesome!

For example, if I need to send a heavy file to someone, I just right-click on it, copy the link and send it to the recipient, because the file is already in the cloud. No file-sharing or waiting for a download.

The cost of Dropbox depends on the capacity and features:

I use the latter plan because I store a lot of stuff there and like some of the features.

The best part is the ability to sync files and folders selectively. You can leave some files only in the cloud, freeing up space on your computer, but still see those files locally.

Here is a real-life example. My main desktop computer has 3 TB of disk space. My music library takes up almost a third of it. At the same time, my laptop is 512 GB, but in iTunes, I can always see all the tracks of my collection and I can download or upload them back to the cloud at any time.

Documents and spreadsheets

For many years, I have been using Google Docs instead of the archaic Excel and Word. They are basically the same text editor and spreadsheets tools but online, which makes them accessible from all devices. Google Docs are easy to share with others.

Google Docs

No more “Oh, I left the Word file on my work computer so I can’t send it to you until Monday” nonsense. As a nice bonus: Google Docs is also free.

Passwords, payment details, document numbers and scans

Have you ever had a situation where you couldn’t remember the password to a site or service and couldn’t recover it? Or that you needed to send a scan of your passport for some business but had no way to scan it? Or that you had to fill out your insurance number somewhere, and you don’t know where it is?

Well, it used to happen to me all the time, so at some point, I got a password manager. Out of all the cross-platform apps, I liked 1Password best in terms of its features and interface, and I still use it.

1Password

1Password can store everything: logins from websites and social networks, document scans, bank cards, domain mail details, and server and database settings. All this data is encrypted and can be accessed using a master password (or fingerprint or facial recognition on Apple devices), which is not stored anywhere.

The service is available in two models: one-time purchase or subscription.

Backup of everything

Last but not least, backups. In case Dropbox or any other service I rely on stops working at some point, I keep all my files on another independent backup server. I use Backblaze for this purpose.

It works like this. You install the app on your computer and tell what you want to back up (the entire computer or individual folders) and when (continuous, scheduled or manual). I chose to back up everything every day, and that’s it – I sleep well.

Backblaze

It is essential to understand that Backblaze is a backup service, not file storage. In fact, it is a mirror that keeps an exact copy of your computer on its servers: if you delete a file from your computer, it will also be deleted from the cloud. This is to ensure that if at some point you need to restore all the data from a backup copy (let’s say if your hard drive crashes or your computer is stolen), the cloud will have the most recent copy.

And since these backups are stored in the cloud, they can be downloaded on another computer or even on your phone. Very convenient.

Backblaze costs $60 per year and has unlimited storage. If you sign up using my referral link, you and I will get a free month.

Perhaps after this post someone will say that One Drive is better than Dropbox. Or that it sucks, you should use Amazon Drive. Or that all of the above is nonsense, only your own server can be trusted. But none of that really matters at all. It is important to take care of the convenience and security of your work and personal data, which apps or services you choose is entirely up to you.

How to change the dynamics of a set using the mixing techniques

The easiest way to control the energy of a mix is to choose the appropriate tracks. If you want to raise the energy, you play a more upbeat track; if you want to lower the energy, you take a softer track. It’s simple.

How I organise my DJ library by energy, mood, and structure

But what if a DJ needs to stay in a certain tempo range and energy zone? For example, an opening DJ who can’t push the energy too far. How do you pick and mix tracks so the set is still dynamic and interesting? Why sometimes do cool tracks sound boring together in a mix?

I’ll tell you about two techniques that can help you answer these questions: mix density and harmonic mixing.

Mix density

Mix density is how often the tracks change and how deep they go into each other during transitions. A clear indicator of density is the number of tracks per hour.

Let’s say the average duration of the track is 7 minutes. If, in one hour, a DJ plays just 9-10 tracks, it means he plays them from the very beginning till the very end, so this set might seem sluggish. And if DJ plays 13-15 tracks in an hour, it means the tracks change each other more frequently, so the mix appears to be faster-paced.

Here is an example. Let’s take these two tracks:

Here’s the first option on how to mix them together:

Listen to what’s going on here:

Now listen to the second version of the mix:

What’s going on here:

Do you feel how much more driving the second version is than the first one? If not, listen carefully. Take your time.

Both versions have exactly the same tracks, but in the second example, the second track starts earlier, almost in the middle of the first track, so the mix sounds denser and more energetic.

Harmonic mixing

Harmonic mixing is the principle of matching tracks based on their keys. If you select tracks in certain keys, then the transition between such tracks sounds musically pleasant. I wrote about it four years ago, read it if you are interested to know more.

However, in the context of this article, we are interested not in principle itself but in the fact that it allows us to control the energy of the mix. We’re talking about energy here, remember?

For example, I’ll put these two tracks together first:

This is what I got:

Note that the tracks have the same key – Em, so switching the bass from the first track to the second track at 1:10 is as seamless as possible.

Now I’ll mix that same track, ‘Driver’, but this time with another track, ‘Delirious’ by Matan Caspi, which is in key Bm. Here’s the track itself:

This is what transition I got:

Here, the transition occurs at 1:10 too, and as the second track has a different key – Bm, this time the bass change immediately seems more energetic, or noticeable at least.

Now comes the most important part. Notice that I didn’t say that any example is better than another. Mix density and harmonic mixings are just tools and nothing else. Sometimes playing several tracks in a row with the same key is good. Sometimes playing just 8 tracks in an hour mix is good. And sometimes, changing the energy using these techniques is good. There is no right and wrong as it’s all situational; however, knowing these tools is crucial for playing good sets.

Mix density and harmonic mixing are the tools in a DJ’s arsenal. They don’t make the sets better or worse on their own, but knowing and using them at the right time is important

To read interesting blogs and pages on the Internet, I use a thing called RSS. Turns out, not many people know about RSS, so I will tell you what it is and how to use it.

The problem with following on social media

It usually goes like this. When you discover an interesting person or brand, you want to follow them. For example, you find and follow a musician on Instagram or another social network. You’re interested in the person or their work, so you subscribe to their page to get new content from them. Seems logical.

The problem is that the algorithmic social media feeds don’t do a very good job of showing you the content of the authors you subscribe to. To be clear, they don’t have that task at all.

Let’s suppose you are subscribed to the Facebook page of someone you are interested in, but that person rarely posts anything there, once a month or even once every three months. And if the page has few posts and its posts get not many ”likes,” the algorithm of the social networks considers this page “uninteresting” and may not show its new post in your feed. This is known to everyone trying to run their social media pages. In my experience, on average, posts on social networks are only shown to 10-15% of the page followers.

On top of that, as soon as you go to any social network, you are attacked from all sides by notifications, banners, reposts from some unknown friends, advertising, and cats. That is, even if you try to open Instagram or Facebook for something useful, you are inevitably confronted with a bunch of unnecessary information that no one asked for. (Of course, if the goal is just to kill time, then social networks are great, but that’s a conversation for another topic altogether).

In addition to social networks, there are periodicals, blogs and other sites. For example, in the post about the benefits of blogs I advised starting blogging on your own domain. But it begs the question: how do you read content scattered across dozens of different sites? Usually, people follow pages on social media for this exact reason, to read all posts in one app. Also, most people and even brands don’t have their own standalone blogs, so there is no place to follow them except social networks. What to do then?

This is where it’s time to talk more about RSS.

What is RSS

RSS (which stands for Really Simple Syndication) is a way to subscribe to any updated content. RSS can be used to subscribe to anything with a so-called feed: blogs, social media pages, and even services like Soundcloud or YouTube.

It’s important to understand that RSS is not a specific app, but an open technology. Like email, for example. RSS has been around for decades, and it’s all the more surprising that so few people know about it.

How to use RSS

To subscribe and read content using RSS, you need a special app, a reader. It’s like for web surfing we use browsers such as Safari or Chrome, so for reading content on RSS you need an app too.

I use an app called Reeder 5. Here is what it looks like:

Reeder 5 on macOS

If you are on a Mac, I highly recommend this particular reader: it looks great, works great and syncs quickly between devices via iCloud.

If you are a Windows user, check out Feedly. It works right in your browser, like Gmail for email. Feedly is not as cool as Reeder, but nothing better for Windows as far as I know.

To add someone to my reader app, or to subscribe to someone, I click the “plus sign” at the top left (I press the ⌘+N shortcut, of course) and paste the page’s web address. This way I sort of form my personal newsfeed of those authors I’m interested in, even if one is on Instagram, another is on Facebook, and the third is a news website, for example.

The best thing about RSS

The RSS reader allows you to group authors into folders, mark posts as unread, and add them to favourites. Also, there are no annoying ads, reposts, or other information garbage in RSS. That’s all great, but it’s not the best thing.

The best thing is that the content is waiting for you rather than demanding your attention here and now. Social networks are like this: if you haven’t been there for a day or two, all recent posts are already “drowned” in your feed. Many people develop the so-called FOMO because of this — an obsessive fear of missing out on something interesting that is provoked by social networking.

On the RSS, the posts are always waiting for you regardless of any algorithms and precisely in the chronological order in which the authors published them. Obviously, if you won’t open an RSS app for months, you may accumulate a lot of posts. Well, and that’s totally okay — they’ll be waiting, so take your time and enjoy reading later.

in RSS, the content is waiting for you rather than demanding your attention here and now

I’ve even noticed this: after I practically stopped mindlessly spending hours using social media, and instead started very selectively subscribing to specific authors of interest to me by RSS, I began to feel much better about myself. Less anxiety, less procrastination. More control, more usefulness. I can’t guarantee you’ll feel the same way, but this is how I feel.

How to add social media pages to RSS

To subscribe by RSS, all you have to do is put the page’s address into the reader, as I wrote above. But under the hood, things are a bit trickier: for a site to be added to the RSS reader, it must have a special file with special formatting, which is where all the new posts are collected. This file is called feed. Most news sites and blogs have such a file.

Usually, you don’t need to know this because the reader finds this file on the site. For example, if you paste the address of my blog dsokolovskiy.com/blog/ into the reader, the app will quietly search my feed link and actually subscribe to dsokolovskiy.com/blog/rss/, because this is my blog’s feed address. You probably won’t even notice such technical detail, and again, this knowledge is usually unnecessary.

However, it’s a little different with social networks. If you paste a link to, for example, an Instagram profile, the reader will likely give you an error: “Sorry, there is no feed at this address”. Social networks are doing everything they can to retain an audience within their platforms to show people more ads and simply don’t generate feeds for user pages. Social networks don’t want you to read their posts at a convenient time and in a convenient RSS reader, bypassing ads and notifications of new likes from your friends.

Fortunately, there are services like RSS Bridge and RSS.app that turn content from third-party services into feeds that readers can understand. Just exactly what we need! It works for Instagram, Telegram, Mixcloud, and many other sites that don’t generate the feed file themselves. I’ve been using these services for quite a long time, so I recommend them.

Bonus: who to subscribe to

At different times my RSS reader has had anywhere from a few dozen to several hundred authors. From time to time I unsubscribe from some, and add others. It’s such a living, ongoing process. But if you’re just starting out or have decided to try using the RSS, here are a few sources and people I recommend subscribing to:

DJ TechTools, DJ community. They write about equipment, software, artists, and industry news.

Sound On Sound: Recording & Mixing, a podcast about recording and mixing music from one of the oldest music magazines. They share how to make transients, in what order to put the effects chain, how to use dynamic equalization, and other subtleties.

Concept Art World, a showcase of digital artists and conceptual art. They post illustrations of stunning beauty. These works inspire half of the tracks I’ve written.

John 00 Fleming, DJ, producer, and owner of the JOOF Recordings label, where I help him with A&R. Aside from announcing tours, new releases, and other typical artist content, John is one of the few who gives interesting behind-the-scenes details about his DJ career and perspective on the industry. You can learn a lot from him if you want to.

Blog posts about John Fleming

Jason Fried, entrepreneur, co-author of Basecamp, Hey, and the books Rework and Remote. He gives an interesting perspective on business, management, marketing and PR.

Jason Fried on marketing by sharing

Ilya Birman — designer, DJ, creator of the blog engine on which my blog runs. He writes about product and navigation design, music, philosophy, life.

Well, subscribe to my blog too, of course!

If you know any cool authors or magazines to read – post link in the comments, I’d love to subscribe to them too.

When things are pretty quiet here, it may seem that nothing happens from my end, but it’s actually the opposite.

Those who have been following me for a while know that I’m passionate not only about music but also about education in the music industry, and my blog with over a hundred articles is a testament to this.

Now I’m working on a full-fledged training course for DJs and producers. There won’t be recipes for quick success, promises of world fame after the first release, or abstractions from theorists. Instead, it will be a consistent learning system and practical advice from personal experience.

I can’t tell you yet when the course will be available, but if you’re interested — leave your email and I’ll let you know when it launches: dsokolovskiy.com/courses/.