Sometimes, before the sleep, I read a book to my son. It begins with a train coming through the darkness:

Clickety-clack!

As it should be – with a honking, roaring engine, clattering wheels, and a cloud of steam:

Wondrous sight!

I will not retell the entire book, and go straight to the finale (spoiler alert!): in fact, the train turns out to be a toy train, and everything that happened to it was in the boy’s dream.

It was just a dream. A book ”Steam Train, Dream Train” by Sherri Duskey Rinker and Tom Lichtenheld

I liked this simple idea so much that I wanted to implement it in a track. To make something powerful, straightforward, in a sense even monotonous – like a train that goes on and on without stopping; but at the same time mysterious and atmospheric.

Perhaps some people have already guessed. The phrases the dreams, dream machine and we can fly from my track “A Train Into Darkness” are a direct reference to this book and a subtle hint that everything that happens in the track is also a dream:

That’s why the track is intentionally hypnotic and even a bit dreamy, that’s what I wanted to portray. However, it turned out that this track works well not only in dreams, but when you are awake too:

That’s how, unexpectedly, even for myself, a children’s book became the basis for a serious track.

The single “A Train Into Darkness” will be released next Monday, February 8, and is already available for pre-order on Beatport and presave on Spotify:

Stream or download

Websites of popular artist music distribution services

Vlad, I’ll tell you right away that I personally didn’t release music directly through distributors. All my releases are signed on the labels, so I didn’t deal with distributors. What I do know on this subject is my general knowledge of the music industry, so take it with a grain of salt.

Why release music on your own

I see three main reasons why someone might want to release music on their own, without labels:

Timing control. With labels it’s usually like this: you send them a demo, and wait. You wait a week, two weeks, sometimes three. Then the label says: “Sorry, your track doesn’t work for us.” You send it to another label, you wait again. If you’re lucky, they accept the track, and then you wait again – for the release date. Some labels have dozens of releases in the pipeline, so sometimes you have to wait for your release for half a year or more. With self-releases, you don’t have this problem  – you release as much as you want, whenever you want.

How to send a demo to a record label

Financial control. All the labels I know have a rather complicated, non-transparent, and slow reporting system. As a rule, the sales report comes either quarterly or semiannually, reflecting the previous reporting period. That said, some labels put a minimum threshold on royalty transfers of $100 to simplify accounting, meaning they withhold anything below that amount for themselves, and thus aspiring producers may not see any income for years. To be fair, sales and streaming really don’t bring in much, so it’s not the labels’ fault here. Anyway, by releasing music on your own, you see all your pennies earned and can withdraw them at any time.

Read also the truth about music sales and how much I’ve earned on the album sales

Creative freedom. Usually labels release music in a certain style, concept, and sound – it’s called a format. But sometimes they follow their own format so literally that they release tracks that are almost no different from each other. They say they are looking for originality, but in fact, they accept only the same-sounding tracks. The independent release of your own music allows you not to adjust to any format and make whatever you like.

Now I suggest we look at the specifics of distributor work.

Without a label, you can release whatever you want, whenever you want, and have 100% income from it

Cost

First, I think it’s important to understand what distributors are like and what their financial models are. Two of the most famous and popular ones are DistroKid and CD Baby; Spotify also recommends them.

Spotify: recommended distributors

These distributors have two fundamentally different payment models:

Subscription. DistroKid charges $20 a year for an unlimited number of releases. For that amount, you can have a release every week like Stan Kolev, but the key here is “per year”: if you don’t renew your subscription after your last paid period ends, all your music will be pulled off from the streaming services. In fact, if you choose a distributor with a subscription, you’ll basically be committed to paying every year for the rest of your life. DistroKid doesn’t take a commission, which means that 100% of your income goes to you.

It’s also worth noting that $20 a year is the minimum basic version with a limited set of features. For example, if you want to choose the exact future date of your release, that costs $36 a year.

One-time. CD Baby charges $10 for a single and $30 for an album, but only once for life. They take an additional 9% commission from the income, which leaves you with 91%.

CD Baby also has advanced versions which cost $30 for a single and $70 for an album respectively. The main difference between the regular and the “pro” versions is the publishing administration included in the price, we’ll talk about that below.

You should also have in mind the mastering and cover artworks cost, which in the case of self-release you also have to do yourself: either with your own money or with your own time.

For a self-release, you have to pay with your money and your time

Publishing

The main functions of a distributor are to put music on streaming platforms and then collect royalties from them, i.e. income. But income from music can come not only in this form, but also in other, less obvious ways: from the use of music in videos, from playback on Internet radio stations, and so on.

There are three main types of royalties: mechanical, synchronization, and public performance. I’ll write more about it someday

Now, by default, almost all distributors don’t collect these kinds of royalties. For example, some vlogger used your track in his video, and that video got millions of views. If you don’t worry about it beforehand, you won’t get anything out of that million views using your track, even though you could.

For example, DistroKid doesn’t collect royalties from anywhere except the platforms where it delivers music. The exception is YouTube: for an extra $5 per single and $15 per album per year, plus a 20% commission on revenue from YouTube.

CD Baby has a royalty fee collection included in the “pro” versions I talked about above. If your tracks get played on radio stations, clubs, or anywhere else, CD Baby will collect royalties to you as the author.

Those who work with DistroKid and other similar distributors usually have to use separate royalty collection services. For example, one such service is Songtrust. It costs $100 for a one-time registration, and then takes a 15% commission on the royalties collected.

Platforms

Every distributor has a list of platforms they deliver music to. As a rule, they all work with major streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, Deezer, and others.

So, all such distributors don’t deliver music to Beatport, because you have to have a label to be placed on Beatport. For example, DistroKid technically does it, but your music ends up on their label page, where all the music they’ve distributed that way is mixed up, which isn’t great in my opinion. The only exception I’m aware of is the distributor called Record Union: for $60 a year, it will deliver music to many platforms, including Beatport, though publishing administration is not included.

Some producers create their own labels with the sole role of putting their own music on Beatport, but that’s another story.

To release directly or not

Everything I wrote above is distributor features that are important to consider. But whether they are pros or cons depends solely on your goals, plan, and strategy.

For example, some people can’t imagine releasing music without being on Beatport, while others care only about streaming services and don’t care about Beatport. Or someone releases a single a year, so it’s okay to pay $30 for distribution through CD Baby, and someone releases a single every few weeks, so DistroKid might be more suitable for them.

Whether or not to release music directly depends solely on your personal goals, plan, and strategy

Personally, I think that whatever distributor you choose, an independent release, unlike a label, won’t give you the most important thing, which is your name’s affiliation with the brand. It’s like a quality mark that others say, “Oh, that producer’s from Anjuna!” Well, or Drumcode, Armada, Toolroom, you name it — any credible label in their genre. When your name is associated with a label like that, it gives you extra value, credibility, and an audience, which in turn can help to open up new possibilities.

What record labels do

What’s more important to you is up to you.

A few thoughts on the pictures from DJs’ gigs and advice based on my own failure

First of all, the most obvious: photos are a good thing. They’re personal memories that feel good to revisit and share with others. Who doesn’t love pictures?

Now the slightly less obvious: Pictures of DJs’ gigs are your work assets. If a DJ has good pictures from his gigs, it’s easier for promoters to work with him: to run an advertising campaign for the upcoming event, to sell tickets. Also, photos from performances help to remove fears of potential promoters: when you see a DJ behind the club gear in front of live people, you know that at least he has such experience, which means less chance that he will screw up (remember that decent DJs are pretty rare). And, of course, photos are great content for visual communication for your blogs and social media.

Read what about social media John Fleming and Ace Ventura

Finally, something that would seem unobvious or even wrong to many at first glance: making sure that a DJ gets photos of the gigs is the DJ’s own job. I’m not talking about how to get those gigs (that’s a big separate topic), but about the photos from them.

It’s the DJ’s job to get pictures of his gigs

When I was young and inexperienced, I used to think something like this: “Since the organizer is doing the event, he most likely hires a photographer. And since there’s going to be a photographer at the event, that means I, as the DJ, will have some great shots from there, especially when I’m an international artist in the lineup. Right?”.

With these thoughts in mind, I flew to my first international gigs in Switzerland in 2014, then to Hungary in 2015, then to Switzerland again in 2017, and soon to Greece. Events in different countries with big lineups of international artists; big clubs and festivals. Guess how many pictures of me are from there? The answer is zero. None. At least I’ve kept the posters, or else it was like there were none. Wonder how that’s possible?

See all my posts about the shows: posters, photos, mixes and other snippets from the tour

Well, the thing is, when organizers hire photographers, they do this for a very different reason. For the organizer, the main goal of the photos is to make people want to come to their next events. To do that, they usually try to show a good mood, people, vibe, location, deco, and all that that typically catches people’s eyes. And that’s not necessarily DJs at all.

For example, this is what one of such shots can look like:

Shankra Festival, Lostallo, Switzerland, 2017. The photo is cool, but not about me

I ended up having great gigs, but there’s not a single shot of me from there to use as my asset. Don’t be like me.

After realizing it was a complete failure, I’ve since made it a rule to hire photographers myself — not for the entire events, but specifically for my sets.

When you hire a photographer, you can explain to him what angles to shoot and from what not to; he certainly will not be late for your set; you probably won’t have to wait for the photos for weeks; the files will be in high resolution and thus they can be used even for posters, or anywhere. With this approach, I now have several hundred good pictures that I use for promotional needs, social media, podcast covers, and other uses.

I add the best shots in high resolution to a special page for promoters and press

Of course, I’m not the first to think of this. I remember in 2018 noticing that Boris Brejcha is touring the world, yet almost all the photos on his Instagram are signed by only a few photographers. In other words, Brejcha doesn’t rely on local photographers from the organizers (who, of course, are certainly present and take photos of Brejcha anyway), but he flies with his own, trusted guys.

Boris Brejcha on Instagram

Boris Brejcha in Moscow, 2018. Photo: Ruben Schmitz. The pictures like this “sell” well very

At the time, I thought it was a great idea and started doing the same thing. As an artist, I don’t gather stadiums of people like Brejcha, but even if there are only a hundred people on the dance floor, you can still ask the photographer to take at least a few close-up shots of the DJ — shots like that are useful and important too.

Me at a gig at Gorod Club, Moscow, 2018. Photo: Pavel Tzimisce. A nice, working shot even without the stadium of people

All in all, DJs, a word of advice: don’t rely on the luck of the draw, but hire photographers yourself. These investments are worth it.

I asked my wife to listen to a track I recently finished, and after listening to the whole thing she said: “Wow, I like it! It doesn’t sound like Daniel Lesden style at all!”. Do you get it, right? She liked the track because it didn’t sound like me! :-) But oddly enough, to me it sounded like a compliment.

That scene makes me think about what people call a signature style. A ‘trademark sound’. Is it a good thing to have as a music producer?

To be honest, I have mixed feelings about it.

On the one hand, it’s nice to recognize a producer you like when hearing a track for the first time: “Yeah I know that synth, that must be that guy!”. But on the other hand, I think there is a thin line between a ‘signature sound’ and a simple ‘copy-and-paste’ where some producers just keep making the same-sounding tracks over and over, years after years.

Personally, I like going out of the comfort zone to make something fresh, something that I haven’t done before. New kick, new bassline, different tempo, new sound design, and new techniques and arrangement tricks. And although the result may not be liked by everyone, that feeling of accepting and accomplishing the challenge really worth it.

My new single is coming out in October, and I’ll share the preview next week. In the meantime, I’m curious what do you think about it? Do you prefer a tried and proven sound from a producer you know, or do you cheer and appreciate out-of-the-box music experiments even when the outcome sounds different to what you get used to?

During my DJ sets, I try to put a laptop next to the decks when possible. But it’s not there to run a DJ program like many people think whether it’s Traktor or Rekordbox or something, but for a clock. A big and bold clock on a dark screen that shows the current time:

For me, the clock is a kind of anchor to reality, a reference point in time and space, which helps me to better plan the tracks during a set.

I don’t pre-plan my sets in advance, but once I get in the DJ booth, I kind of understand how I’m going to build a set: which track I’m going to put next, what vibe I want to come to in half an hour and on which note I want to finish my performance.

With standard shorter sets, it’s relatively easy. You just play a dozen tracks, and it gives you an indicator that half of the set has already passed. Although, I still worry ‘Do I have time to drop that awesome tracks before my set time ends?’. But playing 5-6-hour open-to-close sets without clocks seems impossible to me at all.

Of course, there’s a clock on the phone, but I don’t like staring at the phone during the set. It doesn’t seem to be very respectful of people on the dance floor, as if I was checking my email or social media there. Wristwatches do not fit either because you need to twist the wrist, which is almost always busy on the deck or mixer, and on the small screen is not so clear. The big screen of the notebook on the side but in a constant field of view is ideal in this regard.

Also, the clock helps to finish the set on time. I’ve never had a problem with it, but I know a lot of times when the next DJ comes for a switch-over and the other DJ says, “YEAH, SURE! JUST ONE MORE TRACK!”. And then there’s more. In the end, the next DJ starts ten minutes later and gets nervous, the timeline of the event shifts, and it’s not good. Sometimes there is the promoter or a special stage manager who watches over strict timings, but I think that’s the DJ’s area of responsibility to respect the timing.

Anyway, DJs, please watch the clock.

Last summer, I performed in London for the second time, and this time I also managed to visit the legendary Ministry Of Sound. I will tell you about the club and my impressions.

The Box, main dancefloor

How did I get there

I flew to London on June 14, the day before my show. By touring standards, this is just an unprecedented amount free of time, so I would use this opportunity to visit one of the attractions. The Ministry Of Sound was number one on my list.

The night before, I discovered that the progressive house veterans Quivver, Hernan Cattaneo and Dave Seaman would be playing as part of the Sudbeat label party, so I decided to combine business with pleasure: go to the club to explore and listen to good music.

Event poster for 14 June 2019

Emma, the promoter who had arranged my booking, was kind enough to put me on the guest list, with access to the VIP lounge. Of course, I usually don’t need the privileges of a VIP person, but it would be nice to see all areas of the club, so I was very grateful for this opportunity. A regular ticket would have cost me £30.

About the club

The Ministry is five minutes from the Bakerloo line’s Elephant & Castle tube station. On the way to the club, there are signs asking to respect the neighbours:

Show some respect

The entrance is unremarkable, apart from the club logo on the railings and the projection of the adjacent building:

I came almost to the doors opening, so there was no queue. At the entrance, security politely asked me if I had a ticket, and I told them I was on the guest list. A man ran a metal detector over me, and I went through. Everything was swift and friendly.

I wasn’t wearing any coats, so I didn’t use the checkroom or remember it. As far as I know, the cloakroom is a charge of £3.

The club has four dance floors, each with its own name: The 103, The Box, The Baby Box and The Loft.

The 103

The 103 is the first dance floor you come into after entering. The bar along the long side makes this room a hangout place and a pre-party before the main action of the night.

The DJ booth is located in the far and almost unlit corner of the dance floor, which only indirectly confirms my assumption about the purpose of this place. On the opposite side of the bar are steps to the balcony, from where you can view the entire dance floor.

The club filled up quickly, and by midnight it was pretty crowded:

The 103 dance floor right after the doors, opening and two hours later

Dave Siman and Steve Perry were behind the decks all night long. As per usual, they played house, tech house, and progressive house:

My main discovery was the crowd: a good third of the visitors were Chinese. I would never have guessed that! People in the know explained that there was a university near the club, where many wealthy Chinese studied, so going to the Ministry was something like a student night out to them. They got drunk fast, though, so they soon left the dancefloor.

You get to the VIP area if you go up the stairs and to the left. From there, you can see The 103 dance floor on one side from the balcony and The Box through the windows on the other side:

VIP area. The pictures were taken at about 10:40 p.m., so it’s still empty. I don’t know how it was afterwards because I didn’t come up here again

The Box

The Box is the main dance floor and the main pride of the club. They don’t open it immediately, but only when The 103 gets crowded enough – until then, it’s closed with doors and heavy curtains. This night it opened at 00:30.

On the aisle to the dance floor there is a warning sign about the loud sound, and as it turned out a few seconds later – for a good reason:

Caution!

There is no bar or even any seating around the edges of this dance floor. Just dancing and fantastic sound.

It is worth telling more about the sound. Usually, in clubs, speakers are near the stage, so if you get close, the sound is too loud, and if you move to the corner of the dance floor, it’s too quiet. As a result, you look for the perfect place on the dance floor, a little sweet spot where you feel comfortable.

But at the Ministry Of Sound, it’s a whole different story. The dance floor of The Box is almost square, and the speakers are arranged around its perimeter so that everything sounds equally excellent in every part. As soon as you step inside, the punchy soundwaves immerse you, and this pleasant feeling of sound pressure remains equal at any point on the dancefloor. So, in short, the Ministry Of Sound has the best sound system I’ve ever heard and felt.

the Ministry Of Sound has the best sound system I’ve ever heard and felt

Here are some technical details from the audio manufacturer who handled this project:

Martin Audio’s R&D Director, Jason Baird designed what is now the timeless six-stack 5-way hybrid sound field. Designing custom versions of the AS118 bass and Wavefront W8C mid-high cabinets, with two 21” ASX subs form the base of each of the six stacks around the perimeter of the dancefloor, coupled with a custom horn flare. The flare not only met the MoS management brief that the design should retain the physical presence of the old stacks, but at the same time enabled more output to be generated with better horizontal directivity. “By accurately aiming the stacks, we could broaden out the low frequencies to cover the whole of the dancefloor,” he rationalised.

The development of The Ministry Of Sound with Martin Audio

At The Box, I only caught Quiver, who played until two in the morning. It was an excellent progressive house set:

The change with Hernan Cattaneo. I didn’t get to hear much of him this time, unfortunately

The Baby Box and The Loft

I got to The Baby Box and The Loft by accident and didn’t even know they existed until that night. The Baby Box has little light, almost a dark room. The Loft, on the contrary, has more light than usual, as well as an extra bar and sofas – such a chill zone. I understand these dance floors are places for up-and-coming local DJs, so they are not even on the poster.

***

The reasonable part of me thought it would be a good idea to get some sleep the night before my own show, so I went home at about 02:30.

And on the way out of the club, I found a smoking area, which was larger than the two small dance floors combined:

The smoking area on the way out is another big area with a separate bar. I wonder what it’s like in the winter?

Read also: how I went to Printworks London.

At Skazka Festival two hours prior to the doors opening. Photo: Schneider Family

No matter when my set time is, at 1 or 4 AM, I always try to arrive at the venue prior to the doors opening, especially if it’s the first time.

Is all the equipment functioning properly? Is the volume of the DJ monitors controlled by the Booth Monitor knob? Does it have sufficient overall volume, or should I ask the sound engineer to turn it up? How does the acoustics sound in this room? Won’t that spotlight over there hit my eyes?

Does LINK work? Is the USB port for the USB stick broken, or should I play from my SD card today? Is this the right deck model for me, or is it better to get a controller out of the backpack? Is there room on the table for a laptop, and if it isn’t enough, how can I move everything to make other artists feel comfortable too? Where should I put the recorder?

Are sound guy and stage manager here? What do they look like, and where to find them in the middle of the night if necessary?

What’s the audience like tonight and what’s they up to? What tracks do other DJs play? How do people react to them?

And it is only a tiny part of the technical and organisational questions. Of course, you can’t think of everything, but if you know at least these moments in advance and not five minutes before your set in the middle of the night, chances for a successful performance slightly increase.

At the invitation of Rave People, I answered some more questions in a series of mini-interviews prior to Open To Close.

How do you prepare for an OTC? How do you physically withstand such marathons? Do you feel hungry during a performance?

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

The main preparation for my performances is to fill the music collection and prepare the tracks. I even have written a big article about preparing tracks. I consider the tracks building blocks for different situations on the dance floor, so I think about it in the following way: “So, what do I have from dark and drive for peak time? I’ve played this track before, so I won’t play it next time. Oh, this one’s cool! This one and that one would be good in the mix with it. So, what about the more melodic one, but with the same level of energy?». This way, I try to have enough material to build interesting sets on the go. Open To Close in this sense is a real test!

In my past Open To Close experience, playing a long set was not as difficult physically as I had imagined it would be. I often go to raves, so the body is prepared to dance all night long. And sometimes I also run, which adds to my endurance.

The main preparation for my performances is to fill the music collection and prepare the tracks

Of course, I’m getting hungry because I arrive at least a few hours before the set and in total, I’m spending good ten hours at the venue. That’s why I have such a big backpack – I carry delicious things in it :-).

January, 25, Guru Bar. More info.

Buy tickets

On January 25th I will play a 6-hour set, and in the meantime, Rave People team asked me about the intricacies of such a challenging performance.

In 2019 you already performed in the Open To Close format. What was the hardest thing for you to do?

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Generally speaking, the most important and at the same time, the most difficult thing in the DJ booth is the ability to put the right track at the right time. The music collection I told you about last time is also important, but if a DJ can’t put together a whole story from individual tracks during a set, then the price of such a collection is a penny.

It’s one thing to keep people’s attention and interest on the dance floor for an hour or two, and it’s completely another thing to do it by yourself all night long. You can safely say that such performance is a true test of DJ skills.

Specifically, last time I had the hardest time restraining myself in order not to play all the most “fire” tracks at once. When you know that you have all night long at your disposal, you have to allocate your resources, including music, in a very different way. Open To Close is a marathon, not a sprint.

Open To Close is a marathon, not a sprint. you have to allocate your resources, including music, in a very different way

January, 25, Guru Bar. More info.

Buy tickets

In anticipation of my solo performance on January 25th, I gave a series of small interviews to the Rave People team to give behind-the-scenes details of myself and the event.

How did you come up with the idea of performing in such an unusual Open To Close format? How is it fundamentally different from your usual performances and what should we expect?

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

The idea came out of a natural desire to share music.

Usually, when a DJ is invited to a gig, he is expected to fulfill a certain role: open the event, warm up before the headliner, and so on. Inside this role, the DJ is quite musically stiff. It’s not bad, but rather good when a DJ understands such limitations. However, my music collection and taste, on the contrary, are not limited by any one genre, style, pace.

I started collecting music consciously long before I decided to build a music career, so a rich and diverse media library is a natural part of me. When the audience sees the performance it’s only the tip of the iceberg, the real work of the DJ is in the selection and finding those rare gems.

The set is just the tip of the iceberg, the real DJ’s work takes place hours upon hours digging through music

Open To Close is an opportunity to express all the music and the vision that I have had (and continue to have) for years without limitations. So expect music that is deep, sensual, funny, dark, aggressive, calm, energetic; house, trance, techno; in short, there will be a lot of things, and therefore very interesting.

January, 25, Guru Bar. More info.

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