Native Instruments UK #futureofdjing
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OPEN FLOOR: What is the #FutureOfDJing?

Native Instruments UK #futureofdjingYesterday, I broke free from the ample confines of the Worxlab, and took a trip to London to visit the rather swanky new offices of Native Instruments UK in allegedly trendy Shoreditch (looks like everywhere else in London if you ask me). There I saw… well I can’t and won’t talk about what I saw, but their new hashtag of #futureofdjing was quite prevalent, and is very much a key part of their marketing push. So for a change, I’m opening up the floor to the DJWORX community — what do you feel is THE FUTURE OF DJING?

I’m sure you have many theories (possibly conspiratorial) about where DJing is going. So tell us. I’m not going to lead you at all, but simply open up the floor for you all to speculate, theorise, dream, and otherwise ponder where things are going. Don’t just limit this to NI’s potential roadmap, but include all the players in the DJ market. Paint some broad strokes, or get minutely detailed. What do you wish for in your wildest dreams? What do you hope for? Or being grounded, what are your realistic expectations of what will actually happen?

The floor is open, and unrestricted. Yes… you sir at the back… what is the #futureofdjing?

 

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Mark Settle
The Old Owner
I was the editor around these parts for the first two decades of the DJWORX journey. I’m on a creative journey at The Worxlab, and drop in occasionally here. Expect the odd article from me every now and again.
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59 Comments

  1. Fortunately I am too old to worry about it all, for me right now I can’t see a future for the “DJ”. Machines have made morons into public heroes for pushing buttons. Taste, talent and skill seem to have been pushed aside to make way for marketable “products”. We will have more and more advances in technology and music scenes will come and go, but I doubt we will ever see true DJ’s in the future. We will never get back to two decks and a mixer unless it’s for a “retro” night … I know I sound cynical even pessimistic …but I did say I was too old :)

    2. I’m reading today about how the UK government is considering allowing driverless cards on the roads but law. So the concept of DJless clubs isn’t unrealistic. Maybe manufacturers will start working on ways to interact directly with the clubbers more.

      1. The way that Pioneer are going, thats a distinct possibility, one major star (i can’t say DJ) being broadcast around the globe. The real issue though is music choice, when the real DJ disappears so will the music. DJ companies will influence the music being played and we may even get back to the days of payola (I did say I was old).

        1. The more the mainstream pushes cookie cutter pop crap onto the dancefloors the further the real heart of the culture will retreat into the underground.. There will always be an underground, and hence there will always be a space for real talent and worthwhile music.. If the mainstream wants to wring us dry and throw us in the bin, I say bring it on.. It will only serve to highlight the best parts of what we love about the art by expediting the exodus of all the wankers that are currently making it shit. Eventually.. we should be back to a state where.. whatever equipment you have, you prove your skills by what you can do on them.. rather than what you don’t do on them.

          1. the true heartbeat of the music (not too be confused with the mainstream classing of EDM) has always been underground. developing and innovating new techniques that grow into sub-genres… the last 20 years has been quite the musical ride.

    3. computers still recognize “patterns”– the human mind is a bit more sophisticated, well at least some are. video services are having trouble with predicting taste, because their computers can’t figure us out. there’s still hope for humanity :)

    4. old is what happens to us when we don’t strive to learn new things… this coming from a person who’s first turntable was in ’78 (disney’s mickey mouse 45 turntable for read-along books).

        1. CunTrollers and non-moving-platter-scratching is like having sex with a plastic sex-doll. Turntablism is like having sex with a women. You can cum in both…but only one is the real deal and it certainly ain’t the plastic sex doll…

  4. The future of DJ’ing is bright in my opinion. I’m new to it, and it was the advancements in technology and a healthy dose of DJ Hero that pulled this music lover and producer into the DJ realm. I expect more technological advancements (smarter playlists, smarter decomposition tools, etc.) in the future that will appeal to bigger markets (casual DJs & general music lovers). I think about how the Wii turned the video game industry on its head with motion controls that ultimately appealed to a wider audience than traditional consoles did. What industry would not want their products to appeal to a wider audience? In my world, more revenue is better for everyone.

      2. Most people who try DJ’ing aren’t going to be hard core, my point is to get as many people to try it as possible. Technology has brought more people to the art than it has pushed away. I think that trend will continue into the future.

  5. oh gosh, if I must :)
    personally, I don’t care about the future of products used to be a jukebox, which is exactly what most of djing and dj have turned into. a giant glorified “no, that’s not just my ipod running over there. that’s a guy with turntables playing all my iTunes playlists” if you need much more than a keyboard and mouse to mix, then you probably don’t spend enough time on track search and prep.
    Now, let’s talk about something I do care about, Scratching and beat-juggling. oh what a bright future we could have, if this wasn’t all about corporate profits. There are a lot of great ideas that would sell 1000 units, but companies like NI are to big to be concerned with numbers like that.
    I’m familiar with a lot of midi controllers, and apps. And to this day, the best most precise “waveform control in the software” still comes from the…..wait for it….Stanton SCS3D. I have, still, and will probably always think that the real future of djing would manifest itself in a larger, more scratch-oriented 3d. Why is this the future? Because of the multi-touch tricks that can’t be done on anything else.
    I would also like to see, IN EVERY SOFTWARE, like DJPlayer implemented, a quick and easy to way to do “jump to active hotcue” beat juggles.
    I’ve been doing some tricks with cdjs and slip mode, using the reverse switch as a crossfader of sorts, and well…it’s nuts!!!
    Finally, I will reiterate my passion for a scratch sampler/recorder with sample mode having a 20 second rewind, and record mode maybe like 10 minutes, but wouldn’t give immediate access to scratch. built like a giant scs3d, with the crossfader from the scs3m, and a mixer section designed to be ambidextrous, with a CF, two short pots, and 6 kill buttons.

    1. SCS.3D !!! Exactly! It is heavily underrated, and it definitely performs tricks not available without some heavy tricky mapping a-la-DJTechTools.
      I still have my full SCS3D system and even if I still don’t understand how to map it to my preferences, I wouldn’t change it’s modularity and feel for any other.

  6. The future? Somebody will finally design and manufacture the club specced vinyl/DVS hybrid direct drive deck that nobody realizes is missing from their life.. Criminy on a crutch? How long must I wait for a direct drive platter turntable that pushes a perfect dvs signal without the needle on the platter? Numark? seriously? Can you do this already? You are literally sitting on all the technology needed to make this a reality.

    1. I’m with you. I recently got a Stanton SCS.1 system (what year is it again?) and I’m pretty happy with the results when paired with VDJ8. Was it my first choice? Nope. I’d much rather use SDJ but I prefer using 10″ direct drive platters with no needle than anything else.

      1. I’ve been watching that space for a long time.. the plug and many software horror stories have put me off of it.. But yes.. that would be pretty much exactly what I was looking for.. Now if they could make one USB 2/3 with a 12″ platter and a club finish.. I’d be sold..

  7. Smartmixing, live looping, step sequenced remix decks, realtime video sampling into generative lighting and visuals, interactivity (arduino? Rasberry pi?), telepresence, e-learning, customized diy controllers (lasercuts, 3D printers, cnc), NI turntable groovebox allinone…

    There are a lot of futures, what are you going to make it happen?

    1. And back to basics at same time keepin’ it real too!

      http://youtu.be/TN5ltss0NMA

      People still complaints about futurism/controllerism… But ALL modern and respected Turntablist come from this. If you check “scratch. The movie” you could learn it from people like Qbert… “Zigga zigga zagga…” “What this sound comes from?” And other statements from them.
      Problem? Must of them forgotten the rest of the show (robot legs, uh?) and the whole message focusing into “skills”, then his students make the “mistake” the gospel truth of turntablism (cutting edge mind blowing and fun art transformed into a heavy stone or flag to carry without sense) and still complaining screaming inside themselves searching for a desesperated organization (of such art) with has no rules in its conception as artform)

      Free yourself from mental slavery and (with the useful knowledge and skill obtained) recover the original freedom to “BE” instead of “DO LIKE” and evolve as a Human being.

  8. google/facebook/spotify/last.fm/foursquare collab that dynamically datamines the entire listening history of every individual in the crowd and generates a playlist of perfectly beatmatched and seamless harmonic mixes according to the time of day, attendees’ tastes and current emotional status, seasonal climate, cultural events, current affairs, and the degree of physical involvement of the crowd as quantified by smartphone accelerometers. hands in the air replaced by like buttons.

    1. We’ve seen a lot happen together haven’t we gusset scratch? It’s an entirely different landscape from the early days of skratchworx. And while I can sense your tongue jabbed firmly in your cheek, what you’ve written isn’t implausible at all.

      1. And was performed in the Barcelona Music Hack day few years ago. I remember a soundcloud/bandcamp plugin who was cappable of searching an accapella and instrumental (from different artist worldwide), find compatible ones, match them (includding timestretching) and present it to you… Based in a “search” field. These hacks are performed in 48 hours over the hackaton.

        Check the hacks from worldwide here:
        http://new.musichackday.org/

      2. it was only my last sentence that was fully tongue in cheek, although if you combine that scenario with livestreaming then i guess it could be much the same effect.

        big data will take over from djs in much the same way that jukeboxes superceded resident bands who took requests. this technology could be deployed everywhere from the superclub to the local ritzy to the supermarket pa on a saturday morning. the cultural reaction will come in the shape of crypto-hipsters (crypsters?) who push back against the network’s algorithmic effect of being funneled into narrower and narrower marketing demographics by abandoning social media, taking up traditional instruments and focusing on exclusive perfomances to fellow elitists that are acclaimed for their atonal fifth order dischords, unpredictably shifting time signatures, and spontaneous reinterpretation of canonical arrangements. or in other words: jazz.

  10. I think tone play will be one a much more common everyday mixing transition. Not that it’s in anyway new, as people have been doing it way way way back. But with every digital system coming out with pads, and dicers it’s a LOT easier and still under utilized. I could see someone like traktor incorporating more than key detection for the song but note/chord detection throughout the song. So you would easily visually play the notes of a song like you would an instrument to transition into the next song. Djing seems to fall less and less on a trained ear but on the crutch of visual guide.

  11. The future of DJing is fully automated computer-based predictive mixing systems to play the preferred chart-toppers of the moment to rooms full of people who just want to drink and rub up against humans of their preferred gender while they listen to music they heard on the radio on the way to the club. Weddings will be done by the same systems, with programmable announcements and pauses to accommodate the non-music parts.

    Actual human DJing will be relegated to specific, knowledgable audiences, and it will involve either underground tunes or turntablist performance, until such point as those things can also be automated. At that point, DJing ceases to be a viable profession or even a source of income for anyone, and is relegated to a pure hobby.

    And then something crazy happens; with all the potential for money, fame, and sex wrung out of it, DJing reaches a transcendent state. Nobody is busy shitting on anybody else for the gear the use or the things they like to do, because we’ve all become about as cool and relevant as someone making wooden ships in a bottle; suddenly everyone who’s in it is only in it for fun.

    In the meantime, it’d be great to see a hybrid device like Ezmyrelda mentioned. It’d also be awesome to see someone rip the screen displays out of the Numark NV and sell a pair as a standalone add-on device, similar to the Novation Dicers.

    1. Indeed.. Right now I am working on an equipment setup that places the monitor flat above a flight case.. It’s not exactly deck specific monitors but I’m thinking it will remove that barrier between me and the audience and allow me to keep my eyes where they need to be, either near the equipment or on the people who paid money to dance.

        1. I’m actually going a bit different route.. I’ll pm you on fb with details.. It’s pretty super secret but you I would be willing to give details to.

  12. The future of DJing will be DJing, just like it is today. The main difference will be how the music gets from the brain of the DJ to the feet on the dance floor.

    Computers aren’t going to replace a DJ, just make their tools easier. If we measure all of DJing by what’s mainstream than we might as well call all music what is played on pop radio. The spotify’s and Beats musics of the world aren’t going to replace DJs. They are going to provide DJs with access to an unlimited amount of music, but I’m still not clear as to why that’s a bad thing.

    Good DJs will be harder to find, but not because there are less of them (or us, if I can be so bold). They will be harder to find because there are more DJs, and most of them will not last more than a few years before they go and do something else. And the underground will, as it always has, hold and nurture the best of the DJs there are.

    In short, the future will find us complaining about the same things we do now, except turntablists will be a little older, and controllerists will find the new technological marvel unacceptable because it isn’t keeping it real.

    And there will be more music, a lot of which will be awesome.

  13. the future for me is 2 turntables and a mixer, even if the whole world ditches turntables i’ll be still rocking turntables, the 1 man band like GLOBE told WIZ

  14. hopefully a return back to the old 2 record decks and a mixer. i know this is par for the course at a lot of american venues but i can’t think of a bar near me that even has record players installed, its more a wish than a prediction but id love to be able to mix with records again (even if it is with DVS)

  15. I know I should be focused on #FutureOfDJing …but all I can think about is the crossing out of The Future of Sound. Could this mean NI intends to do away with products like Guitar Rig and Maschine? Surely not. Maybe we’ll be seeing a re-branding or a new division of NI dedicated to “all things DJ” …and along with it a slew of new DJ products ranging from “novice” to “professional” (similar to the perceived distinction between Intro and DJ for Serato).

    1. OH MY GOD.

      “Could this mean…” NO. It means nothing. Please stop reading between lines to find hidden meaning that isn’t there. It is simply me playfully replacing one marketing term with another to give this story more context on this DJ focussed site. NI are most definitely not ditching the rest of their product line to do nothing but DJ. Everything is growing and moving forward.

      Making a new image for the story as we speak to eliminate ANY confusion.

      1. Whoa whoa! Sit down, breathe and try to relax a bit… You see, companies are changing at a fundamental level, for example Baldmer declared Microsoft to be a “devices and services” company (devices came first). Then a year later Nadella, their new CEO, changed it again to a “Mobile and Cloud” oriented corporation. Companies in highly competitive spaces must adapt and reinvent frequently to stay relevant and agile when its time to incorporate new technologies or simply change to what drives profit.

        NI is no different. The DJ space is quite competitive and companies need to be at the bleeding edge of technology. Now more than ever since EDM is booming and technology is driving the converging synergies of DJing and Production to becoming more intertwined with each other. Now DJs can transition to production with more ease than ever before and viceversa.

        Microsoft ditched the Surface Mini since it did not made sense anymore on their roadmap and that is not a bad thing since they can refocus resources into what makes sense. I mean, NI killed Kore right?

          1. And I don’t doubt that but this is not about agreeing or not. This is more akin to how NI as a company might react to certain market strides, for example, what could be interpreted as a disruptive technology. Yes you have seen their roadmap, and no doubt is exciting, but have you seen Ableton’s, Serato’s, Pioneer, Novation, etc? This is quite the market and one of the main reasons I like it so much. A roadmap is just that and there are quite a few reasons to keep it secret such as the ability to simply change it due to some other competitive tech or market trends. I have seen roadmaps as well and they sure are not written in stone.

            I hope you could eventually share some of the things you saw in there, NDA permitting, since Im sure you saw some pretty cool stuff. Good luck!

  16. or maybe DJing will evolve into more and more acts doing live production, since most DJs are also producers, people could get their minds out of the 2/4 decks and a mixer paradigm and actually use Remix Decks and programs like Ableton Live and FL Studio’s new performance mode to actually play their songs live… this would involve much finger drumming and keyboard playing.

    maybe we could even get live musicians back into the flow, real drummers, guitarists, bassists, singers, multi-intrumentalists and what have you.

    electronic music could even evolve to a point where people could improvise live sets that sound almost as polished as records… it is after all already possible and it’s been one of the core features of Ableton live since day one… and a grossly misrepresented and underused approach i might add.

    although finger drummers, who really have amazing talent, are already doing this, albeit with less harmonic diversity as it is quite hard to finger drum AND play melodies simultaneously ;)

  17. It would be sweet if the dj booth was just a blank touch screen that let you manipulate, mix, and sample/chop a track like in Ableton or Maschine on a massive fluid screen and all in your headphones. I think improvements in hardware/sofware UI and sound manipulation capabilities is the future. Breaking down the barrier between the brain and the hardware still has a long way to go.

  18. With the ongoing blurring of lines between traditional desktop and mobile operating systems, it makes sense that companies like NI would also be heading in that direction.
    By making it as easy as possible to transition between all of the components or tools involved in production and performance or indeed making it the same software with different uses, you could sell a heap more gear.
    Maybe one all-encompassing platform that becomes what you need it to be by simply plugging in the peripheral (of which there should be many) you need at the time.
    Plug in a Z2 or Kontrol S4 – you got DVS or Traktor, stick in a Maschine, you’re a producer. All of it has seamless integration with Komplete.
    I would ship it with two stickers.

    “I also produce”
    “I also DJ”
    let the customers decide which means which : P

  19. NI are releasinga second video in the series for #FutureofDjing today according to their instagram. Interesting to see what these guys have up their sleeves since well Serato are kicking their butt in the realm of new DJ kit.

    Note to Self is DJing actually a word in the Oxford English dictionary.

  20. The standard trope seems to be that “blurring the lines between DJing and production” is the future of DJing. I think there will continue to be some of that, but I don’t see that as the main thing.

    The reason I’m skeptical of this: There’s an inherent limit to how much a “DJ/Producer/Technology Collector” can improve a track by messing with it in real-time, or by mashing it up with parts of something else in real-time. (This isn’t even to mention the huge body of music that isn’t on a grid, or for some other reason doesn’t lend itself to this sort of thing at all.)

    To me, the more fertile ground for the future of DJing is truly coming to grips with the virtually infinite amount of music that’s at our immediate disposal, and the instantaneous speed at which it can be incorporated into a set. Despite these amazing and recent developments, I feel like the sensibilities by which sets are constructed, and the sophistication of the aesthetics by which music is juxtaposed, are still in their infancy.

    Case in point: the controversy over Sync buttons is interesting to me not because I particularly care one way or the other, but because it’s a foregone conclusion that the “default” way to combine music is to take two songs, pre-smash them into a quantized grid before the set, then have the computer lock the tempo of one of them to the other. (And yet we wonder why something seems lost!)

    I don’t say any of this disparagingly. Instead, I say it because I feel like there is a massive and fascinating frontier out there, in exploring the relationships between bodies of music in many new ways (that don’t involve mutilating the actual fabric of the music by such overt methods).

    It will take time to get there — it might even be the next generation who figures out how to make “art” out of it, since all of what I mentioned will be the vocabulary they are born and raised with.

    rs

  21. The major players selling streaming content either through their own services,more through integration of Juno/Beatport, directly into the controllers/players.

    Selling of subscriptions will make them their money in the future.

  22. Try this for size…the more traditional dj skills get automated the less of an actual skill they become.crowd reading and playing the right tune at the right time will still be important.
    I actually see more of a return to the personality dj with the big gob ;) something that technology can’t really influence and something that the skill and technique of the djs of the past 40 years had more or less made redundant or at least less common.

    1. Definitely agree with this. I think we’re in a period of being “dazzled by technology” right now (DJ culture being one of the worst offenders) but that it will return to being about people and music.

  23. FoDJing is clearly the fusion of:

    * Producing – where sequencing/remixing is the key skill
    * DJing – where manipulating tracks is the key skill
    * Video engineering – where many video sources “sync” to the music
    * Lightshow engineering – where lights “sync” to the music
    * Audio engineering – where sound quality is adapted to the venue
    * Broadcast engineering – where “the show” is streamed live and/or recorded

    In short, DJs will need to know everything about putting on the best show possible.

  24. Always wondered by the DJ tool manufacturers are not looking at multi-DJ systems so that you could assemble ‘DJ bands’ playing together — with ease, just hook a cable in and not worry about MIDI clocks and preference settings. All works together, defined one master control and multiple slave ones.

      1. Maybe true today but as with any other art form, things change or have to change in order to avoid becoming stagnant. Having ‘bands’ of DJs playing together would be an interesting new approach. Anyone who has ever played in a ‘good’ band knows how the interaction between members elevates the music to another level.

  25. Just thought of what hopefully might be coming.. NI specific infact.. Everybody thinks that the next logical step for NI Z2 would be a full four channel mixer. I think that’s a bit off. It essentially has that.. though not for analogue mixer mode.. It has 4 volume controls. It’s just that two of them are rotary and software only. NIs bread and butter really is software rather than hardware so I don’t see them pushing users down the more non NI hardware path. I think the next logical step for the NI Z line would be two discrete soundcards and two discrete USB B ports for easier user switching or collaboration.. In addition two more USB A ports for more NI Hardware. Think about it. Two F1s and two X1s.. How sick of a set up would that be?