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Music Technology

TwitterDJ Released for Download

Now available for download is the TwitterDJ application. DJ pioneer/Producer/Label Owner Richie Hawtin and his Minus label helped develop this application that tweets each track a DJ plays during a set in (nearly) real time. You can see the application in action @ his twitter account. The app utilizes an updated version of Traktor’s standard broadcasting technology and the popular social site twitter.com. Traktor being the Djing software that allows you to mix digital music internally within the software or externally with a standard mixer, turntables or CD decks and timecoded vinyl or CDs; depending on the software version (just in case you’ve been locked in a padded room flippin old tresor wax for the last decade and finally decided to conform).

TwitterDj is currently only available to run on Intel based Macs running OS X 10.5 and Xcode software. You will also need Native Intruments Trakt5o Pro 1.2 and Icecast 2.3.2 or higher.

This type of technology is an excellent step in promotional advancement for digitally released music. This gives an artist, and typically their independent label, the opportunity to gain further recognition for their music as its being played by a performer. How many times have you heard a track at a party, then again at another, frantically needing to add it to the collection but every pain-staking effort to find it on the small information you have is entirely fruitless? Yes, it may take a little something away from those diligent heads who scour through dusty crates and scan thousands of samples before finding those gems; only to broadcast your find to the world so it can be soaked up by some brat who lets his software beatmatch for him. But there are inventive ways around such things. Maybe counterproductive, but there’s always a way… Or, like a good friend pointed out to me, how annoying will it be with a bunch of techie-hipsters standing around at a club, too cool to dance, face lit up from the warm glow of their iphones, anxiously awaiting the next track tweet.

But (after years of denial and sly looks in the mirror) I excepted the fact that you must embrace technology and the information trade. The faster technology is adopted and the more it is exposed leads to faster development. It’s just the way it is, you can either your turn your back on it in denial… or except it. It will still continue to exist either way.

2 replies on “TwitterDJ Released for Download”

Nice write up and view. Good point re: promotion qualities of TwitterDJ. Though re: the last sentence, must turning a shoulder to certain technologies be “in denial”? I do not agree with that in most cases.

It’s possible to choose whether or not to utilize or not this-or-that technology on an individual basis, without there being any bit of denial of existence, effectiveness or usefulness of said technology in other applications or for other individuals.

Just sayin’. That’s what I do – pick and choose which techs I want to employ, and which I want nothing to do with, for whatever reason.

Also, re: 10 year old Tresor. Please refer to O’Connor & Sutton’s ‘Against Nature’ 2xLP for a nearly 10 year old (2000) Tresor album that will never go out of style. You may actually need the cushy walls of aforementioned padded room while listening!

Holler,
LH

Good points LH. I agree, it does come down to an individual basis as far as accepting technologies. I guess that may have been more of a reaffirmation that I myself have learned to not turn my back on tech as a whole… as a force… as a movement. We cannot deny the expansion of new tech, we must harness it and use it to our advantage. And, as you’ve said, pick and choose what works best. After all, how could you deny the existence of something if in choosing what is right you must explore all possibilities. I love 10 year ol’ Tresor and those records will out last anything dropping today. It’s the only thing you could last that long in a padded room with. BTW, the guy in the padded room… it’s me.

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