Today’s music panorama is one outlined by abundance and immediacy. In a chronically-online world, all the things is overground instantly. Scenes need to work actually arduous to remain underground and even then, some eagle-eyed A+R or advertising and marketing individual goes to see the excitement and attempt to bottle its essence for wider consumption. Underground by no means stays ‘under’ for lengthy. Yet, on the similar time, we’re seeing a blossoming of scenes, each on and offline. While the previous are formed by platforms’ algorithms, the latter are inherently extra human in nature and type a part of a rising analogue revival. It just isn’t fairly a selection between ‘power to the people’ or ‘power to the platform’ however it’s not far off. And it’s from this cultural dichotomy {that a} really distinctive counter-culture phenomenon is going on: the return of bootleg and remix tradition.
The music enterprise has spent the final half a decade or so grappling with the rise of the creator financial system. While the lengthy tail is dealing with countless hurdles (slicing by means of the muddle, incomes thresholds, to not point out UMG’s proposed acquisition of Downtown), it’s not going anyplace, however as an alternative making a bifurcation of the music enterprise. The rise of the patron creator has resulted in three tiers of music creation:
1. Consumer creators
2. Music creators
3. Traditional professionals
But there may be, in truth, a fourth tier: DJs.
The function of DJs in music’s counter-culture motion
Generative AI and instruments like dashing up and slowing down have enabled extra folks to create, whereas playlists have empowered folks to curate. DJing channels each of these inventive lanes, and it’s booming. In 2023, DJ tools was the one main music {hardware} class to see robust development (most different classes declined). Meanwhile YouTube is abuzz with DJ units from a brand new crop of younger, usually feminine, DJs. DJs are an alternative choice to the algorithm: pure, human curation.
While a lot of the DJ growth has, unsurprisingly, been absorbed into the mainstream (e.g., Boiler Room now boasts 4.5 million YouTube subscribers) there’s a thriving underground that each seems and feels totally different. Its house is SoundCloud.
The downside with everybody accessing all the things is that, properly, everybody has entry to all the things. It is absolutely arduous to sound totally different. If you might be a longtime DJ you’ve gotten the benefit of getting despatched promos forward of launch so that you keep away from simply sounding just like the Beatport Top 10. However, in case you are within the lengthy tail of DJs you don’t have that benefit. Your various? Bootlegs. SoundCloud has grow to be the house of unofficial bootlegs and remixes. The place the place underground DJs supply their units with tracks that aren’t a part of the dance mainstream.
Why Gen Z and millennials are reviving ‘90s dance music classics
Bootlegs and unofficial remixes are certainly not one thing new. What is new, nonetheless, is that the fragmented, scenes-based nature of SoundCloud is enabling bootlegs to energy underground dance scenes. And what is especially fascinating, is that a lot of that is being finished by younger producers and DJs, reimagining ‘90s classics. The ‘90s were, in many people’s eyes, the heyday for a lot of dance music genres, or on the very least, the defining decade. And there are three essential defining qualities of ‘90s dance music:
1. Production methods have been way more rudimentary than right now. As a consequence, the tracks can sound way more uncooked and natural than the extremely polished digital music of right now
2. Most concepts, sounds, melodies and chord progressions have been being finished for the primary time, so they’d a purer and less complicated really feel. Electronic tracks since then have needed to embellish and modify to be totally different, placing sonic distance between concept and output
3. Less music was being made and was being performed by fewer DJs, so massive tracks turned actually massive. Big sufficient to nonetheless be well-known right now (a dynamic true of all music genres pre-streaming)
The result’s that SoundCloud is awash with Gen Z and millennial producers and DJs remaking ‘90s classics for today’s genres. Whether that be ‘90s trance revival or classic garage tracks being beefed up into UKG bangers. I will refrain from dropping any links to these creators to avoid putting a big takedown target on their backs, but there are many who are almost exclusively releasing bootlegs on SoundCloud, each with tens of thousands of followers that eagerly listen to and comment on their tracks. Many of the productions are ‘rough around the edges’, however that’s usually the purpose. It is supposed to sound totally different to the over-produced mainstream. It is digital music’s punk / storage rock second, the place concept issues greater than type.
This is bifurcation in motion. These creators are opting to not play within the conventional music enterprise lane (largely as a result of they’d battle to get the rights cleared). So, as an alternative they’re working within the music enterprise’ ‘grey market’ – not fairly a black market however not the formal market both. Because that is by its very nature, beneath the radar, it means these scenes every have a soundtrack of their very own, one that you just can not discover on Beatport or Spotify.
How SoundCloud’s scenes are totally different from the remainder
Crucially, what marks these music scenes as being totally different from the very-online scenes that prosper in locations like TikTook, Reddit, and Discord, is that on-line is barely a hyperlink within the chain. The music involves life within the DJ units, at events, small golf equipment, and raves. Online is the place the music is sourced and the place folks go to relive reminiscences, however offline is the place the enjoyable is being had and the place the tradition lives. There can be a inventive virtuous circle at play: the bootlegs are the kicking-off level for scenes however additionally they reply to the scene, the sound evolving rapidly in response to what strikes the dance flooring.
There are methods wherein the standard enterprise can play in remix tradition. Armada’s BEAT Music fund is buying rights to traditional tracks and getting producers to create trendy remixes. This is a brilliant technique however it’s one thing totally different, as a result of these remixes circulation into the standard trade construction. Labels may additionally faucet into (and monetise) the chance by creating stem sandboxes with a subscription charge. Though many labels would probably fear about high quality management of the output and monitoring royalties and performs.
But there’s a extra elementary downside / alternative with attempting to assimilate the underground: as quickly as you begin attempting to put formal constructions round it and elevate its profile it’s now not underground. Perhaps as an alternative, the perfect factor the standard music trade can do is observe and admire from afar. To let these new, anti-algorithm, anti-perfection scenes flourish and wait to see what they create.