DJs and producers are supposed to be on the same side. For decades now, producers have made the music, and DJs have played it. Simply put, one can’t exist without the other, but in 2019, it often felt like the two camps were increasingly at each other’s throats. Like many great conflicts, the root of the problem here is money. Namely, producers are no longer earning very much of it.
Long gone are the days when a hot 12-inch could sell tens of thousands of copies; most releases these days struggle to sell 300. And while digital sales once promised to replace some of that lost income, the rise of streaming — and its miniscule royalty rates — has snuffed out much of the hope that dance music producers will realistically be able to sustain themselves economically as the industry moves into the future.
It doesn’t help that DJs are arguably doing better than ever. The explosion of the global club and festival circuit has given rise to fees that regularly tip into four and five figures, yet very little of this money is then trickling down to producers. Even the performance royalties they should be receiving aren’t being paid out properly, thanks to poor tracking of what songs are actually being played at these events. In short, DJs are cashing in, while the people whose music they’re playing receive almost nothing; it’s no wonder that words like exploitation are increasingly being thrown around.
Unfortunately, there are no easy solutions here. Barring a major revamp of the royalty system or some sort of industry-wide income collectivization movement, these problems are primed to worsen in the years ahead, especially as streaming increasingly creeps into the DJ booth. (If even DJs stop buying music, then nobody will.) Still, something needs to be done, if for no other reason than we need producers to keep making music.
No matter how much we love to get nostalgic in the club, dance music will get stagnant fast without a constant influx of new tunes. DJs and producers need each other, and if they don’t start working together soon, the entire industry will be at risk. Shawn Reynaldo