About
The person running this site is:
- Daniel
- born in 1985
- Swiss
- a software engineer
Taste in music is fairly eclectic.
I didn't really get into music until at age 17, my friend Luke introduced me to High Contrast's 2003 Essential Mix. From there, my obsession took me from Jungle and Drum & Bass over Breakbeats to Techno, Hip-hop, Trip-hop, Funk, Soul, R&B, Jazz, and beyond. By now, it's easier to list the genres I'm not into.
I've been to hundreds of concerts and festivals, and I visit dozens more every year, in addition to the one I attend every week. I love browsing the new releases at my record dealer's, or blindly buy what looks interesting at the Katalog.
The day I stop looking for new music, and stick with what I already know and like, please have a doctor check up on me. I'm always looking for the next track which unexpectedly blows my mind. That's why I listen to a lot of new music on the radio (BBC, WEFUNK, Nova, Rinse, KEXP, KCRW, wherever Gilles Peterson is playing, …), at the record shop, on streaming services, by browsing the world wide web, by reading magazines and blogs, or by attending concerts of artists I know nothing about.
On this website, I post some tracks I particularly like, both new discoveries and old favourites. They're my little musical diary, but if your taste somewhat overlaps with mine, hopefully it can be a starting point for your own musical discoveries.
And the beat goes on.
If I were a doctor, I would prescribe that you addict yourself deeply and irrevocably to music and never, ever seek cure outside of more music.
– Henry Rollins (L.A. Weekly, 2011-07-07)
How and where to stream or buy
If you like any of the music you find here (or anywhere else), I'd encourage you to buy a copy of it, old-school. By and large, streaming services are just the latest stage in major music labels finding more ways to fleece artists. It's pretty fair to say that artists don't profit at all when you stream their music.
📶 Of course, I also know how convenient huge streaming libraries are, especially for discovery. I personally tried most services and ended up staying with Qobuz. What makes me recommend them over the competition is that they're said to pay more royalties to the artists, and that they're a small and likeable company which is noticeably run by true music fans.
💿 Good on you if you still like to buy and play physical records! It's the true way of building a personal collection and appreciating music consciously, not just as ambient noise. Online shops exist but, of course, nothing beats buying at your local, independent dealer. In case you don't know which ones are near you, have a look at recordstores.love and vinylworld.org.
💾 Finally, for music downloads, I'll share with you my own list of recommended webshops. These are ordered by my personal preference. I move down this list from the top until I reach the first site which sells what I'm looking for. All of these sites sell uncompressed (FLAC) files without DRM, which is a strict prerequisite.
- Bandcamp is number one because it takes the smallest cut out of the money, so the artists benefit more from your purchase. Often, artists also sell exclusive physical editions here.
- Boomkat is a cool independent store which also sells records. They're somewhat biased towards ambient and experimental genres.
- Bleep was founded by legendary label Warp Records and was very early in the game of good download stores. They have since expanded to sell music from other labels, and broadened their genre selection, but still focus on electronic music.
- Juno Download is the digital download sister site of legendary Juno Records. They offer a very large catalogue.
- HighResAudio is a shop from Germany with a focus on Jazz and Classical music.
- Traxsource is similar to Bleep in that it was one of the first true download shops, founded by an independent record label, and focuses on electronic music. Their heart is in the world of House music, but they offer many other genres, too.
- Qobuz also run a download store. You don't need to be a streaming subscriber to buy from them! They have the largest catalogue of any shop on this list, so they're a good fallback.
- Beatport is kind of a mainstream version of Bleep and Traxsource. They sell exclusively electronic music. Has a bit of an iffy reputation for catering to the "Autopilot DJ" crowd (just let the software bpm-match and key-match your selection, beatmatch your transitions, pretend you know what the knobs do, and frequently throw your hands in the air).