I Am A DJ, I Am What I Play

I came across this tweet in Gerd Leonhard’s Daily Wisdoms

“Bloggers are now like DJs: They pick bands to play and talk about, and become powerful super-nodes (me;) http://tinyurl.com/5zf2td”

Gerd thinks about the future of music a lot (and like many of us who think about the future of anything), discovers convergence at every turn.

I like the image. As a start point.

But we are not DJs who only select finished versions to play. We are DJs who remix what we listen to as we play it back, scratching and creating our own versions, rapping over them, adding a melody… removing a bass line.

And the music never ends. You hear my iteration, play it, remix it, layer more tracks on it and share it. I rediscover it and feed it into the tune I was playing.

And the music never ends.

The music we select, share, shape and import back into our ongoing mix helps shape what we are.

I am a DJ, I am what I play (as David Bowie put it…)

The never-ending remix may (may?) start with bloggers but extends to everyone who participates in the networked world. The DJ is no more important than the listener here.

It applies not only to ideas, but also to messages, services… products.

Everyone is a DJ now. And everyone is making the music. The remixer adds as much value as the orginator and as the player.

In this world, the song, most assuredly, is not going to remain the same.

Comments

[Dan Thornton]

But, and to beat the analogy horse once more, not all DJs are created equal and have the same influence...

And I suspect the role of the key influencers, and the key content creators will no longer be to create a finished masterpiece, but more a classic moment frozen in time in the evolution of a piece of work.

[Jye Smith]

Truly inspirational post. Thanks :)

[phil jones]

Funny, I always thought of bloggers as the MCs of "the world of hip-hop" ( http://www.nooranch.com/synaesmedia/wiki/wiki.cgi?RappersAndBloggers ) hyping the crowd while the hackers creating the new software and products were the DJs (organizing the the infrastructure)