Godaddy will be no help whatsoever, they're the definitive cheap and nasty webhost.

Use a Soundcloud embed. Anything else is far more hassle than it's worth. Soundcloud Pro is €29 a year, it's reliable, a doddle to set up and it confers the cachet of having done it "the right way".

I can't think of anything genuinely popular that has been completely missed by the BBC genre charts, but the actual rankings can't be any better than an informed guess.There are myriad problems with compiling charts these days, the most obvious being that sales are no longer representative of a trac...

The Mac Pro isn't a particularly quiet machine by modern standards. The standard fans are small in diameter and relatively fast-revving, the hard drives aren't suspended in any way, the aluminium chassis is fairly resonant and there's a straight path for noise through those perforated end panels. Wi...

The Neumann KH120s are better than the old K&H O110s, but considerably cheaper. In what possible universe does that constitute "paying for the name"?

Spitfire have been working with the man himself and are about to release Cinematic Percussion by Hans Zimmer . Heavyocity's 'Damage' includes plenty of suitable samples.If you're doing it yourself, I'd suggest layering several taiko, timpani and orchestral bass drum samples, possibly with a synthesi...

They're perfectly fine plugins, but they're not markedly better than most bundled DAW plugins. The user interface of a lot of Waves products are decidedly old-fashioned looking, but they do the job. Waves periodically offer very large discounts on their entry-level bundles - I've seen Silver offered...

They're both fantastic monitors. The differences between them are slight and largely subjective, so our opinion isn't going to help you a lot - you really need to demo them.Some distributors and dealers offer a loan service on request and it's worth enquiring, but you can demo any kit you like at ho...

NB. The 770Pro as recommended above is semi open-back. it's isolation figure is only 18dB so I don't think it's the horse for this particular course. There's a helpful FAQ on the Beyer website about the difference between the two and their intended applications. The 770 pro are effectively closed-b...

DT770 pros. They're standard at the BBC, for good reason - they have all the virtues of the classic DT100 (comfort, ruggedness, ease of maintenance, isolation) with none of the vices. They're nearly accurate enough to mix on, but with enough isolation for tracking.The DT770M has more isolation than ...

KA6, easy. In terms of audio quality, latency performance and driver stability, it's competitive with interfaces costing twice as much.

The Red Bladder wrote:

uphillbothways wrote:I largely disagree with TheRedBladder. Most dance music isn't gigged - dance music has a completely different commercial infrastructure and there just isn't a useful performance circuit for unsigned acts.

So how do people get to dance to dance music, if it is not being played anywhere?

If I go to any disco on Planet Earth, I will hear floor-pulls from a rather small range of artists, all of whom gig pretty much all the time.

Rizzle Kicks are not a dance act, they're a pop act. They operate within the pop infrastructure, which is effectively inaccessible to unsigned artists and frankly not worth the effort in trying to break. The fact that a record is played in bars nightclubs and danced to does not make it dance music, perverse as that might seem. As an unsigned artist you don't have a cat in hell's chance of getting played out in your local sticky-floored meat market, but you have remarkably easy access to the DJs at your local dubstep or D&B night.

DJing is not the same as live performance. Many dance music producers do DJ, but those activities are separate but mutually supportive. The skillset of a DJ is only weakly related to those of a producer, which is why a lot of major DJs release music in their own name that they paid someone to produce, and why a lot of producers play out prerecorded DJ sets. Playing out your own music is a completely ineffective means of promotion if you are not already an established DJ.

Dance music has a well-established infrastructure for the promotion of new music. As a producer, you network directly with DJs, forming relationships within your own genre community. You gain access to live performance and radio play by providing exclusives and VIP mixes, which are mutually beneficial arrangements for artist and DJ - the artist gets someone evangelically plugging their music, the DJ gets the kudos of being one of the first with a hot new tune. This of course requires a great deal of hard work and a tune that is worth the effort.

My Traktor playlists are full of tunes by people who have never played a DJ set in their lives. A large proportion of the people propping up the Beatport charts are getting bookings as a DJ because of the success of their record releases, not vice-versa.

Some dance music producers benefit a great deal from the experience of DJing, others are perfectly in tune with the zeitgeist from just following the scene. Hell, I know people who've hit the 1xtra A-list without ever having set foot in a nightclub. OP's main problem is that he's clearly badly out of touch and has put together a record that sounds two decades old. He may benefit from the experience of DJing at some point down the line, but first he needs to turn on the bloody radio.

I wholeheartedly agree with the following:

The Red Bladder wrote:It is not really a catch 22 situation: as a dance music producer, your job is produce music that gets them onto the dance floor. That means putting your tastes on the back burner and putting the tastes of the audience right up-front.

I largely disagree with TheRedBladder. Most dance music isn't gigged - dance music has a completely different commercial infrastructure and there just isn't a useful performance circuit for unsigned acts. Playing DJ sets can be a very useful promotional tool for an artist (and conversely, releasing ...