Lately we had an email conversation with a guy working for a club music mag here in Berlin. Let’s simply say, for one of the two important mags in town. After having stated that he liked our stuff, he said in the very same mail, that he’d be sorry but that the mag doesn’t usually review neither mp3 labels nor releases. Apart from the fact that he might not have liked our stuff and that he wanted to hide behind the unspoken of policies of the house, we found that statement sooo typical - but sooo bizarre at the same time.

Fact is, in spite of todays myspace and iPod generation, or world reknown DJs like Dave Angel who use DVS systems or - God forbid! - even a laptop only to spin, many of the influential German club music media more or less ignore the devellish mp3 medium. We honestly wonder why?

Well mixed and mastered mp3s sound as good in the club as any vinyl. Plus they sound much better than badly mastered lo-fi vinyls, lots of which are still produced and spit out on the market every f***in’ day.

The burden of carrying heavy crates with felt TONS of the black gold in them is a real mothafuckin’ pain in the ass.

DJing is about to change radically anyway. Already today, many DJs open for this change include their own effect units like the Mini Kaoss Pad, use some sound producing live gear along their DJing, or go for the above mentioned DVS solutions like NI’s Traktor Scratch to be able to be more flexible, spontaneous and innovative than the oldskool kings. In fact; DJing and Liveact(ing) become one.

And to speak of the oldskool and put that into a historic perspektive: without the boldness and openess for new things of  innovators like Grandmaster Flash or Kool Herc, DJing as we know it wouldn’t even exist.

To finally pay our respects to more of these real DJs, namely the scratch wizzards (”what is a DJ, if he can’t scratch”). These always have used every possible angle to manipulate a vinyl in every un-thinkable way. And today even these hardcore vinylistst use control records of a DVS system AND other gear.

So hey, maybe we should stop to limit ourselves to what’s still widely seen as the only way of playing music in a club (or for that matter, elsewhere). Also, we cannot help but to feel that this is not only lazyness of thought, but that there are tangible business interests at stake also. Since, apart from ideologically triggered beliefs, isn’t it pure lazyness of action that the club music industry is unable to think about new business models and so to re-invent itself? They, who don’t stop critizing the majors for their immobility and the RIAA for its demonization of their very customers can’t come up with more than to sell sound-storage-media? A business model which will be dead by the end of the decade!

Some people at least understood. Beatport.com, Junodownloads - and even some artists like Jay Haze with his wrong context thing whatever net label approach a couple of years ago (sorry, Jay;). But even the latter could only make some waves with his netlabel because he had some vinyl releases out in the first place.

Well, it’s time for a reboot guys. And not only so, because today you’ll only get a distribution deal as a label newcomer if you know the distributor in person plus book him on your parties. No, it’s because vinyl is dead.

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