Kaskade, spinning at Marquee, says posting live mixes tricky business
I was in a dayclub last year when I heard a no-name DJ spinning “Kaskade Live At Coachella 2012.”
“Wow, this DJ is totally stealing Kaskade’s set list,” I thought.
I knew Kaskade’s “Coachella” set by heart because I have listened to it hundreds of times since Kaskade uploaded it onto Soundcloud.com for people to get for free.
Well, guess what. Kaskade had a very similar experience while he was vacationing in Florida.
“It’s creepy. This happened to me just recently,” says Kaskade, who plays Marquee nightclub on Saturday and Marquee Dayclub on Sunday.
“I was at dinner in Miami right next to a club. And in typical Miami fashion, I could kind of hear through the walls, so I could hear what the guy was playing.
“And he did four tracks in a row right from ‘Coachella.’ ”
When Kaskade heard that Miami DJ’s first song, he realized it was one of his own tunes he spun at Coachella. Kaskade thought, “Oh, that’s cool.”
“Then he went into the next track, and I went, ‘Oh, I wonder if he has heard the Coachella mix.’ And by the third song, I was like, ‘Ohhh, he has definitely heard the Coachella mix.’ ”
Kaskade laughs this off.
I point out to Kaskade (Ryan Raddon) that he still gets pennies-per-play every time such DJs play his songs, so that money adds up.
But Kaskade shrugs that off, too.
“I’m not worried about getting the pennies from royalties, but just that people are out there enjoying it.”
In fact, Kaskade uploads lots of his own music for free. Quite a few other DJs do, too. But quite a few DJs don’t.
As a result, I listened to his “Coachella 2012” mix more than anything else last year.
When I inform Kaskade of that, he says, “This is awesome — the power of Soundcloud! I love to hear that. That’s amazing. You know every subtle little nuance in that mix then?”
Yes, I do.
“A lot of time and effort went into that one,” he says.
Kaskade says it isn’t always great when other people post his new songs online for free the minute the songs are available for purchase. He wants people to buy them for a while before they start giving them away.
“Listen, the day I put out a new single and somebody goes and loads it up on Soundcloud and has it up there for free download, yeah, that’s not cool,” Kaskade says.
Likewise, Kaskade never does that to other musicians. When he posts his live mixes of other musicians’ songs online, those songs have usually been on the market beyond their big-sales runs.
It is a gray area — whether it’s good or bad for DJs to post their songs online after they have been on the market for a while.
“People are still trying to figure out what is OK and what is not OK,” Kaskade says.
“Some guys are getting burned. And other DJs are calling out guys for putting stuff up” online, he says.
“I haven’t had much of a problem. Most of the stuff I put up, nobody’s had a problem with it. And if they did, I would take it down.”
But dear aspiring DJs: Try not to steal whole sets from Kaskade or anyone else.
Doug Elfman’s column appears on Page 3A in the main section on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He also writes for Neon on Fridays. Email him at delfman@
reviewjournal.com. He blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman.
