What are DJs doing wrong

[Brummbaer]

May be - even if there is a school of thought that suggests distorted sound eventually has a negative "psychoacoustic" effect on the general mood.
However, I don't listen to tangos only "while dancing" (and DJing, as I suppse many DJs do). And if I find myself wondering - say, while driving - whether the sound really has to be that poor, then the dancers are surely wondering the same thing, at least at the beginning of a dance. Besides, one can always play something else out; there is usually no shortage of options.

Some see scratchy, poorly transferred and adjusted, old music as a mark of 'authenticity', or 'true tango'. I recollect some group we once attended listening to scratchy, pop and click infested, 78s, or worse. It needn't be like that. It can be 'tickled' to remove those distortions, but it's a lot of work. Occasionally (rarely?) there's a good tango hidden there, but sometimes best forgotten for a reason. If it was good, someone may have recovered a good recording. It needs a musician as well as technical expertise.

Sadly contemporary recordings can't offer the orchestration, just a small group. We really need more contemporary tango music for dancing from modern groups and composers (but some will be forgettable!)

 

[ArbeeNYC]

Then you have to select the crowd appropriately, perhaps implizit at a milonga notoriously unfriendly to beginners ("El Destino" in your area?), or even explizit at an encuenro.

The crowd at El Destino is not musically more discerning than at other milongas. Every milonga has a subset of dancers who do know the music and certainly care what's played. And that can cover a wide range of music, not just 1940-1950.

My personal explanation:
And then there's a segment of experienced dancers who want to dance musically, fluidly, and with ease to mostly familiar music.

Generally, those are the people who care about the music. Maybe it's the same everywhere, I don't know. But if you're a DJ, I would imagine you would be playing primarily to that group.

Gifted dancer, who can adapt their dance to a wide range of music, but perhaps only want to dance to a part of it at any given time, are naturally rare.

A part of it in what sense? A wide range of music in what sense?

Personally, I draw my own conclusions from my observations:
I play an "endgame" with more opulent and good-sounding pieces (that I personally enjoy). Anyone who doesn't want to join in can go home, but in general, this works very well for my regular milongas.

That doesn't sound like a recipe for success. It almost sounds kind of antagonistic toward the dancers.

 

[itwillhappen]

Generally, those are the people who care about the music. Maybe it's the same everywhere, I don't know. But if you're a DJ, I would imagine you would be playing primarily to that group.

Operating on the premise that the majority has little interest in the music itself - and will somehow manage to dance regardless of the musik - a DJ naturally focuses on the other segment of the crowd. That said, the faction of "older white men" who are willing to dance only to a very limited repertoire is actually smaller than one might think. While this approach certainly fosters a sense of group identity and makes dancing easier - even for those with limited talent - it is nonetheless entirely possible to build a bridge to them later in the evening.

A part of it in what sense? A wide range of music in what sense?

The question is whether one prefers to dance to familiar tangos in their customary versions, or whether one seeks out a challenge. Both are possible; both are valid. That said, in my impression people who are equally happy dancing to absolutely anything often dance equally poorly to anything.

That doesn't sound like a recipe for success. It almost sounds kind of antagonistic toward the dancers.

Once again: I dj at a tango studio - alongside a rotating lineup of other DJs - roughly every two months. The full-time organizer and host sees the guests out; it is his job to gather feedback and pass it on to me. And all in all, that feedback is very positive; compared to some other evenings, the guests leave in a noticeably better mood.

 

[ArbeeNYC]

That said, in my impression people who are equally happy dancing to absolutely anything often dance equally poorly to anything.

I'm inclined to agree with you about that.

 

[itwillhappen]

Once again, I experienced a truly poor set from a DJ originally from Buenos Aires. The audio quality of his tango library made it obvious that he hasn't kept pace with developments over the last ten years, nor with the bandwidth of available tracks.

Perhaps DJs from there struggle to differentiate between varying situations and local customs. There are significant differences between a professional, salaried DJ in Buenos Aires and a hobbyist DJ here in Europe. The former - if he wants to pay his rent and feed his children - must consistently satisfy both his older regulars and tourists, week after week, over the course of a six-hour milonga. Here in Europe, milongas are often shorter, DJ gigs tend to be more sporadic, and most DJs aren't truly dependent on the income; consequently, there is simply more room for creative freedom.

What I think DJs are doing wrong In general is overestimating the shelf life of their music libraries. Material that was painstakingly cobbled together in the distant past - such as those "Susanna Miller Tandas" bootleg CDs or half-hearted transfers from the major labels - is now practically worthless, like tapes and audio cassettes. And the library that has cost me around €2,000 to acquire so far might well be worthless five to ten(?) years from now, as AI opens up new possibilities for sound restoration. It might(!) even become obsolete because AI and streaming services are pushing human DJs to the sidelines. And a changing musical taste is another factor.

 

[itwillhappen]

Also TangoTunes has now launched its own high-quality tango music streaming service:

tocatoca.com — TangoTunes goes Streaming

TangoTunes goes Streaming — high-quality Argentine tango for practice and listening.

tocatoca.com

There is also an option for studios: "No DJ required for classes or practicas — simply use curated playlists."
So, no AI involved just yet.

Meanwhile, discussions about the use of AI are kicking off in the Tango DJ Facebook forum. It is evidently not yet clear to many DJs that modern streaming services possess the feedback data - and have the potential to acquire even more - needed to train a "Tango AI." Most DJs still assume that AI will simply replicate existing online playlists in the future, rather than being able to react dynamically to the situation at hand.

 

[ArbeeNYC]

And the library that has cost me around €2,000 to acquire so far might well be worthless five to ten(?) years from now,

I'm curious. For that money, how complete is the library? Does it include all of the major orchestras from say, 1925-1955 in high-quality transfers?

 

[itwillhappen]

I am not a collector. I have a "pragmatic" library, sourced from popular streaming services, primarily for prelistening, which is quite comprehensive.
Added to this are purchased CDs and a large "inherited" collection of CD-MP3s, some of which offer better audio quality.
For DJing, I have also - wherever possible - purchased high-quality tracks, new tanda by tanda, from TangoTunes and TangoTimeTravel, acquiring a total of 750 tracks over the years (at €1.80 each).

 

[itwillhappen]

With the rise of AI-assisted software development, significantly more specialized TDJ software has recently been entering the market.

As I have mentioned several times, in my view, documents such as freely available playlists are insufficient for training AI; there is an urgent need for real user data and quality metrics. And so, I read the "Terms of Service" and "Data Privacy" policies of a new TDJ player with interest:

To provide advanced features like automatic Time Machine adjustments and library synchronization, the application transmits non-personalized track metadata.

Standard Metadata
Includes song titles, artist names, album info, and track duration. This is used for database indexing and library management.

Free & TDJ Tiers
Acoustic & Spectral Data

Users on the Free and TDJ tiers transmit acoustic fingerprints (Chromaprint) and spectral information (frequency distribution and loudness profiles). This data allows our central server to identify historical recordings and provide optimal restoration presets.

M!longa Player

The premier music player for Tango DJs

milongaplayer.com

The standard platform executes automatic, mandatory cloud synchronization of your local library and metadata edits upon closing the application. This ensures your collection is securely backed up and helps build our global crowd-sourced database structures. The exclusive capability to completely disable this forced cloud reporting (Cloud Anonymity and Offline Isolation) is strictly reserved for users subscribed to the Professional (Musicalizador) tier.

M!longa Player

The premier music player for Tango DJs

milongaplayer.com

In other words: a Professional Licence (€9.99/month) allows you to prevent your library metadata from being transferred to a "global crowd-sourced database".
But many TDJs won't care about that, because their key assets are reading the floor and selecting the right tanda at the right moment...

 

[Rabbit]

With the rise of AI-assisted software development, significantly more specialized TDJ software has recently been entering the market.

... OK, so they can vibe code a bunch of features, but now anyone can do that, and all those features are useless anyway. And I chose my DJ player precisely because it doesn't have useless features cluttering up the UI.

 

[itwillhappen]

... OK, so they can vibe code a bunch of features, but now anyone can do that, and all those features are useless anyway.

As previously mentioned, a talented DJ needs nothing more than a software player, provided they aren't using hardware like CDs or vinyl records.
Playlists, track pauses, volume adjustments - all of these can be handled manually.

However, I suspect the DJ's role will initially shift further toward that of an amateur audio engineer.
In other words, the DJ decides which tools to use to restore, improve (or ruin) their audio files.
It’s essentially a Wild West phase until new standards are established in this area.

I see the first "AI tools" emerging - whatever that might mean in this context:

Tango Restoration

AI-powered audio restoration for 1920s-1940s Argentine tango recordings.

tangorestore.hanmesoft.com

 

[opendoor]

..suspect the DJ's role will initially shift further toward..

I think I quit DJing at the right time. I fear that DJs will soon rank at the bottom of the pecking order: organizer - teacher - host - cleaner - bartender - cashier.

 

[Rabbit]

I see the first "AI tools" emerging - whatever that might mean in this context:

Tango Restoration

AI-powered audio restoration for 1920s-1940s Argentine tango recordings.

tangorestore.hanmesoft.com

Now this is something a few of us have been speculating about for a while (training a neural network specifically on old tango recordings to clean them up). I'm curious what their actual training set was. Some of their showcase examples are genuinely impressive and others introduce a bit too much distortion into the instrument sound for my taste. Will give it a try on some of the annoyingly noisy Tangotunes tracks I have (due to lack of availability of anything better.)

 

[itwillhappen]

I think I quit DJing at the right time. I fear that DJs will soon rank at the bottom of the pecking order: organizer - teacher - host - cleaner - bartender - cashier.

Looking back, it might seem that way because the own effort involved used to be significant. Yet, those very costs have been steadily dropping for decades - moving from shellac, tape and vinyl to CDs, computers, the internet, streaming, and now artificial intelligence.

Ultimately, however, everything remains within a kind of market equilibrium. DJs account here for roughly 10% of a milonga’s costs; if that expense can be reduced relative to the effort involved, it will be. Just as DJs rose to popularity because they allowed organizers to avoid the much higher cost of live musicians, they will be replaced if they cannot offer added value beyond what AI provides. And there is no end in sight to this technological evolution.

Acquiring the necessary skills has also become drastically easier and more accessible to the masses. You can keep a scanner like Shazam running continuously during a milonga and later calmly review which musical choices worked and which didn’t. This is a completely different scenario compared to ten years ago, when you might have approached the DJ to ask about a specific track just once.

 

[Rabbit]

Acquiring the necessary skills has also become drastically easier and more accessible to the masses. You can keep a scanner like Shazam running continuously during a milonga and later calmly review which musical choices worked and which didn’t.

But you won't necessarily know why.