Techno: The Complaint That Many DJs Are Hiding Their Tracks

Techno is bleeding out amidst exclusives and unmixed sets

Techno is not in crisis due to a lack of audience. It is in crisis, or at least that's what a significant portion of its most loyal listeners maintain, because of those who play it. A community of fans has turned the exchange of sets and tracks into a fairly reliable thermometer of the genre's direction. The diagnosis emerging from it is not pleasant: many DJs are hiding their tracks, new ones mix crudely, and the audience ends up taking refuge in the memory of the classics.

The DJ Who Hides the Track They're Playing

This is the most repeated reproach. Some argue that a good portion of the local scene's DJs keep their song titles secret as if they were a secret formula. Like having a ball in a box, states one of the voices. The complaint goes beyond a mere quirk: if no one shares, no one downloads, no one disseminates, the genre dies out. And then these same DJs lament that hard techno and its variants are in decline. The contradiction rhymes with what already happens in a thousand sectors: those who hoard data boast about it while complaining that their business is sinking.

320 kbps or WAV: Quality as a Battlefield

The second point of friction is sound. Listening to a set on a mobile phone is not the same as on decent equipment, and the difference is measured in data: compared to compressed files, 320 bitrate or WAV mark the distinction. The price is the size — some sets exceed 200 megabytes — something that today, with available connectivity, should no longer be an excuse. Some open their sets for download from the first minute, and others defend just the opposite. The fight, deep down, is between disseminating and hoarding.

Mixing Rudely Doesn't Make You a Better DJ

The technical criticism is the most juicy. A good DJ, it is argued, is measured by equalization and transitions, not by dropping all the tracks at once. Mixing on the fly, letting one melody explode when another ends, or cutting at the exact beat before the drop doesn't make anyone a bad DJ. What does make them so — in the opinion of those raising the point — is neglecting volume gains and overlapping melodies. The breakdown circulating about equalization and beats is, in practice, a manual on how not to ruin a set.

The Tag War: Techno, Trance, or Goa?

There isn't even agreement on what each thing is. When someone uploads a video and tags it as techno, the purist jumps in: none of the tracks in the video are techno, corrects another, who sees disguised trance or outright a bootleg there. There are those who confess to trance — it doesn't matter how it starts, I always end up in the same place — those who demand their share of Goa, and those who champion the genre's classics. The scene fights over the label while sharing the same tracks.

The Rhythm of a Community That Doesn't Rest

Beyond the technical debate, the pattern of activity is almost liturgical. The week starts with greetings, pogre with Tuesday's "trumpet blast," and culminates in a Friday marathon with goodbyes, sign-offs, and even a late-night snack. Tracks trinc one another — from Eric Prydz to classic reworks brought back from memory — and conversations chain into successive parts when the previous one gets saturated. There's even room for a health warning and a remembrance of someone no longer with us. Everything fits between kick drum and kick drum.

The immediate future suggests the scene will remain divided between those who share openly and those who keep their gems under lock and key. If the generous side gains ground, techno will recover some of what it lost. There's a not-insignificant possibility that both things will happen simultaneously, and no one will mind.