[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":210},["ShallowReactive",2],{"codex-\u002Fcodex\u002Fdjing-is-all-about-playing-music":3,"codex-around-\u002Fcodex\u002Fdjing-is-all-about-playing-music":199},{"id":4,"title":5,"body":6,"cover":165,"date":166,"description":167,"draft":168,"extension":169,"faq":170,"kind":183,"meta":184,"navigation":185,"noindex":168,"ogImage":165,"path":186,"readingMinutes":187,"seo":188,"seoDescription":189,"seoTitle":190,"standfirst":191,"stem":192,"tags":193,"updated":165,"__hash__":198},"codex\u002Fcodex\u002Fdjing-is-all-about-playing-music.md","“DJing is all about playing music”",{"type":7,"value":8,"toc":156},"minimark",[9,13,16,23,28,31,34,42,49,52,55,59,62,73,80,84,87,90,101,109,113,116,119,122,130,133,136,143,146],[10,11,12],"p",{},"A clip has been going round. Laurent Garnier, sitting in a Soho Radio studio\nwith Kate Hutchinson, says that a lot of DJs now care more about their social\nmedia than about music, and that he finds it sad — really sad, extremely sad.\nThen the line above, flat and unadorned. Music is the key to the whole thing, he\nsays. If it isn't, don't do this job.",[10,14,15],{},"It should be an unremarkable sentence. A plumber saying plumbing is about pipes.\nThe reason it travelled is that it has stopped being obvious, and the person\nsaying it has been doing this for decades — which is to say he has nothing left\nto sell by saying it.",[17,18],"embedded-player",{"height":19,"provider":20,"src":21,"title":22},620,"Instagram","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.instagram.com\u002Fp\u002FDOqZlLFggzW\u002Fembed","Laurent Garnier in conversation with Kate Hutchinson, Soho Radio",[24,25,27],"h2",{"id":26},"part-of-it-not-the-point-of-it","Part of it, not the point of it",[10,29,30],{},"The lazy reading is that this is an older DJ complaining about phones. It isn't,\nand taking it that way lets everyone off the hook.",[10,32,33],{},"I am not making the argument that you should delete your accounts. That is a\nluxury position, usually held by people who already have an agent. Social media\nis part of this work now — it is how a record finds the twelve people who will\ncare about it, how a night fills, how somebody in another country hears a set\nthey were never going to be in the room for. That is real, and it is worth doing\nwell.",[10,35,36,37,41],{},"The word that matters is ",[38,39,40],"em",{},"part",". It sits underneath the music and exists to carry\nit further.",[43,44,46],"codex-note",{"kicker":45},"The distinction",[10,47,48],{},"It is the poster, not the show. Posters are useful; nobody goes home humming one.",[10,50,51],{},"What goes wrong is the inversion — when the poster starts deciding what the show\nwill be. And that inversion is not a character flaw, it is arithmetic. A set is\njudged by the room it happens in: forty people at 3am who will never post about\nit. A clip is judged by people who were not there, on mute, in three seconds,\nagainst everything else in the feed. Those are two different crafts and they\nreward opposite instincts. The room rewards patience, a long build, the risk that\nonly pays off eight minutes later. The feed punishes all three.",[10,53,54],{},"So the DJ who gets good at the second craft is not lazy. They are responding\nrationally to what gets them booked. That is what makes it a trap rather than a\nfailing: the incentive is real, and following it makes you worse at the thing you\nstarted for.",[24,56,58],{"id":57},"the-platforms-are-not-neutral-pipes","The platforms are not neutral pipes",[10,60,61],{},"There is a second criticism underneath the first, and it deserves saying out loud\nrather than being left as a vague unease about screens.",[10,63,64,65,68,69,72],{},"The media theorist Geert Lovink makes it in ",[38,66,67],{},"Platform Brutality"," (Valiz, 2025;\npublished in German as ",[38,70,71],{},"Die Brutalität der Plattform",", transcript, 2025). His\nargument is that social media have moved past the old complaint about\ndistraction into something with teeth — algorithmic manipulation, exhaustion, a\npermanent low-grade injury — and he places it inside what is now called\ntechnofeudalism: the idea that a handful of platform owners have become\nlandlords, extracting rent from everyone who has to build on their ground.",[10,74,75,76,79],{},"For a DJ that stops being theory very quickly. Your reach is not yours. It is\nlent to you by a company that can change the terms overnight and owes you no\nexplanation, and every hour you spend feeding it is an hour of unpaid labour on\nland you will never own. Treating that as neutral infrastructure — as simply\n",[38,77,78],{},"how things work now"," — is the part I would push back on hardest. Use it. Don't\nmistake it for a public square, and don't let it set the standard for what\ncounts as good.",[24,81,83],{"id":82},"the-other-half-which-travelled-less","The other half, which travelled less",[10,85,86],{},"The part of the interview that got clipped less is the part I keep thinking\nabout. Garnier describes people sending him demos with an apology attached — that\nthey tried to release the track, but it didn't fit any label. His response,\nparaphrasing: if it's good music, it should fit. Be open minded.",[10,88,89],{},"That is the same argument pointed at a different target. A genre box is a feed in\nslower motion. It also rewards the legible version of a record over the true one,\nand it also gets into your head before the track is finished. Anyone who has sat\non a demo because it was too slow, too long or too strange for anyone's A&R knows\nexactly what he means.",[10,91,92,93,100],{},"His own label, ",[94,95,99],"a",{"href":96,"rel":97},"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.laurentgarnier.com\u002Flg--page--cod3_qr.html",[98],"nofollow","COD3 QR",",\nputs the same thought in writing: that it wants to stay free of expectations and\nprejudice, because only the music counts.",[102,103],"codex-cta",{"body":104,"href":105,"kicker":106,"label":107,"title":108},"The clip is fifty seconds of a full show. Kate Hutchinson in conversation with Laurent Garnier, Soho Radio, 22 August 2025.","https:\u002F\u002Fsohoradio.com\u002Fshow\u002Fkate-hutchinson-feat-laurent-garnier-22-08-2025\u002F","The source","Soho Radio","Hear the whole conversation",[24,110,112],{"id":111},"two-opinions-and-where-they-come-from","Two opinions, and where they come from",[10,114,115],{},"None of this settles anything. It is two opinions, and opinions are cheap.",[10,117,118],{},"What makes these two worth putting next to each other is where they were formed.\nGarnier has been doing this for decades. I have spent more than eighteen years\nbehind the decks, in rooms of forty and in rooms of four thousand. Neither of us\nis describing a theory of club culture; we are both describing a job, and we have\narrived at the same place from opposite ends of it.",[10,120,121],{},"And it is not a private conclusion. It is more or less the value the underground\nhas always claimed for itself: that the music comes first, that the room is the\nevent, that you take a risk in front of people who might not thank you for it.\nThe uncomfortable question is not whether the scene believes that. It is whether\nit still behaves as if it does, now that there is a counter next to everything.",[10,123,124,125,129],{},"I wrote in ",[94,126,128],{"href":127},"\u002Fcodex\u002Fthe-floor-is-not-a-stage","the floor is not a stage"," that when\na booth faces the room like a stage, the room faces back — phones come up, and\ndancing becomes something performed at the front instead of something that\nhappens between people. Hearing the same argument from someone who was making it\nbefore I ever stood behind a pair of decks did not change my mind. It made me\ntrust it more, which is a different and better thing.",[10,131,132],{},"The job is the music. Everything else is a poster for it.",[10,134,135],{},"Which leaves one honest way to end a piece like this, and it isn't with another\nparagraph.",[102,137],{"body":138,"href":139,"kicker":140,"label":141,"title":142},"The mix this piece argues for: mood before genre, a long build, and a Hybrid Flight demo buried in it. No clip of it will tell you anything.","https:\u002F\u002Fsoundcloud.com\u002Fhybrid-flight\u002Fhybrid-flight-emotional","The work","Listen on SoundCloud","Emotional Dancefloor Atmosphere",[144,145],"hr",{},[10,147,148],{},[38,149,150,151,155],{},"Source: Kate Hutchinson feat. Laurent Garnier, Soho Radio, broadcast 22 August\n2025 — ",[94,152,154],{"href":105,"rel":153},[98],"the full show is on sohoradio.com","\nand on Mixcloud. The excerpt embedded above was posted by Soho Radio in September\n2025; the quoted line follows that clip's own subtitles.",{"title":157,"searchDepth":158,"depth":158,"links":159},"",3,[160,162,163,164],{"id":26,"depth":161,"text":27},2,{"id":57,"depth":161,"text":58},{"id":82,"depth":161,"text":83},{"id":111,"depth":161,"text":112},null,"2026-08-28T16:00:00","Laurent Garnier said the obvious part out loud on Soho Radio — that DJing is about playing music. On social media as the poster and not the work, and why the platforms deserve more suspicion than they get.",false,"md",[171,174,177,180],{"question":172,"answer":173},"What did Laurent Garnier say about DJs and social media?","In an interview with Kate Hutchinson on Soho Radio, broadcast on 22 August 2025, Garnier said it was sad that many DJs care more about their social media than about music, and that \"DJing is all about playing music.\" He went on to criticise labels for becoming narrower, arguing that good music should find a home and that people should stay open minded.",{"question":175,"answer":176},"Is promoting yourself on social media bad for a DJ?","Not in itself. It is part of the work of getting music heard, and pretending otherwise is dishonest — bookings happen there now. The distinction that matters is one of rank: the music is the thing, and the posting exists to serve it. It goes wrong when the order flips and the feed starts deciding what gets made.",{"question":178,"answer":179},"Why are social media platforms criticised in club culture?","Beyond the effect on attention, the platforms themselves are the object of criticism. The media theorist Geert Lovink argues in Platform Brutality (Valiz, 2025) that social media have moved past distraction into harm, and places them within technofeudalism — the argument that a few platform owners now extract rent from everyone who depends on their infrastructure. For artists that dependency is concrete: reach, and with it bookings, is granted by a company that owes them nothing.",{"question":181,"answer":182},"Where can I hear the full Laurent Garnier interview?","The full show is the Kate Hutchinson episode broadcast on Soho Radio on 22 August 2025, available on sohoradio.com and on Mixcloud. The widely shared clip is an excerpt Soho Radio posted to Instagram in September 2025.","Response",{},true,"\u002Fcodex\u002Fdjing-is-all-about-playing-music",5,{"title":5,"description":167},"Laurent Garnier told Soho Radio that DJing is about playing music, not social media. A Berlin DJ of eighteen years on the poster, the work, and Geert Lovink's case against the platforms.","Laurent Garnier on DJs and social media — a response from Berlin","Laurent Garnier, on Soho Radio, saying the part that should not need saying in 2026. That someone with nothing left to prove felt the need to is where this starts.","codex\u002Fdjing-is-all-about-playing-music",[194,195,196,197],"club culture","djing","social media","laurent garnier","hqFucNMJVw2LzvSHofnwQBhACojy5P66WAuRVnc-Nag",[200,205],{"title":201,"path":202,"stem":203,"description":204,"kind":183,"children":-1},"Death of the Ego","\u002Fcodex\u002Fdeath-of-the-ego","codex\u002Fdeath-of-the-ego","ZAINAB argues that DJ culture needs an ego death — that the job was always a service position and has been converted into a starring one. On what that costs a dance floor, and where the screens fit in.",{"title":206,"path":207,"stem":208,"description":209,"kind":183,"children":-1},"Keep the Day Job","\u002Fcodex\u002Fkeep-the-day-job","codex\u002Fkeep-the-day-job","IMOGEN's advice to new DJs is to stay employed as long as possible. She is right — and the second half of what she said, about nobody wanting to be a promoter any more, is the part that should worry everyone.",1789031394443]