The XLR8R music mag ran a piece earlier this year explaining how minimal house DJ Richie Hawtin has developed a custom application to take his tracklisting as he’s playing and post this on Twitter. What better example of a musician using social media to engage with his fan base?
Hawtin has been on the cutting edge of the house and techno scene for the best part of the last 15 years (at least), pushing dance music in new directions. Hence fans of Hawtin are often left wondering ‘just what was that track?’. Now, with this custom application wired up to the tastesetter’s Traktor DJ software, Hawtin is able to answer that question in real-time. Information from the tracklisting within the software is piped out to Twitter:
Taken a step further, you could see how DJ’s could add links to those artists/tracks (or even, depending on how commercial they were feeling, add ‘buy now’ links) and generate more interest around the music they are playing.
At a time when the music industry has managed to alienate much of its online fanbase, could it adopt strategies such as this to bring music-listeners back into the fold?
