DJ Laurent Garnier listens to “500 EPs a day” looking for new music
“When we DJ, we should try to play the best music that is out – and there is a lot of music.”
Credit: AVA Festival
French techno DJ and producer Laurent Garnier has claimed he listens to 500 EPs a day, roughly equating, he estimates, to between 1,000 and 1,500 songs daily.
The huge number was revealed during a keynote with the Man With The Red Face producer at the AVA London conference on Thursday 29 February at the British Library. Hosted by writer Séamas O’Reilly, the conversation covered the art of DJing, his early career at the legendary Manchester club, The Haçienda, and the difference between clubs then and now.
“How many tracks do you say you listen to every day?” Quizzed O’Reilly during the keynote.
“About 500,” Garnier responded.
“Are you skipping them, or are you listening to them all the way through?”
“No! Come on!” Garnier snapped back. “We all skip. That’s a normal thing. I skip through 500 Different EPs a day, which makes it about 1,000, 1,500 tracks. I do, because I want to know what’s going on.
“When we DJ, we should try to play the best music that is out and there is a lot of music – a hell of a lot of music. On Spotify, there are between 100,000 and 200,000 tracks a day. So, listening to 500 records is nothing. I basically know nothing about what’s going on but I’m trying to know a little bit. My job is to search for music.”
Garnier went on to further justify this vast number, highlighting that, of the tracks he downloads in a day, some will be used in live DJ sets, some for a show on PBB radio, and the rest will be used on his [DEEP]Search radio show.
Garnier went on to say how it’s important to search for your own music and not accept whatever an algorithm recommends.
“I believe human curating is still more important than what the machines or the the algorithm is proposing to me,” he said. “I’m not happy with the algorithms, so I have to do it myself. The funny thing is, I do find amazing records every day – really, really good stuff.
“I don’t download too many tracks. But yesterday, travelling here… I had 70 new tracks on my computer in 24 hours. So, it’s quite a lot.”
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