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When you know what you like and what you want and you're able to nudge things in the right direction, that's more profitable than ever, because there's so much information out there. Everything's saturated. Tastemaker is probably the most overused word, but I still think it's important.

A-Trak

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A-Trak
Age: 42
Born: 1982
Born: March 30
Composer
Disc Jockey
Dj
Entrepreneur
Musician
Record Producer
Recording Artist
Singer
Montreal
Quebec
Alain Macklovitch
Right
Information
Important
Probably
Much
Word
Things
Stills
Overused
Think
Still
Nudge
Thinking
Able
Saturated
Like
Ever
Profitable
Everything
Direction

More quotes by A-Trak

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I've been doing it since I was prepubescent when I loved to scratch records and play good music. As it happens, you know I sort of fell into the mix. I really feel like I played a role in bringing dance music to America years ago.
A-Trak
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Right now it feels like we're playing a role, like me and a couple of my friends, in where popular culture is going. That's a very rare thing in a person's life to be able to be a part of that. It's a responsibility I take seriously.
A-Trak
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It's a good feeling to have something to stand for in any part of your life. It's like personal integrity.
A-Trak
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There are producers that have been my friends for many years that I'm still a big fan of, from Boyz Noize to solo acts. Justice. It really varies. All the way to like...sometimes I'll just find some dude out of Chicago that makes a great house song. I'm feeling a lot of the deep house stuff, Jamie Jones.
A-Trak
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One thing that I learned in recent years from working more with other people is this idea that part of a producer's job is to make people comfortable and confident.
A-Trak
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There's a bit less elbow room and latitude to take it somewhere else, at least at festivals. In the club you can do whatever you want but at festivals, especially Ultra, nowadays the crowd wants to hear our songs.
A-Trak
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When I get up I still check the rap blogs before I check any kind of dance stuff.
A-Trak
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There are things I like, there are things I strongly dislike. In my DJ sets and in my production I just gravitate towards what I like.
A-Trak
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I think one of the biggest things that's changed in terms of the rapport with the crowd is that now crowds come to hear our songs. We're getting closer and closer to an artist performance.
A-Trak
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It's always important to me to play something other DJs aren't playing.
A-Trak
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Now I'm able to play on the main stage and play my own tracks and the crowd likes them. I feel like a lot the other DJs play a lot of the same songs, and not to knock them, but it's important to me to go up there and sort of sneak in a bunch of stuff the other guys aren't playing.
A-Trak
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What's amazing about a DJ set is when you're able to re-appropriate a song or give purpose to a song that people didn't really think it was supposed to have. Give it this sort of hidden power by playing it before this song and after that one. That it fits into this logic and it goes farther than you thought it could go.
A-Trak
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That was my challenge then, how to make scratching still fun for someone who didn't necessarily come to hear that. It was fun to develop that technique. And now in dance music - I'm still a hip-hop guy at heart, but I love dance music.
A-Trak
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I've talked to people who say that their music and their creative work is a much needed and appreciated escape, where they don't have to think about the state of the world they're not even thinking about themselves so much. They're not trying to express their own experiences of that day or relationship strife or anything.
A-Trak
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At festivals you kind of have to play the game a bit and you have to play a lot of the big bangers but it's to me it's extra gratifying to be able to play the non-bangers and make it work. Because that's still the craft of the DJ, I think.
A-Trak
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I have a radio show on Sirius XM. I put it up as a free download on my Soundcloud and on iTunes. That's a portal for me once a month, to play songs I know aren't getting played on that station the rest of the week.
A-Trak
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There's a lot of producers that are much more technical or gear-skilled than I am. But I have a pure idea of what I like and where I want to go and I follow that.
A-Trak
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There's a ton of amazing music that's not getting heard.
A-Trak
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That's what a DJ is at the end of the day - someone who leads where the music goes. The only thing that's changed is that in America, people have woken up in the last few years and realized it.
A-Trak
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We have to wake up early and make songs everyday. I run my record label. You work at hours where your body isn't designed to work. But it's fun.
A-Trak