Wherever you look, there is a struggle for fame: to become known for something and, by virtue of that, belong to a small elite, to stand apart from the masses. The most obvious example is the broadcasting of a TV show, but such examples can also be found in any other career, among book authors, abstract artists and politicians. This is not a rare phenomenon, but a basic principle of communities. Nevertheless, the paths that lead you from rags to riches seem different. Still, stardom always means influence, and therefore power—or at least the opportunity to share your thoughts, creativity or work with a wide audience.
Different music communities, and drum and bass in particular, are no exception to this rule. Just as in the stock market, where much of it is governed by the decisions of a particular group of people, there are certain labels and artists that influence the entire scene. Who are these people, and why do they have the right to decide what is good and what is bad?
If we take a closer look, the whole question of fame is not so simple. It is like a network, with large and prominent well-known elements at the centre and unknown ones at the edges. Interesting things happen somewhere in between, when newcomers are on the rise and previously well-known people lose popularity. Obviously, this network is entirely subjective, since everyone has their own heroes and their own taste. However, many people with strongly overlapping tastes will agree in their views. So what determines an artist’s position in this network of popularity?
There are several factors that influence an artist’s role on the scale of the entire scene:
- DJ is known because they have been performing at parties for some time. In other words, performance experience is very important. The freshness of the tracks in their set and the number of events at which they have performed also play a major role. Yes, you are right, there are several DJs who are known mainly for their excellent technique, but generally speaking, this is not all that important. In any case, all the “big” DJs are also producers.
- Labels are known for the releases that come out on them: how influential, forward-looking and far-sighted they were (musically, of course). And, naturally, which artists released on them.
- Producer is known through the influential tracks they have released. By an influential track, I mean one that is good or innovative.
If we combine all of this, we get three types of actors. I think that, in simplified form, this scheme would look like the image above. Each release by an artist on a label, as well as a remix or collaboration between artists, is represented by a connection (line). Notice how the network grows in your imagination, don’t you? To be honest, the lines should have different thicknesses to show the number of connections (releases, collaborations, remixes) between two network nodes. We could go deeper and make them dependent on the top 10 or on the number of dubplate plays among DJs and producers. To formalise our idea and bring it closer to reality, we would need to fill each network node with real-world figures: the number of label sales, the number of parties for DJs, or the size of their fee. The “weight” of each element (node/connection) would dynamically increase/decrease, and in this way we could see the entire dnb scene as a whole, as well as determine its most important elements.
By the way, in science, each person’s popularity is calculated by the number of articles in scientific journals and the authority of those publications themselves. Believe me, this ranking is of the greatest importance when getting an interesting job in a laboratory.
So how do you become a famous producer? Write good tracks, collaborate with people more popular than you, and release on well-known labels. That’s all! Good night and good battle.
Update
In the comments to this article ( http://www.neurocode.de/?p=101#comments ), Redshirt mentioned the algorithm Google Page Rank (translator’s note: the algorithm by which Google calculates a page’s rank, determining its position on the search results page; the higher the page’s rank, the higher it appears in the results). Funny, I had also thought of this when discussing typical social networks. According to one of the network theorists, A. Barabási and his book “Linked” (which we highly recommend), many real-world systems will correspond to the model of scale-free networks. In other words, there are several hubs (concentrator nodes, the most influential elements of the network) and a huge number of significantly less important nodes. That is, there is a directly proportional relationship between the importance of a node and the number of similar ones). For example, let’s take the Web. There are portals such as Google, Yahoo (as well as yandex, rambler, drumandbass.ru in the end;) — translator’s note), whose influence is quite substantial. And compare them with one of the millions of personal homepages. Another example is the network of sexual partners (in A. Barabási’s book, the spread of HIV is also studied). Many more examples could be given. Obviously, the global DnB scene is yet another typical example of this.
Likewise, Kidbubble mentioned the influence of some connections on others. In other words, when someone you do not know says something good or bad about you to a mutual acquaintance, thereby changing the connection between you and that contact, as well as its weight. This network is extremely dynamic!
Original article: dizplay, nphect & dizplay blog (neurocode.de). Translated from the Russian translation by Buran and r.dee.
