Oliver Chesler, aka The Horrorist, is a busy guy.
But between holding down a job, jetting to Berlin to perform at techno shows and maintaining an active website, he’s spending his time doing free remixes – trading them for remixes of his own tracks.
Why?
Chesler offers three reasons:
- You don’t have to shell out a bunch of cash to get a remix of your tracks;
- It forces you to work on material that’s not your own, which can be a creative challenge; and
- The remixes that you do for other artists get promoted by those artists, multiplying your exposure and getting your name into the world.
One more reason to consider doing some free remixes is collaboration. Electronic music gear makes it easy to work in a vacuum – or an echo chamber. Collaboration on remixes may introduced some new ideas into your music.
I would love to see more artists put up tracks for the public to remix so that us unknown/amateur/hobbyists can have a crack at remixing tracks. I know FOAM, Acid Planet, and guys like Trent Reznor have done so but, most artist do not.
Thanks for the mention James! I had a lot of people offer free remixes from that post and your link in so I appreciate it.
Seems like most artists or labels are too worried about piracy to do this.
It certainly seems to have worked out well for Reznor, though.
Sure – you post was good food for thought, too.