New dance, club, hip hop and experimental music on NECODO. Download MP3, WAV and FLAC. This issue: Terrence Parker, Orlando Voorn, Dust Traxx and more...

Howdy,

This week we bring you slamming new house releases from Chicago's Dust Traxx label, Detroit house legend Terrence Parker, Amsterdam/Detroit legend Orlando Voorn, and hot material on Leichtklang Recordings and Shush Music.

All of the music in this newsletter is brought to you through our new partnership with GrooveSource. This Chicago based digital distributor will add nearly 100 labels to our catalog over the next few weeks. Read on to learn more about digital distribution - the process by which files from your favorite producer's laptop end up on the web, and eventually on your iPod. We are interviewing Marea Stamper, aka the Lady Ms. Four Square, the managing director of GrooveMedia Group.

NECODO: Can you give me a brief summary of how digital distribution works?

Marea: Digital distribution works a lot like standard vinyl distribution in as much as we basically take a schedule of releases and provide them to various retail outlets for a percentage of the sales. We find new labels by relying almost exclusively on our own personal tastes and knowledge. We’re walking discographies over here. We do occasionally peruse charts and reviews on other websites, but that’s really no different from what we would do as dance music lovers, DJ’s, producers and label owners in our private lives. We work directly with the labels or label groups and act as the liaison between them and the stores...

Howdy,

This week we bring you slamming new house releases from Chicago's Dust Traxx label, Detroit house legend Terrence Parker, Amsterdam/Detroit legend Orlando Voorn, and hot material on Leichtklang Recordings and Shush Music.

All of the music in this newsletter is brought to you through our new partnership with GrooveSource. This Chicago based digital distributor will add nearly 100 labels to our catalog over the next few weeks. Read on to learn more about digital distribution - the process by which files from your favorite producer's laptop end up on the web, and eventually on your iPod. We are interviewing Marea Stamper, aka the Lady Ms. Four Square, the managing director of GrooveMedia Group.

NECODO: Can you give me a brief summary of how digital distribution works?

Marea: Digital distribution works a lot like standard vinyl distribution in as much as we basically take a schedule of releases and provide them to various retail outlets for a percentage of the sales. We find new labels by relying almost exclusively on our own personal tastes and knowledge. We’re walking discographies over here. We do occasionally peruse charts and reviews on other websites, but that’s really no different from what we would do as dance music lovers, DJ’s, producers and label owners in our private lives. We work directly with the labels or label groups and act as the liaison between them and the stores. We collect the money for the sales, we send the releases, we place the ads and we negotiate on their behalf to get them the best deals in as many outlets as reasonably possible.

NECODO: What do you do/what is your role in these schemes?

Marea: I am the managing director of GrooveMedia Group and we do a lot more than digital distribution. We also handle synchronization licensing for TV, movies and games. We are opening our publishing wing. We do event marketing for corporate partners and outsource a whole range of services from manufacturing to a digital whitelabel promo service to labels. As managing director of GrooveMedia Group, I handle a whole range of often strange and unpredictable situations. At any moment I could be on the south side of Chicago taking a hoagie to an artist that I am trying to sign or holding a ladder still while our CEO’s dad tries to fix our furnace 12 feet up in the air. Our office is situated in the beautiful garbage district of Chicago so everyday I walk past a recycling dump the size of a Wal-Mart. From the prestigious to the inane, I have my finger in a lot of honey pots. Monday through Friday they call me “Bosslady” around here. In this office I am a mom to about 9 boys between the age of 22 and 35. When I’m not making sure that they get up on time, “do their homework” and wash behind their ears I am a teacher, lawyer, secretary, glass-ceiling-kicker, intern wrangler, A+R, bare-knuckle boxer, diplomat, hostage negotiator, marketing executive, cowgirl, dishwasher, nurse, DJ and producer. Did I mention that I commute between my office/apartment in Chicago and my house/husband/dogs in Louisville, KY?

NECODO: How has the download format changed the industry?

Marea: For better or worse, digital sales have changed dance music irreversibly. Vinyl sales have plummeted, which is a good thing for the birds and the bees and all us crazy folks that want to breathe clean air, but a bad thing for the mom and pop vendors and vinyl distros. A lot of good professionals have lost jobs due to the bottom dropping out of vinyl. I personally prefer to play it. However, I, like many others, am in the process of going towards using digital myself. I am a digital label owner and I appreciate the freedom of the format and that we do not use petroleum to manufacture mp3’s. There area a lot of quality control issues when it comes to the digital label in today’s market though. The pollution we save from vinyl is “musically recouped” in garbage music. There’s a lot of bad, poorly constructed, poorly mastered material out there. The good thing about vinyl was that the cumbersome manufacturing process acted as quality control. You had to really want to do it. There was money on the line. Mastering was a part of the manufacturing process. Now every 18 year old with a laptop is a producer and label owner. There are good results from the new freedom. Deadmau5 is an example. He’s young, talented and fresh. Digital was a huge part of his success. But for every Deadmau5 there are 10 dead rats that should have left the files on their desktop. Not everyone is a producer. A laptop does not a musician make. We’re starting to see backlash. Lots of stores are cracking down on the qualifications to be a partner. Now the question is how far will the backlash go?

NECODO: Do you think the artist is better off selling digital, vinyl, or c.d.?

Marea: I like to see a combination of limited quantity vinyl and full release digital with exclusive material for each medium. For now there are still vinyl purists and they want their material too. I say give it to them.

Digital is way to sell records and take some of the risk out, which is good for starving artists. The digital stores generally just take a piece of the pie. So you're going to get something with no investment in a physical product.

NECODO: What is your opinion of the current state of music in the U.S.? How do we improve/change/keep that?

Marea: We don’t know who we are. The US needs to reclaim its identity and stop breastfeeding off of Europe. A lot of people in Detroit think it’s suburb of Berlin now. I love the Germans and I love German techno like the day is long. I play a lot of techno from that region. I play a lot of Detroit techno too! So I mean no disrespect at all. But the Germans know who they are and that’s what makes them great. They’re proud of Berlin and the sound you hear coming out of there right now is what it is because somebody asked “what’s next,” not, “hey what are they doing over there and how can we precisely emulate it.”

Like them we need to know who we are.

I live in Chicago, God help me, and once, a long time ago this city gave the world a gift. Real honest to goodness, jackin’ Chicago house is a miracle and a revelation. It should be treated as the gospel that it is. It’s good news! Detroit techno is a blessing. Now I’m not saying that we in America don’t need to love our elders. We clearly do love them with good cause. But we need to own that legacy AND at the same time figure out how to lovingly obliterate it. “Kill your idols.” Let’s acknowledge the past, draw on it when appropriate and focus on the future. Jeff Mills and Ron Hardy are great because they resisted history. Jeff Mills is still asking what’s next. Richie is still asking what’s next. They pulled from the past but ultimately became more. I want to become a nation of iconoclasts.

NECODO: What do you see in store for the future/ any big changes coming that will affect the industry?

Marea: Better technology will make digital DJing even more prominent than it is now. Digital Godzilla will continue to eat the record industry. Vinyl will become a luxury item. Britney Spears will be less important. We will be more important.

Some of their hottest and most recent stormers are listed below.

Until next time, holla!