Live DJ Vs. Studio DJ

[Logan!]

I've been listening to trance music for years. I've seen many famous DJ's live and had so many quality nights out. But the death(symbolically) of one of my favourite DJ's has got me wondering if his refusal to release any singles has ultimately been his downfall.

Eddie Halliwell is the DJ in question and he was one of the best DJ's in the world for quite a few years. To some, me included, he was the best and most spontaneous live DJ in the world.

DJ Tiesto is what I would call a studio DJ. He's released some amazing albums and some of the tunes on them really are classics. But if you watch him play a set live there's no soul to it. It's just one tune blended blandly into the next and there's no real imagination involved.

Eddie Halliwell has never released a single during his DJ career, but if you watch him live he has so much energy behind the decks and a lot of what he does is off the cuff and simply amazing to hear. He was regularly in the Top 100 DJ's list in DJ Mag simply on his performances in clubs, despite his refusal to go mainstream and hit the studio, while the likes of Tiesto and Armin van Burren are relying heavily on record sales to boost their popularity.

I understand that a club DJ needs a studio DJ to produce the tracks they play, and a studio DJ needs club DJ's to publicize their tracks to sell their records. And I'm not really sure where I'm going with this thread. I guess I'm just disappointed that one of the world's best live DJ's has fallen off the scene in recent times seemingly due to his reluctance to get in the studio and make his own tunes. Both are necessary for the trance scene to flourish, but club DJ's > studio DJ's for me.

Don't expect many replies (if any) if I'm honest. it's a pretty random thread and I doubt there are many trance fans here.

 

[Raoul]

A vast majority of DJs are successful because they produce and remix music and use the resulting publicity of those tracks to help market their DJ shows. Its not different than a rock band recording and an album and then touring to support it. There have been a few trance DJs over the years who have managed to sustain successful careers by not producing or remixing - Eddie Halliwell and Christopher Lawrence spring to mind, but there are also a few others. In Eddie's case, he's still relatively young and doing quite well. I saw him at [Judge] Jules' event in Ibiza last summer and i think he's booked for the usual amount of summer shows again there this year. You're right that Eddie's strengths are his live performances, which is probably why he's managed to thrive in the ultra competitive DJ world for years without using production as a crutch to sustain himself. He'll still be around for years to come.

But going back to the original point, DJing has become so competetive that its virtually impossible for DJs to sustain themselves over a career by simply playing LIVE shows. There has to be a good bit of producing their own tracks, remixing tracks for other peformers, DJing, and recording compilations - all of that perpetual self-promotion.