For people who are new to the genre, Essential Mixes are one of the best ways to get to really know EDM artists. While artists typically get popular through hit singles, in full sets artists make a lot of experimental tweaks and changes to make it a unique experience. In the same way that CD's killed the full-album experience, live sets are bringing that "full" artist experience back.
I've compiled a short list of well respected DJs in case you want to use this site to explore other big names in this type of music beyond the usual suspects (Deadmau5.) There are many, many more and this is just a sampling of different sounds from the most recent mixes only.
If you dig that stuff, you should definitely check out what John 'OO' Fleming is putting out these days. His Essential Mixes are absolute quality, and he's also got a monthly podcast that you can get on iTunes that is very addictive.
Agreed. Sasha's February 27, 2000, Essential Mix is a classic. There are no fancy cuts back and forth, no ADHD mixing, it's just a fairly small number of well picked, well mixed tracks.
This looks and functions really well and you have a good selection of mixes.
For those like me who want to listen to a particular Essential Mix from 1993 till mid 2011, someone has uploaded 910 Essential Mix episodes into a Soundcloud Folder which can be found at http://soundcloud.com/das-boy/sets/essential-mix/. There are some real gems in here and it's pretty much a permanent tab for me.
So I built Mugasha and solved that problem. You can listen to a ton of essential mixes on there and other sets. Including track lists and scrubbing ahead.
What's really sad is that I don't work on Mugasha anymore and I have the exact same problem again.
- I cant easily listen to new DJ sets like I used to.
- I have to resort to listening to Itunes podcasts again and have NO idea what I am listening (track list problem)
- Maybe I can find a new owner for Mugasha so I don't have these problems anymore.
For those who aren't aware, getting offered to play an essential mix is a huge honor in the electronic music world. Most of the mixes on this site are from artists giving it their very best.
Cracking good work! This looks incredibly polished for a side project; are you planning on building it up?
In case you don't know, the BBC is pretty happy to take down sites hosting their content. Be careful. I'm pretty sure Mixriot tried the same thing and got burned.
Feedback-wise, you might want to look into more flexible search for non-standard letters. Concrete example, "Tiesto" returns no results, but "Tiësto" returns seven. I have a feeling most people are not going to take the effort to find an umlauted e and will just assume you don't have any of his mixes.
Yep, right now I'm using Soundcloud and following a user on there who frequently posts new sets from popular artists. But it's just one user; I'd love to see that concept expanded upon and taken to a new site entirely. This site has been bookmarked; I'll be tracking to see where this goes!
Pandora plays the crap out of Netsky if you make a station of Ed Rush (and that's a good thing!). I actually like the occasional break in play from Pandora as it reminds me to get up and walk around a bit.
Hey Eric, your site is awesome. I love how easy it is to play music. I had some thoughts from a UX perspective of things I didn't like about it.
Dislike: There’s no sign up, only a Login with Facebook button (which is annoying personally because I don’t like logging in with Facebook http://screencast.com/t/hsKqMkyuR.)
There’s a bunch of white space to the right hand side of the page (http://screencast.com/t/2swhK5EPb2i), which makes the page unsymmetrical and doesn’t feel right.
I don’t like how most of the things on the page don’t have any description beyond an icon. I know most frequent internet users can probably figure it out, but it still requires me to think for a second to make the associations (http://screencast.com/t/6E2ydk3kh) and some older users and perhaps not as savvy internet users may not understand it at all (albeit the site might not be aimed towards them.)
I know this site is for people who like Essential Mixes, but I have no idea what a collection, Essential Mix collection or FACT collection is. Adding a description could add an unnecessary element while removing a confusing aspect, so its up to you to make the choice. I think a description can be made (without hurting user experience) by adding a disposable box next to the collections briefly explaining what they are.
Hope you don't take my thoughts negatively, just trying to help. Overall I like the site, its is simple and has no truly unnecessary elements, that’s good. Also, I like this touch http://screencast.com/t/oWFv5kkU2), adds to the user experience. And I like how easy it is to play songs (just click and it starts playing http://screencast.com/t/MwkkU8musZ).
You sir, are my new hero. Fantastic work. One added bonus here would be to include the track-list for each one. A simple contribution feature here I think would be a big hit so others can do the work to find them.
Looks like I'll be spending a lot of time on here...
First impression feedback: while quickly looking at a bunch of the Essential Mixes, many of them don't have the location where it took place. Personally, I've mentally sorted a lot of these by location && artist, so might find it hard to find something specific I'm looking for.
Thanks for the feedback man! We are trying to keep it as complete and organized as possible. We tried to get the location of the majority of the ones that are live or recorded at clubs. If you find anything that is off please don't hesitate to let us know.
No problem. Now that I've played around with it a little, a couple more points:
- on the search results page the term 'essential mix' is set as a link, but when I click on it I'm taken to the entire collection of essential mixes - I'd expect the chosen essential mix to start playing. I see why you've done this, but I found it confusing as a first-time user.
- I really like how clicking nearly anywhere on the search result starts playing the chosen mix
Very nice work! Essential Mixes are what really got me into trance music way back around Y2K (particularly Paul Oakenfold's... don't much care for his work nowadays though). So thanks for the trip down memory lane, and thanks to the BBC for creating the program.
There was a Soundcloud account with a like every essential mix ever on it the other week, but shortly after it disappeared - I think due to licensing issues with BBC content outside of the UK. Did you look into that for your player?
This is fantastic. I love the EM's but I hate the BBC player so I am always trying to find the mixes on SoundCloud or the other shady download sites. Now they are all neatly packaged in one place.
Nero's Essential Mix really impressed me when it first came out. The long instrumental around 1h:16m was really unique for one of these mixes, probably a more artistic flair than they would even inject in a live set. The dramatic bpm flux around 1h:28m is also a really experimental, unique climax which could only work near the end of a long two hour set like this one.
Great work! Good use of soundmanager2 (http://www.schillmania.com/projects/soundmanager2/) would love to see if it works on an iPad/iPhone and takes advantage of HTML5 audio capabilities. Please post of you've tried it with either.
Love it, and loving your selection I'm seeing in there.
You might like the "mix youtube music videos" website I made. You can load any youtube user's video playlists as "crates" and then mix from track to track:
That looks fun. Would be really useful if each list had a field to "cue" a youtube url that was not in the crate already. That way you can browse youtube in a separate tab to find a video, then cue it up and start the crossfade.
This is the greatest revolution in music listening for me in my entire life. I love electronic music and when I'm coding I want my music to flow non-stop. You can't get that with individual tracks.
I can't thank you enough! Props to helping people discover Essential Mixes.
Wow, looks (and sounds) great, listening to the Four Tet one as we speak :) It looks like all the sounds are hosted on SoundCloud, is this in your own pro+ account? I'm guessing this was the most economical way to host the files?
sigh Essential mix sites pop up every year or so and get shut down pretty quickly.
The best one (~2010) used really simple code to store the files and my bud managed to auto-download the whole library, even after the site was "shut down".
Right around the turn of the millenium, I downloaded a couple dozen Essential Mixes while I was on the GT campus. This just made my day--I really hope any legal issues can be avoided and this can stay online. :)
I really can't describe how much I'm enjoying going back and finding mixes from that era. Not only is the music great; but I feel like I just stepped into a time machine!
love that you posted here when you first saw it, then posted again after listening to a bunch that brought back memories... i did the exact same thing.
One thing I'd like to request would be the ability to skip around the mixes. I was 45 minutes into the Above and Beyond Mix and I accidentally clicked on another mix, losing my place.
Not bad. I wish someone would create the same, but instead use Fabric mixes. A more well rounded mix series. Nothing against Essential. I just prefer Fabric and Fabriclive stuff.
Yes, after starting a few that bring back some major memories, I really want to skip ahead and hear stuff from later. It's definitely possible with soundmanager2, which he's using (http://www.schillmania.com/projects/soundmanager2/). Hope he adds that. Don't get me wrong, I love the site!
love the site design, can I ask what you are using to build the front/backend? Love the colours and the gradient used in the background, how is this generated? Thanks
Sure thing man! Frontend is all Backbone.js hooked up to a Rails API for the backend. We use MongoDB with Mongoid and LESS for CSS with the old bootstrap.less (which later became Twitter Bootstrap). As for the background I could of used a gradient but its just an image made with photoshop.
This appears to only contain mixes from BBC's radio 1 essential mix, and FACT magazine guest mixes. So you'll need to become a world-famous DJ/producer to get your own mix uploaded.
I've compiled a short list of well respected DJs in case you want to use this site to explore other big names in this type of music beyond the usual suspects (Deadmau5.) There are many, many more and this is just a sampling of different sounds from the most recent mixes only.
Above & Beyond, Kaskade, Nero, Cosmic Gate, Flux Pavilion (dubstep), Jamie XX