We’ve all seen it. It may be the first comment on your favorite dance video, or it may be the last comment on your own. Invariably, the question always comes up. “What’s the music?” “1st song plz?” And any other myriad of questions relating to the music used in the video. Sometimes it’s ok to ask, sometimes it’s disrespectful, and other times it’s just plain ignorant. This article is help you know when these requests are ok, how to prevent them, and even more importantly, how to find new music to dance to.

Are you curious what a song is in a video? Here’s a few steps to help you find it:

1) Check the title of the video.

2) Check the credits of the video as it’s playing.

3) CHECK THE VIDEO DESCRIPTION.

4) CHECK THE COMMENTS OF THE VIDEO. IT MAY HAVE BEEN ASKED AND ANSWERED ALREADY.

5) Use an application like Shazam or Soundhound to find it. Some phones (like windows phones) even have a music search feature built-in.

If you can’t find the song name by any of these methods, THEN feel free to ask for the song name. BUT, even this has its exceptions. If it is a battle video, DON’T BOTHER ASKING FOR THE SONG NAME. Basically if they video isn’t of their own creation, there’s a very low chance they know what the song is. That addresses when to and when to not ask for a song on a video. Now the more important part. How to find new music.

Not all of us are DJs. But all of us love music, that’s part of the reason we dance. We know how critical it is to find music that makes us want to move. So here’s a few steps that will help you in terms of finding new music in a digital world. What DJs do is something called “digging.” Digging was the act of going through records in a record store and giving them a listen. These days with a lot of music online, it’s not hard to “dig” for music.

 

YouTube

You know when you’re watching videos on Youtube and then you get all caught up for hours watching those “Suggested Videos” on the right side of the screen? DO THE SAME WITH MUSIC!!! Find a song or artist you like, and go deep down the rabbit hole. You’ll find stuff you don’t know, and have never heard of, and may like it.

Along with that, keep track of any new artists you discover or songs. Remember those names as they’ll come in handy later. Don’t forget you can do simple searches like “popping music” or “future funk” in Youtube and keep on going from there.

Soundcloud

Now that you’ve found some new music on Youtube, let’s do something with it! Go on Soundcloud, look up those artists you just found on Youtube. Follow them on Soundcloud. They very likely will post new music of theirs on there, and they certainly will share the music of people THEY also follow. So you don’t even have to keep looking for music! Basically Soundcloud will have others digging for you.

Also look for some of your favorite DJs, as they will post mixes as well and may post a track list so you can look into any artists that they named. Some artists even make their tracks available for download on Soundcloud.

Bandcamp

Bandcamp is a website where underground music artists sell their music. Sometimes they offer it for donation, sometimes they charge a dollar for a track or five bucks for a whole album. The price is set by them. So what makes Bandcamp so great? Well besides the individual artists that make their music available, there are also Collectives and music labels that will put together compilation albums of their artists.

So essentially, get one album and you can have 5, 10, 15, 20 different artists that all fit in the same genre. You look up each of those artists individually, and get their music or find more collectives they are on and find more music, and so forth and so on. In my own personal experience, I once downloaded an album from a collective on Bandcamp, and by searching all the artists I liked on that album I ended up with over 500 new tracks.

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Now that you have some tips on how to find new music, go forth and start searching! I’ve seen complaints by dancers about “it’s not fair of a DJ to not share the music they have, and it takes away from the music artists making money, etc, etc” but there’s a few things you may not understand. DJs are not iPods.

DJs create a distinct style and sound that becomes their marker, just the same way a dancer creates their own flavor that sets them apart from other dancers. Those DJs are hired to spin at events because of those identifiers. If they give away all the music they have, and lose their identity, it kills their value as a DJ thus losing gigs and hurting their own livelihood. So please, don’t get on a DJ for not providing you with the music they play.

Instead, do the work to find the music you like and makes you want to move. It will give you more of a connection to the music you dance to and make the experience.