Using Shazam in the Club

I know a lot of people have an issue when they see clubbers using Shazam. But why not? It is a tool that has been produced to make people’s lives easier. Sure, it does look rude when there is some eager beginner hanging round the DJ booth, hitting the big blue button at every song. But it shows (s)he’s digging your tracks. The range of opinion varies to fully supporting it, to deciding it is literally Hitler. To me it feels like a Luddite movement.

I understand when a DJ has spent hours crate digging for a track, they probably won’t want some semi-dedicated clubber finding it immediately, after all the hard work. Yes, it’s unfair. But you are a DJ, your job is to play great songs to the crowd. If you don’t want your secret track choice compromised then stop playing it to the 300 people in the club.

The thing is, it’s still you up there playing that track. It’s still you getting the credit for dropping that famously obscure track that everyone is singing. Just because someone uses Shazam, doesn’t mean that they are going to grab your set recording and mime your set another night.

I use Shazam in the clubs. But only when the tracks are good. If I find myself using Shazam several times in the night, I also find myself really admiring the DJ’s track choice. In a way, it’s a decider of how much I like the DJ. Also, because it allows you to record the snippets when there is no internet connection, I normally wake up to all the notifications. This is a morning-after reminder of how good the DJ was, the bonus is you don’t have to remember the list either!

I’m not huge on the “commercial” clubs where you go in knowing the entire verses to every song. For me, I prefer a balance of familiarity and new music. Even before I was old enough to DJ at clubs, I’d always read about how they are the places to go to find new tracks, that I’d never heard. Shazam is a tool for exactly this.

In a way, if I don’t use Shazam on a night out, there’s an issue. Either the tracks that I don’t know suck – so I wouldn’t want to know them anyway, or the tracks being played are the same tracks that have been played every night at the same time for the past two years, in which case everyone knows them.

There’s another point, a huge benefit you could say, in support of Shazam. The people that want to know your tracks don’t have to shoulder surf and see your CDJ/Laptop screens. This keeps annoying people away from your booth, who often start up chat with you just to get their eyes on your song titles.

Accept that in this regard, a person silently clicking on a phone is much more tolerable than a guy leaning over, who probably is too drunk to remember the next day anyway. I’m not saying use the app, but don’t let seeing someone in your crowd use it ruin your night.