On top of their taste-making game as usual, the Discobelle boys (yes, the people behind the always-on-point blog, Discobelle.net) selected 18 earth shattering tracks for you to discover. It’s one of those epic playlists and they did it shuffle style! That means you never know what song comes next…and that’s pretty exciting!

Wanna know what’s Discobelle’s take on the future of the internet, the next big artists, and the role of music bloggers? Well then, check the interview!

How did the Discobelle thing started and how did it become so big?

It started as an off shoot from a Swedish blog after a dispute about what genres we should cover. We wanted to write about Dipset and the others wanted to write about funky house. It made sense to part after that discussion. But we took our mix series with us and that’s what really got things started. We caught on the whole Hollerboard-Diplo-esque scene and started to cover it extensively. A few good names doing mixes for us, and consistently picking up new and hot tracks gave us a good following. And from there on it’s just kept on going.

How do you pick the tracks you post on your blog?

Picking the tracks themselves is mostly a gut feeling. But there’s a lot of work trying to get hold of the tracks in the first place. We spend a lot of time doing research on other blogs, forums etc, and also talking to artists and producers directly. These days it’s a give and take process. Most artists understand that the promotion that they get from being featured on the blog massively overvalues the eventual loss in sale for that specific track.

Is there a “Discobelle sound”?

If there is, it’s probably Swedish. As a rule of thumb we try to feature Swedish artists and producers since it’s a scene that we know well. There’s so much good stuff that deserves to get a wider audience than it’s getting at the moment, and I hope that we can play a part in doing that sometimes.

Who do you see as the next big artists?

There’s a ton of talented artists that are showing up all over the place but to name a few that we’d like to see good things happen for: Boy 8 Bit, Drop The Lime, DJ Sega, Aeroplane, Mano, The C90S, Dada Life, Donnis, Bird Peterson, Foamo, Raziek, Hatchmatik, Holy Ghost, Rico Tubbs, Plimsouls, Top Billin, Brodinski etc etc. If we can only name one artist then it would be Lykke Li, she’s gonna be huge and we love her.

What other blogs do you visit regularly?

We run a mailing list called Grindin with about 50 or so mp3blogs which means we pretty much regularly visit all of them but to name names it’s blogs such as Fluokids, Big Stereo, Palms Out, Mad Decent, Trashmenagerie, Discodust, Nahright, La New Shit, Mass Hyperbole, Get Weird Turn Pro, Panda Toes and alot more. There’s alot of excellent blogs out there who all do a great job of digging through hundreds of e-mails to find good artists and tracks.

Are music bloggers the new A&R’s?

They could be, but more often than not the selection is hardly one an A&R would make. The pretence for selection is completely different as the bloggers have no commercial interests whatsoever, apart from maybe ad sales on the side. They open up for a different view on what’s hot or not. I think the point of music bloggers is that we don’t need A&Rs to tell us what we should like and buy. Good tracks manage to get through anyway these days. Sure, there’s marketing involved still – but the gap between labels and unsigned artists has radically decreased.

Where do you see this whole internet thing going in the future?

Well, without going too Nostradamus on you I think it’s going to be the main infrastructure for all media and communication. As simple and obvious as electricity. We don’t think “oh, let’s use some electricity to put this light on” – you just do it and assume that’s the way one does. Well the same thing will happen with getting music. Of course we’ll go online to get our music. This calls for new business models and maybe even new types of incentives for music creation. We’re still at the beginning of that one and maybe, once the industry wakes out of its slumber, we can have an interesting discussion about that fairly soon.

Visit Discobelle

Visit Discobelle’s Fairtilizer page