We invite you to play this on your best system or headphones while you read:
Dance Music
It’s funny how intensely and constantly electronic music has accompanied the lives of our team of three. For one it started when the 6-year-old visited his mother’s aerobics classes – choreographed to the finest trance music of its time. Another a classically trained jazz pianist, he eventually found the dancefloor more magnetic than the concert hall. And a jungle tape, slipped by a friend’s older brother, proved to be the hook for the third. There seemed to be something deeply unique about music that makes people move, which kept us firmly fascinated.
For us, a combination of three qualities set dance music apart: A strong sense of collaboration and interactive energy contributed by organizers, artists, and attendees alike, who come together to celebrate wrinkles in space and time. Its singular focus on making people move, and creating a space where people move freely and without judgement. And the truly infinite range of emotions and imagery that its soundscapes can evoke so deep inside ourselves.
Other than when we gather to dance in cities, fields, deserts or forests, enjoying electronic music is often a solitary experience. In particular, we found that none of the places online where we find and buy electronic music support, let alone amplify, what makes it so powerful. Streaming services and online stores are consumption-only and at times cumbersome to use, leaving little space for a collective experience or deep emotional exploration. Deepdrive is our attempt to challenge some of these assumptions.
Deepdrive
Our goal was to make it possible to search for music in ways more natural to us as human beings – how it sounds and the things we imagine while listening. We gather musical descriptions by allowing people to describe any track they like, enabling deep searches such as “glittering synths”, “hypnotic”, or “space station”. We’ve designed a compact yet powerful music description system to make this process pleasant and introspective. Descriptions are visible throughout the platform and guide you as you explore new musical terrain.
In addition to a novel way of interacting with music, we’ve created a marketplace that we hope is fun and easy to explore. Artists and record labels can directly upload and sell music in digital format on Deepdrive, and money reaches them quickly and transparently. Their share on sales is 85% less payment processing fees, and fans can pay more than the minimum price if they wish. Tracks can be streamed a handful of times before purchasing, and we apply curation to shape Deepdrive’s musical identity. Like a good old record store.
Now go deeper and read our commitment to Fair Trade Music, search music that sounds like “glowing water”, marvel at the gorgeous Deepdrive-unique waveforms of this atmospheric, embracing and immersive album, this 3-dimensional, deep and hazy track with some alien speech, or this blissful, soothing track with sounds of glistening dewdrops. When you’re ready, sign up to save music to your library, follow activity on the platform, maybe add descriptions of your own, and stay tuned for what's next.
Welcome to Deepdrive :)