“Predicting the future of music is never easy. Discussion relating to UK underground dance music this year has, from my perspective, focused almost entirely on an apparent stylistic fragmentation and eclecticism, and the success of DJs like Jackmaster and Oneman seem to provide confirmation of this. Any journalistic attempts to identify definitive sets of musical characteristics and to provide this scene with a name have been met with intense scrutiny, and hostility from both listeners and musicians, despite 2011 being the year where if anything, key labels such as Swamp81, Numbers and Night Slugs have refined their respective styles to the point where they are immediately distinguishable from each other and maintain their own distinct identities. This kind of dialogue between journalists, musicians and listeners has only been made possible by the dominance of the Internet as the primary medium through which most people engage with music.
One of the things I’ve found most interesting this year has been watching the increased attention and coverage given to the kind of small-scale, localised scenes that internet distribution makes possible. In many cases, the quantities of physical releases manufactured are negligible compared to the widespread digital distribution of the music online. Unconventional formats such as cassette or CD-R accompanied by hand made artwork have become more prevalent, and they’re often distributed by the artists themselves, acting as little more than a conduit through which listeners engage directly with musicians. The importance of direct dialogue between listeners and artists now seems to be universally accepted, and it’s increasingly unusual to come across artists with whom direct communication through social networking, for example, is impossible.
Journalists in the past have acted as filters out of necessity - where information about music was accessible only to a minority, those few writers and tastemakers were hugely influential in terms of how that information was presented to the public. Their opinions and recommendations were taken as gospel, as regular listeners were unable to take those decisions for themselves. This is no longer true. I don’t see myself as occupying a position of particular authority on “Music in 2012”, when most of the information available to me as a DJ, label owner and enthusiastic music listener is accessible to anyone who cares deeply enough to investigate for themselves.”
Read more predictions in Clash's Social Forecast for 2012.