Following the recent announcement that DJ distribution platform Aslice is shutting down, Richie Hawtin has shared his thoughts on the news.
In a 10-minute statement posted on YouTube and social media, the pioneering techno producer expressed his disappointment that many big-name DJs did not join Aslice, a donation-based platform started by the DJ. Zak Houtoretsky in 2022 which allowed DJs to voluntarily share their playlists and contribute a portion of their fee to the artists whose music they played.
“The closure of Aslice is a huge disappointment,” says Hawtin. “Maybe the biggest disappointment I've felt in our community, our scene since I've been a part of it.”
Last week, the company announced it was shutting down and released a lengthy report citing reasons including industry skepticism (“despite reaching out to more than 2,000 professional DJs, many remained hesitant,” the report says), difficulties the platform was facing to gain widespread adoption, difficulty for the company to achieve financial viability, mixed engagement among DJs and limited adoption by the top and most well-played DJs.
The report notes that “only 4.7% (56) of the top 1,199 DJs on Resident Advisor [with more than five upcoming performances] participated in Aslice.”
Hawtin is highly critical of these non-participating DJs, writing in his Instagram caption that “Aslice was working and the only problem was that not enough DJs, especially the successful ones, agreed to sign up and share the music eco again. system on which they have built their careers. Aslice didn't fail, the famous, most followed DJ's of our scene failed us all.”
In announcing its closure, the Aslice team said that since their launch, they have paid out $422,696 to musicians with money from DJs participating on the platform. They add that all participating artists with the balance will be paid by the end of 2024.
Hawtin shared that as of 2021, he has personally paid 88,950 euros (about $116,268) to the producers whose music he played in his sets, costing him an average of about $800 per gig.
Noting that he was not an investor in Aslice, Hawtin explained that “it was a platform created to rebalance the economic disparities that are a big part of our scene. The financial disparities between how much a DJ or musician and producer gets paid for the music they make and the money that goes into our DJ pockets when we play other people's music.”
Hawtin said that while most bands play their own music and earn royalties accordingly, “in our own beautiful scene where we have the biggest paid acts playing other people's music, that system doesn't work. And it got worse as we moved into digital distribution and streaming.”
He added that he has seen many talented producers stop making music because they couldn't support themselves and their families doing it, even though their music might be played by famous DJs in their sets. He says the platform was “a way to recognize musicians and support the true grassroots of our entire scene. Without music, there are no DJs.”
Listen to Hawtin's full statement below.
The Aslice report notes that the platform has been a particularly vital tool in the world of electronic music, given that PROs' “inability to support the electronic music scene is evident in several key areas,” including, the report states, their technological stagnation , lack of proactive outreach and community building, complicated registration processes, inability to track unreleased music, outdated distribution models, low accuracy rates, and lack of retroactive payments for producers who were not registered when their music was played.
