Hey DJ, do you want to be famous in an overcrowded business? Part three, the Positioning Matrix

Techno Music PortfolioLast week I promised to show you a systematic approach to develop your very own positioning strategy – to make you outstanding beside all your competitors. And so here we are with a positioning matrix for the techno genre! This two dimensional matrix allows you to…

  1. get an overview over your entire music business
  2. understand your competitors´ business strategies
  3. identify the „white spots“ you might want to cover (boost musical creativity).

To make it possible to characterize and assess techno music/tracks I suggest two aspects, namely aggressiveness of tracks plus complexity of instrumentation. The first distinguishes between highly aggressive tracks, fast and pushing, ideal to mark a peak in your set, and smooth ones, more ambient and calm.

The latter aspect, complexity of instrumentation, needs a little more looking into. We can categorize three subsegments:

  • segment one: rythm based. These tracks are dominated by rythm (hard kick, sharp highhats etc.), hard bass lines, and/or noises (cracks, sweeps,..), and/or voices/whispers (dry, FX). Songs have a simple structure and are mostly powerful.
  • segment two: pad based. These tracks are dominated by pads and ambient or evolving sounds (calm, airy, a bit sedating,..), in combination with sounds mentioned above. During the past two years a growing number of producers have developed a love for combining pad sounds with hard and pushing rythms.
  • segment three: melody based. Tracks dominated by a melody (synthesizer and/or vocals), chord progressions combined with all sounds mentioned above. The melody will usually be longer than one bar and consist of more than just a few notes.

With this we will create our 2D positioning matrix and, starting next week, how to use this method for DJing and music production. Stay tuned!

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