Just Blaze Explains How BDS Changed Remixing


Do you remember when a remix meant almost a completely new song?  When Soul Culture presented the question of how and why remixes have changed over the years, Just Blaze explains the need to increase song spins and the limits of computerized radio tracking, specifically Neilsen’s BDS system.

Nobody stops and asks why does the beat stay the same. It’s because if you change the beat, the computers that run BDS won’t pick it up as the same song. So the whole point is to get more spins.

1,345 thoughts on “Just Blaze Explains How BDS Changed Remixing”

  1. That’s interesting how it broke it down like that. Just is smart. I mean he’s telling it like it is. Its great commercially buy sucks for the art & creativity.

  2. man, corporate america has taken the creative side out of hip hop completely. usually the remix is tighter then the original, money changed everything, class of 2010. but the info given by just blaze is one 2 grow on.

  3. Note that in pre-hiphop era remixers where actual re-mix-es. Meaning they would put fe. a rejected guitar line back in, turn the drums a lower, tweak this and that. So basically we are going more and more back in time.
    Secondary it’s allot easier to make a remix based on the original beat and melody.

    In my opinion BDS doesn’t suck out the art, but the fast consumers and dj’s do. Real radioshow dj’s should handpick their songs. Café owners and such should browse trough their database from time to time and people should search more for music and artists themselves. Utopia?

  4. While I can understand the reasoning behind the industries current approach to the remix, I think it can be a bit short-sighted in some cases. I can think of a few cases where changing the beat as per the traditional remix resulted in a hit when the original track did not do well (e.g. “the choice is yours” and the “nappy heads” remix).

  5. I’m not saying Just Blaze is wrong.

    I will say I’ve heard over a thousand really fucking dope remixes with brand new beats and all sorts of creativity just in the past 12 months. What he’s talking about is 1) radio play and 2) major label promotion.

    So it’s not like corporate America is fucking up hip hop, it just means that the flood of dope REMIXES won’t be getting any spin on Clear Channel stations. Were they in heavy rotation before, though? I don’t think so.

    It will be dope to see this situation finally change, though. I think we’re going to see a big shift from using Neilsen numbers over to web-based metrics like Big Champagne, and that will definitely open up the horizon for real remixes getting more momentum and coverage.

    Or, the Bronfmans will just keep running everything for another 50 years, who knows…

  6. Method Man and Mary J’s ” All I need “was mad hot ! the remix did better than the origional. The remix helped get it a grammy win cause the song on the album was hot but the remix with mary was hotter !!!! I dare anyone to say im lying ! ‘ but that was back in the day’s of real hip hop 🙁 now the beat carries the song . for example ‘ that soldier boy and roscoe dash crap ! aye shorty we all the way turned up ‘ ya’ll know what im talkin about . its crap ! you add guitar ‘ a synth and a lil loud hats ‘ then repeat the same hook 30 times with some reverb on it and you have sold another 500’000 copies . Kids now a ‘days don’t wanna be concious ‘ now they want a nice splif and some Ciroc ‘ after that they take a toot of that powder ‘ next thing you know the cops are at the club and two young cats are on the 6:00 news cause they shot somebody and got 65 years no parole. We had everything from poor righteous teacher and krs one to snoop to nwa big daddy cane ‘ cool j and they were all different . now its all crap. local artists are crap. dj’s don’t use records (not all but some ) when i heard trina and diddy doin a record the other day i knew it was all over with lol

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