Just like every other form of content today, keeping up with the newest DJ hardware and software felt (to me) like sweeping up leaves in a thunderstorm. Most weeks, the genuinely useful technical pieces were buried within algorithmic feeds, sponsored gear launches, and 3rd hand press releases.
I started building a way to track these using freely available RSS feeds and a basic HTML dashboard. I am really enjoying the process of news discovery right now, and have thus decided to share my findings via a newsletter. It’s called Tracked, and will publish here on Beatform every second Thursday.
Friction #
I have found that the coverage tends to split into two extremes: manufacturer-adjacent blogs heavy on marketing and launch hype, and the daily scroll of [insert social media platform of choice], where you’ll likely get stuck for too long doing something unproductive (mine is Reddit ofc).
As a builder and DJ who genuinely enjoys selecting, I’m reading pieces from across the entire ecosystem - hardware, software, and open-source - and filtering out the fluff. Tracked is a curated, tight and scannable brief of the handful of tech updates that matter to those wanting to stay in the loop.
Curation Architecture #
The format was actually inspired by Matt Navarra’s Geekout. Instead of a sprawling list, each edition opens with the general DJ news worth knowing, then maps the rest of the ecosystem into three areas:
- Hardware: Pioneer/AlphaTheta, Denon, Numark, Rane etc.
- Software: Rekordbox, Serato, Traktor, Djay Pro.
- Open-Source: accessible-source environments (including the much-loved Mixxx), right-to-repair, and indie development.
Each story tracked within the last two weeks.
Tooling #
My local RSS-fed dashboard automatically pulls from a hardcoded list of sources (including subreddits, manufacturer feeds, and FCC equipment databases), auto-sorts incoming items into buckets, and pushes them through a three-stage filter: a daily scan, a weekly shortlist, and a final manual selection.
The objective isn’t complete automation however, it’s just doing the heavy lifting so I can spend more time listening to tunes and choosing the best stories (rather than finding them).
Deployment #
I’ll post every edition of Tracked natively on Beatform, which will stay in the permanent archive. Always free.
However if you want this directly in your inbox every fortnight, enter your email below:
(Do you have an indie project or a quiet source I should be monitoring? Please reach out!)
