If you follow DnB and jungle, you know the routine. New releases on one platform, mixes on another, videos somewhere else, radio shows wherever the host felt like uploading them, and rave listings scattered across countless pages. You end up with a pile of tabs and still miss the tune everyone's talking about. DROP THE BASS is my answer: one live hub for drum & bass and jungle, made for junglists, selectors and crews. It's live, it's free, and it's deliberately not a streaming service.
A hub, not a platform
The first decision was what DROP THE BASS should not be. It doesn't host music. It doesn't try to be another place you have to upload to. Content links back to the original sources, so artists and labels keep the plays, the follows and the context.
That sounds modest, and it is. It's also the only version of this idea I'd want to use. The scene already has homes for its music. What it lacks is one place that points at all of them at once.
What's on the front page
| Piece | What it does |
|---|---|
| Scene board | A live overview of what's new |
| Release previews | Listen in the page before you click out |
| Persistent player | Keeps rolling while you browse |
| DROP THE BASS Radio | Radio shows in one place |
| Artists in focus | A closer look at specific artists |
| Community shouts | Short posts from the people using it |
| Raves by city | Upcoming events worldwide |
The player that doesn't stop
The persistent player was the feature I cared about most. On most sites, clicking a link kills whatever you were listening to. On a music hub that's absurd. You're halfway through a mix, you click to read about the next rave, and silence. So the player keeps going while you browse. Small thing. Huge difference to how the site feels in the small hours.
How content stays current
The site is kept fresh by automated syncs, not by somebody copy-pasting links all evening.
- Sources on YouTube, SoundCloud and Spotify publish new releases, mixes and videos.
- Automated syncs pick up what's new.
- Items land on the scene board with a link back to the original source.
- Release previews play in the page; full listening happens at the source.
- Raves are organised by city so you can see what's on near you.
Automation with limits. Syncs keep the board current, but they only know what the sources publish. If something isn't on the source platforms, the sync can't find it. That's a feature of linking out, not a bug to paper over.
Writing for the scene without faking it
Music sites have a particular failure mode: they try too hard to sound like the scene. Forced slang, made-up history, invented stories about legendary nights. Junglists can smell that from across the room.
So my bias for anything editorial on DROP THE BASS is specificity over name-dropping. Say what a tune is and where it came from. If you don't know, say you don't know. Genre labels are a good example: whether something is liquid funk, a roller or something harder is a judgement call, and I'd rather a person make it than let a tag from some platform decide it.
Knowledge over slang. Specificity over name-dropping.
— my rule for writing about the scene
Who I had in mind
- Junglists who want one place to check what dropped this week.
- Selectors digging for tunes and mixes without opening a pile of tabs.
- Crews who want their releases, shows and raves to be found next to everything else.
- Anyone who just wants a player that doesn't stop when they click a link.
What it isn't, and what's still rough
It isn't a streaming service and won't become one. If you want full albums, you go to the source. That's by design.
Freshness depends on the sources. When a label posts somewhere the syncs don't cover, it won't show up automatically. Coverage of raves depends on what gets listed publicly, so some cities will look busier than others for reasons that have nothing to do with how good their scene is.
And some parts, like community shouts, only get interesting with people in them. A community feature without a community is just a text box with ambitions.
If you're building a hub for any music scene
- Link out to the original source every time
- Keep a player alive across page changes
- Automate the syncs and keep editorial judgement for people
- Organise events by city
- Don't fake scene credibility
Have a listen
If you're into DnB and jungle, the board is at dropthebass.co. Leave the player running and click around. My other projects are at spicanet.net/products.
DROP THE BASS: dropthebass.co. Originally published on spicanet.dev.
Top comments (0)