Announcing: DJ Sue's Online Vault

Six years ago, I opened an account with SoundCloud.com (https://soundcloud.com/dj-sue), which is a place many DJ’s and artists share their musical and other audio projects, shows, sets, etc.  I had begun making remixes of songs and by uploading them to my page on the site; I could also embed them into my blog page at http://smowadeng.blogspot.com.  I never really used it for more than that, just an online place to park remixes so I could link to them.

In May of 2013, I did a remix of a Doors song in memory of Ray Manzarek who had just passed away.  I was planning to link it in my blog post, paying tribute to his memory.  I woke up the morning after posting it to an email that informed me that my remix had been removed from the site as it violated copyright law.  I guess that scared me a bit and I never really did anything with SoundCloud since then.

I have on occasion gotten requests from AWT DJ’s for a copy of one of my remixes.  I have never minded sharing these as long as they aren’t altered and the ID3 tags remain intact.  (ID3 tags are the part of the file that contains the song title, artist, album art, etc.)  Destiny has, I believe, almost my entire collection and plays them often for which I’m extremely flattered.  Recently, I mixed a piece that was a tribute to the 60’s but it was for a Rave Party.  I knew Des would eventually want it but I realized that I could never email it to her.  At over 22 minutes, the file is just too large but I thought for a minute.  If I uploaded it to SoundCloud, I could make the file downloadable and Destiny could get it that way.

I uploaded it in anticipation of the request for it that would eventually come from Destiny.  I was looking around and one thing led to another.  I uploaded many of my more recent pieces, since the most recent ones were put there about five years ago.  I uploaded a more recent picture of myself, a bio, link to my blog and added a banner.  I have relaunched it as DJ Sue’sOnline Vault.  I invite you to explore, listen to my mixes and mashups, leave comments, like songs and even create playlists.

I’ve only uploaded what I feel are the best examples of my work.  After my recent batch of uploads, I got another email…

“Hi DJ Sue,

It looks like your track

"Rock and Roll Part 3 (DJ Sue Mashup Mix)"

might contain or be a copy of "Rock 'n' Roll (Part 2)" by Gary Glitter, which is owned by Snapper Music in certain territories.

As a result, your track has been removed…  Blah, Blah, Blah.”

I get it.

The track takes Rock and Roll (Part 2) by Gary Glitter, which is an old ‘70s instrumental that was popular at sporting events (sometimes popularly referred to as the “Yelling Song”) and put the vocals of 3 by Britney Spears over top the music.  For my more recent remixes and mashes, I have created cover art and the cover art for this one was a mash itself.  (See image above.)  I took the cover from the Britney Spears single, shown below on the left, and combined it with the album cover of the Gary Glitter record, shown below on the right.  Unfortunately, you won’t find this one on my SoundCloud page.

I have not turned on the ability to download any of the files on my Online Vault because I really don’t want to attract anymore negative attention or have more files banned.  However, I am probably going to have the occasional “Open Vault Set” in the future.  On those occasions, during my set, I will have the download feature turned on for every one of my mixes as I stream music at AWT.  After my set, I will turn that feature back off.

Oh, and I can still embed the mixes as I’ve done below.  Here are the more recent ones I uploaded.