About me and why I'm on Steemit

I'm Jon, a DJ based in London.

Over the last few years i've been gradually building a name for myself and playing gigs in London and around the south east of England (with occasional forays into Europe and the Middle East).

Over that time i've witnessed a marked decline in a number of things that are vital for someone in my line of work. Licensing hours in the UK seem to have declined markedly, venues across London have been closed and many promoters i have worked with in the past have had to relocate, go out of business or scale back operations. fewer open hours, mean less work for fewer DJ's, and even in the festival scene the restrictions on set lengths, or volume have become prohibitively onerous.

In parallel, digital systems that have supported my work have been undergoing many changes and so few of these have been positive. The ongoing problems that Soundcloud has faced in order to remain financially viable have been accompanied by ever more ludicrous controls of copyrighted material (leading to some artists having their own productions taken down despite them owning the rights) and it was never intended as a forum to promote one's work as a DJ - for many DJ's it has become and remained one primarily because of the access it gives to a huge base of listeners when compared to DJ specific networks such as Mixcloud.

Even the mighty Facebook has become a more hostile environment than it once was, both by restricting the visibility of posts to a small percentage of the people who like and follow your work, unless you have money in the budget to sponsor posts; and the limits on numbers of people who you can invite to events.

Changes such as these have knock on effects throughout the music industries. Although Soundcloud exists for producers to share their original content, it is often the work of DJ's that bring these tracks to an even wider audience - indeed much of the new music I discover on Soundcloud is found via a set from a DJ i already listen to...and thus a producer i may never have heard of becomes someone i follow on Facebook but then lose touch with due to Facebook's algorithms restricting posts from all but the most corporate and well funded businesses.

It is my hope that platforms like Steemit will do something to reverse this trend and start to re-democratise whatever it is that social media has become and once again provide easy access for small time creatives like myself to once more reach wider audiences, connect with like minds and share as widely as possible, those talents or skills we have.

If you'd like to check out some of my sets you can find me on
http://www.soundcloud.com/herukajon
http://www.mixcloud.com/herukajon
twitter @herukajon
http://www.facebook.com/herukajon