Coke Beats: Global Collaborations, Viral Success, and Vinyl Revival on the Virtual Sessions 8/2/23

Coke Beats: Global Collaborations, Viral Success, and Vinyl Revival

In this insightful Virtual Session, The DJ Sessions host Darran Bruce reconnects with Dublin-based DJ, producer, and global collaborator Coke Beats to explore his journey, philosophy, and future projects. Having relocated from New York to Ireland in 2008, Coke Beats has steadily built a career rooted in versatility, creativity, and authenticity. He recounts his recent set at London’s Studio 338, where contrasting atmospheres between DJs Cassy and Lily Palmer highlighted the ongoing debate around smartphone-free venues versus highly visible social media-driven performances.

 

Coke Beats also shares exciting news about his track Greatness, released on Smash The House’s Generation Smash imprint, a collaboration with Danish producer Alris and vocalist Sagu. The single blends pop accessibility with festival-ready energy, reflecting his belief that music should unite people across boundaries. He emphasizes his love of collaboration across diverse genres and cultures, pointing to past projects with Ridgewalkers and support from top names including Armin van Buuren and Tiësto.

 

The conversation delves into his creative process, where some productions take over a year to complete due to his careful planning and commitment to quality. He discusses the evolving role of labels in supporting artists, his philosophy on mixing live with vinyl and digital hybrids, and his podcast efforts to document the realities of life as an artist. From viral TikTok success with his Jason Derulo/Snoop Dogg rework amassing 1.5 billion views to the value of vinyl releases in today’s digital age, Coke Beats proves that adaptability, curiosity, and persistence remain key to a lasting career.

 

Show Notes

Host: Darran Bruce
Guest: Coke Beats
Location: Virtual Studios, Seattle WA & Dublin, Ireland

 

Overview:
Darran Bruce sits down with Coke Beats to discuss his career from New York to Dublin, global collaborations, label partnerships, viral success, and the importance of balancing tradition with modern innovation in electronic music.

Topics Covered:

• Relocation from New York to Dublin and his residency in Ireland
• Recent set at Studio 338 in London and contrasting smartphone policies
• Release of Greatness on Smash The House – Generation Smash with Alris and Sagu
• Philosophy on collaboration across genres, cultures, and backgrounds
• Past projects including Ridgewalkers and global trance support
• Insight into production timelines and structured release planning
• Views on record labels, contracts, and artist development
• Hybrid DJ setups mixing vinyl, digital, and live percussion
• Viral TikTok moment: Jason Derulo/Snoop Dogg mashup with 1.5 billion views
• Inspirations from influential figures like Rick Rubin and David Lynch
• Reflections on vinyl culture and its modern renaissance
• Upcoming projects, podcasts, and label collaborations

Call to Action:
Follow Coke Beats on Instagram @officialcokebeats and check out his latest releases on Spotify and YouTube.
CokeDiscover more exclusive interviews and live sessions at thedjsessions.com.

[Darran]
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the DJ Sessions Presents the Virtual Sessions. I’m your host, Aaron, and right now I’m sitting in the virtual studios in Seattle, Washington, and coming in… Where are you coming in from, Coke Beats?

[Coke Beats]
Right now, Dublin, Ireland.

[Darran]
Dublin, Ireland, yeah. Okay, coming in from halfway around the world. Fun stuff over there.

What has you across the pond?

[Coke Beats]
It’s a very long story, but basically in 2008, I wanted to take a break from New York. It was meant to be a one-year break, and I ended up moving here, and right now I’m resident in Ireland.

[Darran]
And you were recently just in London, too, weren’t you?

[Coke Beats]
Correct, yeah. Tell us about that. Yeah, so the first…

Well, actually, it was a weekend ago. The past weekend, right before the 1st of August, I was in London for a mini-festival, a mini-summer festival, in a venue called Studio 338. It’s a 3,000-capacity venue in Greenwich, London.

And if you are into electronic music, house, and techno, I strongly suggest you check it. Or if you’re just visiting London, and you want to listen to a wide range of talents, of producers and DJs. They have these really cool events that they run from 2, 3 p.m. during the day up until 6 a.m. on the following day. And they have two stages. One is a garden stage, and one is a main room, main stage. The garden stage is obviously for the first half of the event, where they have more chill-out vibes.

House music, deep house, for DJs. And you can literally have a drink on the grass, because it’s a garden, basically. It’s a really beautiful stage built on top of a garden.

And summer vibes, definitely. And then you can move inside. And then they have what they call a 360-degree stage.

So basically, you have the DJ playing in the middle of the crowd. And you can go very close to the DJ and see them spinning on vinyls or on digital, if it’s CDJs. And I was there both because it was the launch of a label called Release London.

And they organized the warm-up DJs up until around 10 p.m. And after 10 p.m., they had the more well-known names. In particular, Cassie, she’s a historical DJ. She played several times at Berghain in Berlin.

She doesn’t do anything hardcore, like techno. She’s more into the house vibes, a very good music selection. And then right after Cassie, there was Lily Palmer, which is one of the new— Well, not really new, but it’s kind of like on social media, she’s an upcoming name.

She’s a brand-new name. She recently started, in the past year and a half, a tour pretty much on a global scale. And it was great.

And Lily Palmer, obviously, was a lot more up-tempo, a mix of melodic techno and a lot of energy tracks. And because she’s a social media sensation, at the moment when she went on stage, everybody was out with the phones. As it is right now, on Instagram, sharing, being there.

It was a completely different vibe, I have to say, from Cassie. Because Cassie, she performs in venues, again, like Panama Ball and Berghain, where there is a strict no-smartphone policy. You probably heard about it.

There’s two different schools. And this is also related to your question about London. What is happening in London is that you have certain venues like Egg London or Fabrique 2 or Printworks, depending on the night.

Printworks is now temporarily closed. I was there six months ago for one of the last events, most recent events. Printworks is a typical big warehouse with concrete walls.

Very good for the more energetic and raw sounds like industrial and techno and stuff like that. But they have this policy about phones, right? So in certain venues in Berlin, they put a sticker on the phone.

So you can’t take photos, you can’t take videos, because they want people to be focused on the present. They don’t want people to be… I mean, you can take photos in certain venues at the bar, for example.

When you’re on the dance floor, the dance floor is huge. And they want to keep people focused on the present. You can do whatever you want.

You can wear crazy clothes or do any sort of bizarre behavior. Whatever you’re into, right? You don’t want to have thinking about being bullying online and all that kind of stuff, which is obviously a recent issue in many venues.

So that was before Lili Palmer and then when Lili Palmer comes in. It was the complete opposite audience, because the audience wants to be seen. So it takes selfies and all this kind of stuff.

I thought it was pretty cool, because you could have both types of crowd in the same venue. Different generations, different backgrounds. It was really cool.

It was truly a mini festival. That was the name of the event, Studio 338. So that’s my recent trip.

And obviously also when I was there, I had the amazing opportunity of meeting producers. I met a producer called New Digital Fidelity, which is actually planning to move to Chicago. He produces a lot of music, which is like house or Chicago house-influenced.

A lot of vinyl record releases. And we’re going to talk about, actually, the next question is about a vinyl release that I gave to him, too. We talked about that.

And we spoke about another reality of London, which is very interesting to know, of places like Planet Wax, which is a music shop and venue at the same time. So, for example, you can go and see a DJ performing at 11 p.m. in the night. And if you feel, you can buy a vinyl record at 11 p.m. in the night. So thanks to that, you can literally shop music or you can hear the records that are in the shop being played or being mixed. So it’s kind of like a really cool, unique experience. So definitely compared to the last time when we spoke, when I was traveling, too, it was just a year after the pandemic.

I can definitely see London being back full on now with a lot of little realities and obviously also the mainstream realities pretty much back to the way it used to be.

[Darran]
That’s awesome. Yeah. I mean, it was you could feel that vibe last year at ADE that something was lifting, like something was changing.

And now we’re a few months away from it, another year in, and things are getting back to full swing of production, which is just awesome. Speaking of music, you have something coming out this week on the 4th of August. Would you like to announce it or would you like me to announce it?

[Coke Beats]
Absolutely. Well, you can go ahead.

[Darran]
It’s a new release on Smash the House label Generation Smash called Greatness. Tell us how that all came to fruition.

[Coke Beats]
Yeah. So basically in April of this year, I started to go back and release regularly one song per month. And I had a few songs that they were playing a long time ago.

One of the releases was come out in May, and it’s a collaboration with an historical trance music duo called Ridgewalkers, which is Ivor and Eleanor. They’re both from Ireland. And they had a massive hit called Find, which received support, still received support by the likes of Armin van Buuren and Tiesto and all the guys from Armada, Alex Moore, if you name it.

Still played to nowadays on A State of Trance by Armin van Buuren. It’s one of those old time classics. There’s a bunch of reasons why it’s a classic.

You know, the sound, the voice. It’s like it has all the characteristics of the classic trance song. You know, like if you think about the White Sensation and, you know, all the big venues in Netherlands or Belgium that are big into trance music.

That’s the sound in that song. And I knew, I mean, I know Ivor for ages, like 10 years maybe or more. And this, you know, that song was finished a year ago.

And only from April of this year, thanks to the management that I’m working with, we decided to create a structure in the releases, which started in April up until now. And exactly the first Friday of August, this Friday, is going to be my first release on the Generation Smash, on Smash the House label. Which is, again, a collaboration between different artists from different countries.

I still, you know, as you remember, like in previous interviews, my main focus is, I believe, in collaborations between artists from very different backgrounds. I think it brings a very interesting sound, backgrounds, both, you know, cultural backgrounds, but also music backgrounds. So in this case, in the case of Greatness, it’s a collaboration, it’s a track that I did with Alris, which is a Danish music producer, featuring Sagu.

It has amazing, you know, it’s amazing vocal performance. So it gets a little bit from the pop world, mixed with the big room sounds that you hear mostly on festivals like Ultra Festival or Tomorrow’s Land. So it puts together something which is accessible to people that are not too much into overpowering sounds.

But at the same time, it can appeal to people that they want something energetic. So some people said that it’s a mix between, it’s like a kind of like a chilled version of Big Room. And some people said it’s Chill Room, which is the funny way I’ll name it.

But Greatness, just like the other songs that I released from April, has a strong emphasis also on the lyrics. And it’s the first time, you know, this year, it’s actually the first year that I started to openly, you know, collaborate with the songwriters about the content of the lyrics. And in particular about making sure that my voice is being mostly a music producer and not a songwriter.

So we mostly focused on the music side. I wanted to make sure that my message comes out also from the lyrics side. Being a collaboration, in this case, between three people, so songwriter and two producers.

And my message, as you know, also in Greatness, is that music should be something that gives a direction. You know, it points into a direction where people can go and have no boundaries, have no division. You know, it’s kind of like a unifying form of art because music itself is very abstract.

You know, it’s not like you don’t see it. You know, you can feel it, obviously, as a vibration. You hear it, but it’s something that you can’t touch.

Apart from vinyl records, you know, like you don’t touch music, right? So when it comes down to lyrics, you have a very limited amount of time and a very limited amount of words in the end that you can use. Because your boundary, your structure is determined by how long is the track, how long is the song, you know, and how many words.

You know, if you do hip-hop, you’re going to have a certain amount of words that you can use and bars and stuff like that. But if you’re into electronic music, you’re going to have more of a song structure. You’re going to have verses and hooks and stuff like that, right?

So within that, there is sort of a challenge. When you want to give a message of freedom, and by freedom, I don’t talk about, you know, the freedom that most people think about, like, which sometimes goes a little bit out of control because everybody wants to have, you know, their voice and their arguing, you know, stuff like that. I’m talking about the freedom that unifies people.

So something that is represented in music by genres. So my message is very, very simple. It’s like if you listen to metal, why don’t you give it a try and listen to reggae or classical music or techno?

Because music defines the lifestyle. So we all know that somebody that probably listens to techno will wear black, just like somebody that listens to metal, right? And also somebody that listens to metal will probably maybe look like rough and strong, but deep inside, sweet person.

Very similar to techno. Or, for example, if you are into hip hop, maybe you’ll like drum and bass because both have an urban style. Both love graffiti.

Both love skateboards. So all these different similarities nowadays, they’re getting more and more, you know, like clear. It used to be that if you were meeting somebody and saying, like, what do you listen to?

Oh, I listen only to jazz. I listen only to rock, right? But if you do that, that means that you also go only to certain festivals.

You only go to certain venues. And by doing so, maybe you’re missing out and you just don’t know. But nowadays, you know, the new generation, like the Gen Z, for example, they don’t listen anymore by genres.

They listen whatever they like, which I think is the proper way. Now it comes to the final point, which is also connected to greatness, because greatness is a mix of different genres. It’s a bit of pop.

You can hear that the verse has a certain vibe and the chorus has a different vibe, etc. Now, the challenge is, if you are a DJ, how are you going to do different styles? Because most of the times, if you’re doing a two-hour set or even a four-hour set, a very long set, you’re going to either play music as a headliner or as a warm-up.

But how are you going to play different styles for people without confusing them? And luckily, there’s very good examples. There’s DJs like Slashy, for example, that does dubstep, but then it puts out a blink 182 track, you know, because it goes well together.

Or maybe something emo, and then it goes into EDM and dubstep like Marshmello, you know, all these different mainstream DJs. They’re more and more introducing this, and the crowd loves it. So you can clearly see in the crowd that you have somebody that is more like dressed up like as a punk rock, right?

And, you know, with colorful hair and like all leather and stuff like that. But at the same time, you have the guy that is, you know, it’s more like a summer beach vibes. And they both love it because they both know the songs.

They both know the vibes. That is beautiful to me.

[Darran]
Yeah, definitely. I liked what you said about the younger generation. They don’t go by genre anymore.

They go by what they like, you know, and that’s because back in the day when you and I grew up, we had a cassette tape. We had a record. We had a CD, and you were locked into that album while it’s playing.

You know, we got pop out a CD, put in one song, pop out a CD, put in another song. And now you got 50,000 songs on your iPod, you know, so you can choose it and make your own playlist or even just go to Spotify and say, I want to listen to this person and who else is on that playlist, and it curates it for you, which is just really awesome as well. You know, I wanted to go back to greatness though, and you mentioned something here that this was produced over a year ago.

And I was curious, how long does it take you to finish a production on average?

[Coke Beats]
Yeah. So, well, it really depends. But if it is my production, if it is something that I do purely for my career because I do a lot of times, you know, like I do remixes.

I do songs for other people too. So more like commission work for hire or, you know, a label project. For my stuff, it can take up to a year.

So it’s the way it works is that you have to be very well organized. So, you know, being a solo artist, obviously, I produce musicals for other people. But when it comes to my stuff, I use, you know, I have a team that works with me.

So I have a very well organized calendar that is planned a lot in advance. So, for example, I already knew in November of the past year that I will start to release regularly from April. And I’m going to have my last release for this year in September.

And then February, March next year, there’s going to be an EP coming out. So I already know that. And then what happens is that there are songs that are in progress, like a year, six months earlier, nine months earlier.

Of these songs that are in progress, they are taken, you know, they’re in different stages. Some of them are on the stand, some other ones are on the demo stage. And I see which ones make sense.

See, like, OK, this song makes sense to have it done in May because it’s this other song before, you know. It’s like the DJ set. It’s a journey.

So people that follow me, follow me because they don’t want something that sounds the same. They don’t want something that like, oh, in April, May, June, July and so forth, it’s the same sound over and over. There are certain elements that are, you know, distinguish me.

For example, you know, having a hook that is high energy and then everything else, which is more a song. That’s pretty much all of my songs. But there’s also the element of surprise, which is important.

It’s also true that most of the times I always work with female singers because I like the sound. It brings out the dimension. I don’t think female singers are as well represented as male singers yet in the music industry.

You know, I love to give a voice, you know, to artists that I can I think can bring a unique point of view, you know, like their own point of view, which hasn’t been heard enough. OK, and this is like these are the way I planned my discography, the songs, how they come out. And in particular, and sometimes it might take a year, sometimes it might take a year and a half.

When moving on, which is the one that I did to Rich Walkers, we started a demo before the pandemic. So that song we’re talking about four years ago and it went on so many different stages. And then it was delayed because of the pandemic.

And then at the end, it was originally pitched to Armada Music because obviously Rich Walkers. And Armada Music said, you know, the sound is too old. Like they’re more into, they’re not anymore into like that old, not to say old school, but classic trance sound.

And they have already obviously tracks by Rich Walkers. So that made me do another review and ended up releasing that song with Turn It Up The Music, which is a label part of Black Hole Recordings. It’s just like Smash The House.

It’s a group of different labels. And Black Hole Recordings is a progressive house group of labels. They have Miss Monique and Coro Loba.

Coro Loba supported one of my songs a year and a half ago in some of our DJ sets. And she was performing here in Dublin too. So that made the connection and they believed in the release and I ended up releasing with them.

So one thing that also I like to do is to work with different labels. So now with Smash The House, I have an option of two more songs with them. So I can go and release two extra songs with them.

It’s open. I’m not exclusive to any label yet because in the moment if and when I will be exclusive with a label, it will be because I can see working with that team for like two or four years. But it’s not the moment yet because I’m working by singles.

I’m not working by a full album. So it takes a long time. It takes a long time to do a song.

A song, it’s a living thing. And because I work with people, like with teams in each song, which are also in different countries, it does take time. And I don’t believe in forcing music.

People can hear that if it’s something that’s forced.

[Darran]
You started talking about the labels. What’s the most important thing that record labels should do for their artists? And on the whole, do you see them doing a good job with that?

[Coke Beats]
OK, so it really depends on who you are, if you’re a music producer or if you’re a songwriter. It depends on that because depending on that, there are different types of labels. I can say right now, because I’ve been working the past year and a half mainly with electronic music labels, I can say that if you want to build, if you want to focus on music and you want to build a follow-up, so you basically want to get your music distributed and exposed as much as possible.

At the beginning, even if you are touring and doing gigs and stuff like that, I suggest, if possible, to work with a label. And you choose a label, basically, there’s different ways to get in touch with labels. The best way is obviously networking.

You can go to music conferences, you can work with managers that are connected with labels who basically pitch your music, and that’s completely normal to do that. And then what happens is that you should choose a label you feel you can work with and you feel they like, honestly, what you do. And you’re going to be surprised because in electronic music, most of the people, when they think about electronic music, they think about pop, commercial sounds, right?

But if you go into the different world of house music, techno, even EDM, each label has a very defined sound. So some of the labels, they invest and they help you in mixing and mastering, they do the mixing and mastering. And they give you direction, they say suggestions, saying you need to be open, obviously.

Saying like, OK, try to put this track in a BPM a little bit slower, do an extended edit, do a radio edit. That, in my opinion, needs to be accepted because it’s part of the music industry. If you want to work in the music industry, there are structures to observe, at least at the beginning.

When you go to a certain level where you have such a strong follow-up and people that support you or even invest in you, at that point, you can create your own structure. Then you need to think about one thing, that if you want to go that way or when you will go that way, you will have to do everything. Your team will have to do everything.

If you work with a label, the label will take care of distributing your music, pitching it to playlists, helping with the PR, for example, pitching to radios, all that. You don’t have to pay for that. If you’re doing a release on your own, you’re not going to be working on music eight hours a day or six hours a day.

You’re going to have to be on the social media. It’s painful, especially nowadays, especially at the beginning. Because at the beginning, I mean, unless you are a genius and you are at the right time in the right place, in six months, you need also a bit of luck, too.

You manage to become viral, okay? If you reach to that point, it will be good and bad because you will have something really big in your hands and you will be like, what am I going to do now? What am I going to do?

If you are lucky and you have friends around you that are good, that don’t want to take advantage of the success you received in a short amount of time, then you will be able to succeed, which is very rare. Most of the times, as we see in the hip-hop world or in the trap world or drill in East Coast, West Coast, so many young artists, they get ripped off or even killed because their reality, it’s like you’re winning a lottery. It’s like winning a lottery.

And it might happen to 40, 60 people in a country easily because it’s very easy to… If you go viral online, you go viral online big. If you go viral online big, you become an asset.

And a lot of people will start to say, oh, I want to invest in you, stuff like that. So you don’t know what’s going to happen. You don’t want to risk, okay?

You want to say, I want to make the proper decisions. So my suggestion is working with labels at least for a year. Do one release with a label.

See how it works. Learn from the experience. I think it’s a necessary step because I’ve been myself when I started as a session player, I was a session player for major labels, for EMI and Sony Music, and I traveled the world as a session player.

Then I started to release music independently, which was the period where everybody wanted to be independent. And I had a taste of how hard it is because you need to be the artist, you need to manage a team. So if you don’t have the right mindset, and unfortunately, music business is not like economics, it’s not like trading.

It’s risk. It’s constantly risk. You don’t know what’s going to happen.

A lot of things go wrong along the way. And the one that is going to take all the blame, it’s always the artist. So there’s no escape from that.

And after the whole full independent period, then go and say, okay, now I’m going to go with the labels. Still have a distribution deal with Sony Music. It’s not exclusive.

I released stuff with Sony Music. Some stuff went good, some stuff so-so. But now I’m more in touch with saying, okay, let’s collaborate, let’s work together, let’s see what happens.

And it’s a different time. It’s a different time from the 90s or the 2000s where most of the people were thinking about labels as a major rip-off. People are educated now.

You can go online, you can have your contract checked by a lawyer for $80 per hour. In one hour, spend $80, and the lawyer will check it for you and will tell you, look, if you sign this, this is going to happen. You didn’t have that in the 90s.

[Darran]
No, we didn’t, not at all. Awesome stuff. Awesome, awesome insight.

We’re going to shift gears here for a little bit, though, and tell us about the Coke Beats show. What’s that all about?

[Coke Beats]
Yeah, so it’s another thing that over the years changed. I changed a lot. So right now, up until a week ago, it’s just basically a DJ set, and I have four CDJs.

It’s two setups. I either go four CDJs because I like to have different layers, have different tracks. I really, and this is another thing that is another tip or suggestion to DJs in general, experiment and try to do mashups.

Try to see literally having different tracks playing on top of each other of different genres, like a reggaeton playing as a break to an EDM track or over an a cappella from EDM because you’re going to be surprised, and people will love that because it’s fresh. It’s different. In the end, people just want to have a good time.

They don’t care if you are a hardcore EDM DJ. You’re playing who you are, but you also have an audience in front of you. So the simple setup of four CDJs, or I have a setup where I have a mixer and two vinyl record players, and the mixer is a Traktor Z2.

It’s portable, really cool. It’s also in the Techno is a State of Mind documentary, the one documentary we spoke about a year ago, which I basically was traveling around with the CDJ, and then I had also a computer. And the cool thing about that mixer, but also other DVS mixers, Pioneer now has a vinyl record player, but I have that built in, which is the capacity, the option of switching between analog and vinyl.

So if I want to play with the feel of having vinyls, I have vinyls that are connected to Traktor Serap. I use Traktor, but it could be Serap, it could be anything else. And then I can just switch, change the digital vinyl and put a real vinyl and mix it.

Because some releases, they’re not digital. Like when I do a house set or a techno set, which is not necessarily just techno, it could be dub techno, it could be ambient techno, do all these different subgenres. There’s amazing releases where they’re not digital, they’re just physical.

And if I have the option of expressing myself in a long DJ set, that’s what I like to do. I like to switch between a release from 2023 and an analog release from 1999. Why not?

If they feel it goes well and it brings you to a good journey, why not? So that’s the setup that I have. But for the gigs that will come up in 2024, I can’t say anything about that, but they’re going to be gigs in 2024.

I’m thinking about, and it’s not easy, to have a hybrid setup, which is still minimal. So by hybrid setup, it means that I played with a dance duo here in Ireland and I still have the dance duo. We did gigs in spring and the first part of the summer.

The duo is called Malibu Vice. And it’s basically, it’s like a 90s house with remixes of classics. And in that setup, it’s the mixer and I’m playing percussions.

I’m playing the digital drum pad. So it’s live. It’s live drums.

And there is another guy on a guitar, playing those old school AEs, keyboards where you wear them, you play them like a guitar. So that element, I think, is really cool. And there’s a few DJs, producers, that they have that.

Obviously, Fred again, it’s popular because he uses the machine, the sampler. But I like that element as far as I can add also the flexibility of accessing a music library. So my setup would be something that would allow me to play on top and with the tracks.

But not too digital. I like the physical element of actually playing the percussions or maybe some tracks playing bass. You know, something physical.

Because we are anyway kind of like, I wouldn’t say reaching the saturation, but there is so many people that have the same setup. So many DJs that have the same setup. You know, CDJs and vinyls.

And most of the DJ skills nowadays, they’re moving away from the technical aspect. They’re going to the music selection. Because everybody has access to a pretty good DJ setup.

So the live performance will eventually come in. It’s already coming in, like Fred again, it’s already coming in, but it will become more and more prevalent because people will be, you know, they wanted to have more. You know, sometimes looking at DJ mixing, it’s boring for people, you know, unless it’s a big event.

So that physicality will become something more, you know, common. And I want to bring that aspect in my setup.

[Darran]
Yeah, I’ve seen a lot of people transition to that over the years, wanting to bring more of a live element to setup. One of my big business partners in Arizona, he’ll bring a full drum kit in, he’ll bring a guitar, and he’ll have drum and bass playing, and he’ll play drums over drum and bass. He’ll get out and start playing the guitar over the drum and bass, and then go back and start playing the drums.

You know, while he has somebody helping him DJ or even a produce track, you know, he really likes mixing that live element with that. So you got your podcast series. What are the top three regularly listened to podcast and or live stream radio shows that you listen to or you follow?

[Coke Beats]
So in your one or in general that I follow? Top three. Top three.

Okay. So I love, well, they’re on YouTube, except probably for, I’m going to put in Joe Rogan, because Joe Rogan has very interesting interviews in the podcast, and he’s on Spotify now, but he used to be on YouTube. I love many different topics.

I love science, for example, and he’s interviewed people like Michio Kaku, you know, but I follow anyway them, you know. So that’s one. But then definitely Rick Beato, which is a YouTube podcast and is mostly for musicians.

And I started to follow, I like underground podcasts, like something that, you know, something that is not too frequent, maybe once a week, once every two weeks. The third one is very niche, and it’s this guy that, it’s called Agostino Zinga, and he does reviews specifically of the underground scene in Berlin. And he does very good reviews.

For example, like when you go like to, we name it many times, Bergen, the club. And if you know Bergen, but basically it’s obscure, you know, what like you don’t, there’s no recorded DJ sets, no videos, no photos or anything. What he does is that he goes to the flyer and he names the DJs, and he tells about DJs.

Like this guy comes from here and you can listen to the music. This is really cool because the music selection is very good, you know, and for the venue, like the way to select DJs and stuff like that. But there’s no way of listening to the sets at the Bergen.

So you just see the names and most of the times people get lost, you know, into the YouTube rabbit hole, but they don’t know where to look at. Also because as we just said, some releases are only on vinyl records. So he does a good job about doing an honest review on the DJs and on the selections, also of places like Clubhost or Watergate.

And it’s, if you, for people that are into niche genres or, you know, more underground productions, that’s an interesting podcast. These are the ones in, yeah. I like obviously to listen to audio books, you know.

Podcasts for me are demanding also because I’m trying myself to do a podcast. I have one which is basically because a lot of people asking me to do it, but they’re very short episodes, like two minutes, three minutes. A lot of producers and DJs and people that I, you know, met like randomly backstage in a venue.

They said, you know, we’re talking and say like, well, you should record this, you know. Because maybe some people will find it useful, you know. Some people have been in the same situation.

So, but to me it will be boring, you know. And I don’t want to go into monologues. So what I decided to do is that I seen a YouTube gave me this option to do the podcast.

And I’m like, I’m just going to document what happens. You know, what happens this week. You know, what I’m doing.

Very raw editing. You know, it’s just literally, you know, I’m talking and maybe sometimes I’m putting up the phone and I have the phone screen recording on the left side of the screen or right side of the screen. And people can see what is happening and I’m telling, oh, you know, this week I’m doing this collaboration with this artist.

You want to know more about the artist? You know, link to the artist. I’m promoting also who I’m working with.

I want to obviously mention about this interview. It’s going to be in the podcast and telling people to go to DJ Sessions website to see the podcast, you know. It’s part of my life.

It’s part of what I’m doing.

[Darran]
What do you consider to be your biggest break that launched your DJ producing career?

[Coke Beats]
Ooh. I didn’t have yet like a global break or anything like that. I had different projects that definitely consolidated my name in the music industry.

And therefore they get me gigs. So one probably, so there is obviously, some are completely random. For example, in 2019, I did a bootleg mashup rework of Jason Derulo, Snoop Dogg, a song which is called Wiggle.

And it’s a 30 seconds thing. And I put it out, you know. I didn’t care.

I just put it out. At the time, I didn’t even know if Code Beats would be going around. And that little piece of music, it’s basically a DJ, they call it DJ tool, right?

It’s like a little insert of music. It became massively viral on TikTok. It still is viral.

It’s 1.5 billion views accumulated over 2.5 million videos. It’s still growing. Today it was 1.6 something billion. There’s so many different apps nowadays. You can track all that. And it’s still one of the top 100 TikTok songs or tracks used in videos.

You know, different context. There is a smile context. There is a Red Bull used it.

There’s so many, you know, like influencers used it too. So what did it do? It didn’t really increase, you know, streams or downloads of my music, but increased curiosity.

Curiosity in what is, who is Code Beats. So that’s, that was like just a, like a PR, you know, lottery win ticket, you know, but a completely random, totally random. I didn’t expect that.

I didn’t know what was going to happen.

[Darran]
I was going to ask you about that actually, about the 1.5 billion views.

[Coke Beats]
Yeah.

[Darran]
And, you know, how you got to that, how that happened.

[Coke Beats]
Oh yeah. So that was released in 2019 and six months after it was released, there was this context, there is still this context on TikTok. It’s called the smile context.

So basically you have one of those TikTok filters, but it has a number on top of your head from the 100. You probably saw it. And the brightest smile you have and the highest the number.

And there is kind of like a countdown that goes up. It’s like, it’s a riser. And then it says wiggle, wiggle.

And that’s me. That’s if you click on the song, it goes straight to COVID. Yeah.

That’s one. Then there was the crazy barista, which is this guy that does sculpture. He’s a, you know, a mixologist.

He does cocktails and stuff, but he does also sculptures with ice. Takes a piece of ice and like in 10 seconds, it makes like this, you know, dinosaur and different sculptures. He used that, that track by Mashup massivelyly.

And there’s a bunch of other ones, more underground, but they still use it massively. So what happened is that in 2020, I saw that it was starting to pick up and I’m like, why there is like 1 million videos using it. And then, you know, more and more it started to go up and then up.

And I was scrolling, like obviously it never ends, you know, the video feed. And I’m like, this is so random. So basically, you know, I still think that probably the easier way to get viral on TikTok is if randomly somebody decides to use your song with one of the TikTok context, you know, like a dance context or a makeup context.

Because people will not think about the song. They will think about the sound that goes well with something you’re doing in the video. But if you try to do it the other way around, it’s very hard.

If it doesn’t make it viral.

[Darran]
Yeah. Was that something that you submitted your song to be used for that contest and they had those 100 songs to use?

[Coke Beats]
No, it was picked up. It was picked up by a few influencers. Yeah.

[Darran]
Oh, gotcha.

[Coke Beats]
That’s it.

[Darran]
Wow.

[Coke Beats]
That’s awesome.

[Darran]
You know, it sounds like you got a little viral experience under your belt. You know, that’s awesome. But if you could put one non-famous person in the spotlight who means a lot to you, other than your direct family and friends, who would that be and why?

[Coke Beats]
Yeah. So, I mean, in music, there’s many, but I’ll probably put Rick Rubin. I put Rick Rubin because in music, okay, then, you know, obviously, there’s so many other fields that are interesting too.

Rick Rubin is kind of like somebody that will bring elements of knowledge from the music industry, but he’s also somebody that knows a lot about human psychology and spirituality. There’s so many different things, right? And it’s one of those people that are more about producing the vibe, like putting the artist in the right situation and then let all the technical stuff up to the sound engineer, the technicians, you know, all the technical stuff there.

And he needs also the certain situation to be able to add value because certain situations, they wouldn’t need Rick Rubin. He recently released a book, which actually I have right there. I read it, which is like a guru, you know, a book about how to approach music production.

And funny enough, there’s a lot of things, but I already knew because I use that for myself. I already use that when I produce people and they come purely from life experience. So it’s just something that, you know, at the time, especially when I started, there was no YouTube.

So I had to get that from life experience. But in the future, if definitely if I wanted to work with a producer or an artist, I wouldn’t want to work with somebody like Rick Rubin because everybody else, you can kind of know what it’s going to be like because it’s technical. You see what I mean?

So it will bring down to also ask, you know, to a producer, like, how do you make music? You know, what is the most important thing about making music? And to me, it’s not a technical aspect because I already have that.

I’ve seen that. And nowadays you can have so many great technical people working with you. But what misses in the end, what is really important is to capture a magic, you know, to capture something that it could be for lyrics or for sound, for melody, whatever it is.

Then when people listen to it, people have no technical understanding of music. But when people listen to that, they have a certain emotion. It triggers something.

Okay. And if you can trigger that something with like a billion people, obviously you have a hit. You know, and I know there is other stuff like how much it is promoted, what people know about it.

But let’s take, let’s put that on the side for a second. In the end, even if I promote a song, I still need a little bit of that magic. So it would be great, you know, I would love maybe in the future, who knows, to work in some form of capacity with Rick Rubin and feel, what does it feel to be in a studio with him?

Like he doesn’t even need to talk. Just what is the feeling? If there is a spiritual magic, if it is inspiring artistically.

So that’s something that, you know, will make me think about Rick Rubin for an influential person or somebody I would love to work with.

[Darran]
Rick Rubin, that’s actually a name from Blast from the Past. That goes back to the 80s for me. You know, speaking of an inspirational person, he’s worked on a lot of stuff.

Who is the most inspiring person you’ve ever met backstage? And tell us why that person inspired you.

[Coke Beats]
Yeah, there is a, well, probably backstage, it wasn’t technically backstage. It was in New York. It was at the Transcendental Meditation meeting in Manhattan.

It was David Lynch. David Lynch.

[Darran]
Okay.

[Coke Beats]
It was interesting because I love movies. I love Stanley Kubrick. I love Akira Kurosawa.

Tchaikovsky. And obviously, you know, even, you know, more contemporary film directors, even like Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, you know, those classics, obviously. But David Lynch was part of my, what to say, childhood.

But when I was a teenager in Italy, which is where I come from, Twin Peaks was a big deal. People were following Twin Peaks. And before that, obviously, you know, because of Twin Peaks, I went back and checked Eraserhead, Elephant Man, you know, all different David Lynch stuff.

And I was like, where does he get that imagery, you know, that like dream state? And when I was in New York, I was interested in Transcendental Meditation and the Maharishi University, all that kind of stuff. And I found out that David Lynch has been meditating at the time for about 30 years.

And not necessarily to calm down, but just actually to get in what he calls like a deep dive. And in the deep dive, you get access to this collective unconsciousness where you see all those crazy things, you know, like a spiritual world. And you have, you know, places or creatures, right?

Or situations that are very similar to when you go into a dream state, but at the same time, they last for longer than a dream. Because a dream is like a glimpse, you know, of what seems. This is like, you know, like a drawing.

And we had a chat about that. We had a chat about that. And I thought it was really cool because he was both a legendary figure, you know, for me.

It was like, well, it’s David Lynch, you know. And then we were sharing things in common. He come to me and he says, oh, you’ve got the vision, man.

That’s what he said to me. I remember that. And it was like, wow, it’s a great compliment, you know, because I didn’t do Transcendental Meditation.

And he said, like, you’ve got, you know, the vision is like, it’s the same vision, pretty much, of Maharishi, you know, and all the Transcendental Meditation school. So that was definitely a meeting that I’ll remember. You know, it comes up to mind.

[Darran]
That’s awesome. Going back to music, if you could go back 25 years in music history or forward 50 years in music future, knowing what you know now, which one would you pick and why?

[Coke Beats]
Well, I’ll go in the future because I already know the past. you know, if I would go in the past, I’d probably choose to be born in, I was born in 78. I would choose to be born in 48.

So I could be probably 30 in the 70s and 40 in the 80s and 50 in the 90s. Those periods were good periods where you got a balance between technology and creativity. There’s not too much technology and there’s still a very good human interaction, human level in making music or making art in general.

There’s also that, in a sense, and danger on certain aspects that will give spontaneity to music. But it didn’t happen. So it’s, you know, it would be like a back in time, you know, going back and traveling back and just experiencing something.

But I would know what to expect pretty much because there’s so much information now, you know, oh, that’s bad, that producer was around, you know, Quincy Jones, you know, Phil Spector, you know, all those different situations. If I will go 50 years into the future, I will have to make predictions, you know, but in my, you know, one bold prediction that I can make, but it’s very predictable in a certain way, is that obviously technology will never stop. So it will go ahead, right?

And we’re talking about, you know, nowadays about artificial intelligence and, you know, the impact that is having pretty much anything. I think that in the future, no matter if AI will take over or will not take over, there will be a group of people that will feel the need of something made by humans for humans. So there will be a comeback of let’s go and see just somebody playing classical guitar in a church because it’s human, it’s imperfect, and maybe not listen to it in a recorded version, but go and see it performed live.

Let’s go and see theatrical performance like a Broadway show, but without the production of Broadway just to see the talent and the skills that it takes to dance and sing in a certain way because it’s human. It’s not perfect. So there will be two completely, which is happening actually in electronic music right now with no need of AI.

There’s two separate, not communities, so it doesn’t matter the genre, two separate audiences. One audience wants everything predictable that looks in a certain way. They know what they’re going to get because it’s like you go to a restaurant and you read 100 reviews and you already know that it’s all built on expecting.

So somehow it’s literally satisfying every word that you already have in your head. That’s one audience. And there’s another audience that wants the complete opposite of the other audience.

So one audience wants to go and basically met the expectations and do a certain set of behaviors and things. And the other one wants to be not seen for, wants to be out for a long period of time, wants to feel even of risk. And this is represented somehow also in genres more or less, but the point is the audience and what the audience wants to do.

And because of that, you have certain venues and other venues, and you have certain groups of people, certain demographics going a certain direction and other demographics going in a completely different direction. That is already happening. Now when AI is going to get into place, AI is going to make it a lot easier, obviously, for the audience that loves anything predictable.

But at the same time, it’s going to value more what is imperfect for the other audience.

[Darran]
That was deep. Awesome. Well, Koguit, is there anything else you’d like to talk about with us or let our DJ Sessions fans know?

[Coke Beats]
Yeah, so this year, I had my second release on Binary Record, which I actually have right here, which is this one. I don’t know if I can show it. This one, which is a limited edition.

And I’m just saying this because it’s on a aquamarine green. It’s from an Italian label called Glossy Records, and it’s actually sold out. I have a few copies on Instagram and on my podcast I’m probably going to do a giveaway, too.

If you’re interested, you can still get the four copies that I have here. And I think that as a DJ and as a producer, having a release on a Binary Record should still be considered a valuable experience. It doesn’t matter how big is the label.

So if you can, try to work with a label that does releases on Binary and you’re going to experience the whole journey of preparing the music, calculating the time because it needs to be fitting on the side. There’s a whole process and you learn a lot about that world, which is a world that is much alive. There’s a lot of people that are into Binary Records and it will be alive for a long time because of what we just said, that people want more imperfect, human-made music, human-performed music, but also human-DJed music in the case of DJing with Binary Records.

[Darran]
Definitely. Do you see vinyl making a little bit of a comeback right now? I mean, I know you’ve got that, but are they coming out with vinyl players and people are picking up in the stores and getting the records?

[Coke Beats]
It’s not on a mainstream level.

[Darran]
Perspective.

[Coke Beats]
Yeah, it’s not on a mainstream level. For the general audience, it’s more about owning one vinyl, maybe two, just to have it as a collection item. For the people that DJ, yes, there is a little bit of a renaissance of Binary Records, but still depends on the territory.

I haven’t seen that much all around the United States, maybe certain areas like Chicago or Detroit. In Europe, it’s more spread out for a bunch of reasons, but the main reason is the experience of the Binary Record. For the audiences, because you’re seeing DJ literally putting on, it’s physical, putting on the vinyl.

And for the DJ, because of the way you have to plan your set. You don’t have 10,000 tracks. You have 10 records, 20 records.

That’s it. So if you don’t plan it properly, you’re literally going to screw up the whole set. The whole journey is going to be inconsistent.

[Darran]
Yeah, awesome. Well, okay. Where’s the best place they can go to find out information about you, follow you?

Where would that be? Would that be Instagram?

[Coke Beats]
So, yeah. I’m focused right now as far as, you know, like communicating. Because obviously, there’s like band camp and stuff like that for physical, etc.

But I’m focused on Instagram, which is my main social thing. And Spotify for the music. And that’s it, yeah.

OfficialCookBeats, that’s Instagram. But if you type CookBeats on YouTube, I’m the only YouTube channel verified with the name CookBeats. And Spotify.

So Spotify, Instagram, and YouTube. And obviously, I’m everywhere else. But those three channels are the ones that I keep more updated.

Where I’m investing, you know, time to actually curate them. And also to communicate. You know, if people want to send me messages, feedbacks, etc.

[Darran]
Awesome. Well, we got that Instagram. Do you have a link tree up there that’s going to have all your links to it and everything?

[Coke Beats]
That’s it, yes.

[Darran]
There you go. Go to the Instagram, folks. Well, again, CookBeats, thank you for coming on the DJ Sessions.

It was a pleasure. We will be following up with you. Everyone go out there and check out that latest, newest release coming out on August 4th.

Greatness. Awesome. And congratulations on that as well.

[Coke Beats]
Thank you. Thank you.

[Darran]
You’re welcome. On that note, don’t forget to go to our website, thedjsessions.com. Find us on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook.

We’re out there. Follow us. Find us.

But you’re going to find out all that information and more at thedjsessions.com. Live interviews, exclusive mixes, contests, tons of stuff. We do 24 news stories a day.

Times that by 30. 600 news stories about the electronic music industry distributed a month through our site at thedjsessions.com. That’s CookBeats coming in from Dublin, right?

[Coke Beats]
Yes.

[Darran]
And this is Darran coming to you from the Virtual Studios in Seattle, Washington for the DJ Sessions Virtual Sessions. And remember, on the DJ Sessions, the music never stops.