Martin Jensen – Streaming Innovation, AI in Music, and the Future of Live Sound on the Virtual Sessions 10/21/25

Broadcasting live from Spinnin’ Records Studios in Amsterdam, Martin Jensen reconnects to discuss innovation, passion, and the evolving music landscape. Known for his hit singles and global reach, Martin opens up about Me Myself Online, his ongoing creative project that began during lockdown on Twitch and has now evolved into a high-quality YouTube series. The first episode, filmed aboard one of the world’s largest container ships, the Mary Mærsk, symbolizes his ambition to blend music with unique global experiences.

 

He talks candidly about the hidden costs and complexity of live streaming, referencing how production logistics can reach tens of thousands of dollars just to go live—a challenge that helped him appreciate in-person performances even more. Despite his hectic schedule, Martin admits to having little routine or structure, joking about surviving on little sleep and a love for red wine over kale salads.

 

The discussion turns toward creativity and mental balance. When facing creative blocks, he shares that spontaneity—and occasionally a strong vodka Red Bull—helps break through stagnation. He emphasizes the importance of enjoying the process over chasing perfection, viewing each show as both a performance and a test of endurance.

 

Touching on AI, Dolby Atmos, and streaming economics, Martin sees technology as both opportunity and caution. He values authenticity and artistry over shortcuts, preferring hands-on creation. For him, success isn’t measured in numbers or fame but in fun, passion, and staying inspired. His advice to rising artists: do what feels right, stay true, and never forget why you started.

 

Topics

0:12 – Discussing Me Myself Online and filming aboard the Mary Mærsk
2:38 – The logistics and cost of producing large-scale live streams
5:16 – Touring, performing, and lifestyle balance on the road
7:02 – Managing creative burnout and the value of spontaneity
9:59 – Conversations on AI-generated music and copyright risks
12:20 – Choosing between the past and the future of music
14:05 – Dolby Atmos, immersive sound, and streaming royalties
16:20 – Gear, endorsements, and balancing DJ versus personal life
17:27 – The difference between massive festivals and intimate venues
20:39 – Humor, wild fan encounters, and advice for new DJs

Connect with Martin Jensen

• Instagram: @djmartinjensen

[Darran]
Hey everyone, welcome back to another Sideways episode of the DJ Sessions. Yes, coming in all the way from Amsterdam, live right now, it’s Martin Jensen on the DJ Sessions. There you go.

Hi there. Awesome, you’re out there at 8 o’clock right now, you’re at the Spinnin’ Records studio. Yes, I am.

It’s early morning over here, the sun hasn’t even risen, but you know what, in this industry, the music never stops, as our tagline says. How have you been? Long time no chat.

Yeah, it’s been a year or something like that. Just a little over a year since we last spoke, yeah. And you’ve been quite busy, up to awesome goodness, with your latest single, Follow Me.

And I’m wondering, do I, I’m not, hopefully I pronounced this correctly, is it Mar- Mer- Mer-sick? Mer-sick? Did I say that right?

Mask? It was a mask. Yeah.

Is that how it’s pronounced? Yeah. It’s spelled M-A-E-R-S-K.

Mask. So I’m like, how do I say that today? I didn’t do any pre-show on that.

Yeah. I should have. But Me Myself Online, tell us all about Me Myself Online, is it a new reality show that’s coming from Martin, or what’s going on here?

[Martin Jensen]
No, it’s actually something I did back on Twitch under COVID, yeah, I would love if I had a stand for my phone, but I don’t. And this, I can show you here, I actually took a salt. I was going to say, use a coffee cup, it works.

Yeah, but like, I’m trying to do that, but it works really bad. I think it’s great now. Okay, so yeah, I did Me Myself Online under COVID, where we were doing loads of shows around Denmark, online on Twitch, but it’s a bit difficult for me to stream those big shows now on Twitch, because they are short amount of time and stuff like that.

And also, the shows are very expensive to do when we have to broadcast them live. And so now I’m just like doing them online, and doing them to YouTube. We edit them, and then we’re uploading them to YouTube.

And hopefully we will do a bunch of them. But now we started with the biggest container ship, one of the biggest container ships in the world, Marymask, which is pretty impressive, I would say. And I’m really excited to show you the video in, I think we’re releasing it in two, three weeks.

[Darran]
November 7th, correct? Yes, I think. Yeah, exactly.

No worries. I got show notes. Leah does her job well.

I got a team over there at Urban Rebel, who are always amazing and awesome to work with. But no, I mean, you know, it’s interesting you bring up the complexity and the budget or of online streaming on site. That was one of the things that we saw happen in 2020, is being a show that, you know, would be out in the public or having studios and all that fun stuff.

A lot of people jumping online, and we’re like, oh, what kind of webcam do I use? Or how do I do this? And all the technical complications are that we’re getting ready to launch a whole new live series.

Actually, about six or seven new live series here with a venue that I just partnered with in Seattle. And people don’t understand, I got to bring $25,000 worth of gear to make that happen. Yeah.

You know, everything that goes in behind it, that’s my executive producer head. This isn’t just a webcam and a nightclub to make something happen. And then if there’s editing, I learned the lesson a long time ago that when it’s live, anything can happen.

Just like this interview. Anything can happen. Anything goes.

So roll with it. But congratulations on that, you know, taking it on the road. Hopefully we’ll have you here in Seattle soon.

Somebody will bring you up here. Maybe we’ll bring you up here. I don’t know.

We’ll talk about that. I’m going to the States pretty soon. I would love to see you in Seattle when you get here, get you in our mobile studio and have some fun there.

I don’t know if you’ve seen that yet or not, but it’s basically a big glass box that we put on the back of a truck and we drive around with a concept. Something a little bit like, this is what blew my mind away, where I kind of disappeared last year. I came back from Rave the Planet with Riverside Studios and was on the back of their double decker semi truck thing.

And I was never done anything like that before. Never been around 350,000 people. Never streamed live and took number one in the world for six and a half hours, accolades and were a little, yeah, it was awesome.

But no, that was like, I sat back and said, what we do in Seattle is nothing compared to something that happens with Rave the Planet, which is just amazing. We’re looking forward to being back there next year. You know, all this producing music, we’re on the road stuff.

It takes a lot of time to do all this. And I got to know, where do you find time to stay fit? Do you have a workout routine or do you have a mantra that you do?

I wake up in the morning, the alarm clock goes off and hit the road. Nothing at all. You look great for your age.

You look like you’re what, 27?

[Martin Jensen]
Bullshit. I’m 34 now.

[Darran]
34.

[Martin Jensen]
Yeah. It could look like one is 40 at the minute. No, but like, you know, I don’t do anything, to be honest.

I just take things that they’re coming and then I do my work every day and sleep as less as possible. I’m a very bad influence for people how to stay fit in this very industry. I’m super bad.

So don’t listen to me. I drink too much, I sleep too little and I party way, way, way, way over the limit. That’s for sure.

Aren’t those supposed to be the perks and benefits of the job though? Yeah, but I think there’s a lot of health thing. People are very strict about like eating salad and stuff like that.

I prefer a steak. This is like drink a lot of water. I drink a lot of wine.

You know, it’s like, hey, hey, it makes the pain go away.

[Darran]
You know, that’s endorsing it. But red wine is supposed to keep your blood system. Is it red wine or white wine?

Don’t care. OK, well, there’s a place in Amsterdam. I pulled the picture and show you that I went there in 2022, 2023.

We found it’s the ten shots for ten bucks. It’s in the square. It’s not too far away, but it comes with a red, green, Jagermeister or brown.

And then some other shots of something else. Yeah. Watch out for the ten bucks for ten shots.

[Martin Jensen]
Shots isn’t me. Shots doesn’t go well. No, no, I’m more like in a pilsner or a good wine.

Well, then you got to go to the Heineken Brewery, right? You’ve done that. Yeah, I would love.

No, I haven’t done it, but I would love to.

[Darran]
I would love that. That’s a fun little tour to go on. It’s it’s awesome.

Like I said, I wish I was there right now with you. You know, do you ever get fed up with making and playing music like you hit a mental block or something happens to you? What do you do when that happens to you?

If you’re just like, I can’t take this anymore? Is it I grab a glass of wine? I need some sushi.

Her.

[Martin Jensen]
What do you do to take a break from all this stuff? Other than it’s going to it’s going to be a very bad answer again, because I actually had a I had a problem. I had to do a very, very important DJ set.

And I was like, I had to prepare it, like really make it really nice, really tight and stuff like that. And I always freestyle, but the guys need to have all the tracks so they can do lightning and visuals to it and so on, so on, so on. So I had to prefer, prefer the little pre-pass set.

And I couldn’t. I’ve tried filing for five weeks and I couldn’t. And then one day I was like, fuck it.

And then I just went up and made myself a very, very strong vodka Red Bull. 40 minutes later, I was done with my set. Four minutes, 40 minutes.

And I did a whole 40 minutes.

[Darran]
I was like, dang, that’s some good Red Bull.

[Martin Jensen]
I said, no, just just this 40. But like it was insane. And and at that point of time, I was like, this is both really great and it’s really, really bad.

[Darran]
But like, you know, being in the green, being backstage with artists, watching them prepare their sets before they go live, I’ll give homage right now to watching hanging out with Donald Glaude, one of my hometown heroes. Grew up. I mean, he was one of the first DJs I ever saw going out to electronic music nightclubs.

But I remember being in the hotel room with him and he was just looking down his computer the whole time. Everyone’s partying. Everyone’s having fun around the whole hotel room.

And he’s just in his he’s like, I’m like, what are you doing, Donald? He’s like, I’m preparing my set for tonight. And I’m like, but you’re live in an hour.

And he’s like, yeah, I’m making sure my set is good, even though I did this two hours, five hours, 10 days ago. I’m still throwing in my set right now. You know, prepping for a show, it’s you’re right that again, people don’t understand there’s the lighting designers you’ve got to deal with.

There’s the audio engineers. You’ve got to sound check, test everything. You know, I’m sure you’ve been to a number of clubs where you get in there shows on it.

You’re on at midnight, but you’re there at seven o’clock doing the sound test. You know, sound checks and all that fun stuff. And people don’t understand this is show business and the business of putting on a show.

And it takes a lot. Yeah, it takes a lot. You know, here’s a question for you.

Do you have any secret aliases under which you maybe release tracks? No, no. Have you ever thought about like, I love like for Martin and I’m going to go and be X, Y, Z.

[Martin Jensen]
Yeah, but again, like you will also be it’ll be good, but it would also be super stupid business wise. You know, I have a massive, massive following of a massive Spotify. You know, it would be a personal challenge, though, to myself to try to push it out.

[Darran]
But yeah, nothing like that. Even, you know, I talk with people a lot and they say that, you know, when they release music, it’s like making children or you have a child and you put it out there in the world to see what happens. I mean, you’ve done what?

Five billion downloads, five billion streams. I mean, this is this is kind of superstardom level kind of stuff that you do. You know, but like I say, do you ever that idea of pseudo parenting or seeing what could happen?

You know, your take. Here’s a good question. Your take on AI in the industry as a big question.

Probably was a big question a couple of years ago, but now it’s even becoming more is, you know, Timberland just released his first AI artist and apparently didn’t maybe went too well. It didn’t go too well. So they haven’t heard it.

I haven’t heard her. Her it it. I guess I have to say it.

I can’t give a connotation of sexual orientation. But, you know, I mean, AI in the music industry. I use AI for some of our back end stuff as a tool.

And now there’s the one thing that’s called. It begins with an S. Sono.

Is it Sono? Sono. So have you got a chance to play around with Sono at all?

[Martin Jensen]
I tried it the other day, but yeah, maybe it’s me that’s stupid, but I couldn’t I couldn’t get it to do what I wanted to do. So I was like, OK, fuck that shit. I don’t want to spend time on this.

[Darran]
Is it like, hey, Sono made me a Spotify hit that gets me five billion downloads. Yeah, I’m sorry. I can’t do that for you.

[Martin Jensen]
Yeah, exactly. And that is copyright issue. And then now you are taking from other artists.

This is like, no, I am the artist. And like, yeah, one of my songs that remakes it. Sorry, I can’t do that for you.

That’s illegal. Yeah, exactly. I tried to do it, see if it would do it, but it wouldn’t.

And I was like, OK, screw this.

[Darran]
Nice. If you could go back 25 years in music history or forward 50 years in music future, which way would you go right now?

[Martin Jensen]
50 forward. 50 forward.

[Darran]
You know why? 50 forward.

[Martin Jensen]
Because then I would know which songs would be the hits and then we’ll go back to the time I’m in now and then I will produce those hits. Pretty easy would say.

[Darran]
That is by far one of the most awesome answers I’ve ever got with that question. I never thought anyone would play a Back to the Future on that. No, you know, I saw something the other day.

There was it’s actually debuting at ADE and this is not a paid endorsement in any way, shape or form. But they have a 14.1 surround sound system that they’re launching in some nightclubs now. And the system itself, I can’t remember the name of it, but you’re basically going to be able to go in and play around with the sound around the room and change it up.

My green screen went awesome there. Yeah, but you can play with the sound and then basically stems your whole tracks while you’re playing live. Your DJ sets going and then like I can put the drums over there and I can put the guitar or whatever this track over there and bounce it around the room.

That sounds like some really awesome stuff. It almost reminds me of the movie Virtuosity with Denzel Washington and one of Cameron Crowe’s first movies where he’s in the club and he’s kind of doing the sample where he’s putting his hands over the stuff and creating music and creating the song in the nightclub while he’s holding everyone hostage, by the way. It’s a crazy scene.

But, you know, the future of music and where it can go and the interactivity of it, you know, something we’re really looking forward to. You know, have you ever played around in virtual reality or augmented reality or looked at doing something like that?

[Martin Jensen]
No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. No, no, no.

I’ve got recommended many, many times. Genelecs have just made a new GMC, I think it’s called, where you can mix in Dolby Atmos. And that is, I think, what you’re referring to by the club in Amsterdam.

I know that Apple Music is paying way more per stream if you are mixing it in Dolby Atmos than if you are just mixing in stereo.

[Darran]
Oh, wow. I did not know that. I’m going to start maybe making our shows in Dolby Atmos.

[Martin Jensen]
Yeah, I mean, if you’re like putting it, if you’re putting on Apple Music, they will pay you, I think it’s it’s insanely much more. It’s around 50 to 100 times more.

[Darran]
It’s insanely much more from a 0.0000001 of a cent 0.0000001 of a cent.

[Martin Jensen]
No, no, no, no. It’s it’s it’s it’s. Oh, I can’t remember the numbers.

It’s quite annoying me right now, but but it is crazy much more. I think it’s 0.25 or 30 times more.

[Darran]
OK, OK. You know, I was talking with somebody years ago and they were just getting into the Dolby Atmos. And like it was the big thing that all our tracks are going to now be Dolby Atmos and I was like, OK, who else is going to jump on board with this?

What do you have to do to reconfigure your studio to make these songs and Dolby Atmos? A lot. Yeah, a lot.

Exactly. And I think that’s what they said was the exact words was a lot. Because I think expensive.

Yes. How much? I’m not telling you.

Yeah, not much.

[Martin Jensen]
A lot of it.

[Darran]
Yeah, exactly. And, you know, doing all this and gear and technology and everything keeps changing and moving and moving forward. You know, how do you balance your DJ career, personal life without going too overboard?

You know, in your personal life, you have personal life and then you have a DJ life where what is a stopping point or a point where you say, OK, I have my studio. I have my music. I do what I do.

This is my job. Is there is how do you balance all that?

[Martin Jensen]
Not buying gear, not buying gear. Oh, that’s not happening. I’m just buying the newest thing.

Every time it hits the street. So, no. Well, I’m sorry.

[Darran]
I’d probably say someone in your position might not have to buy the gear. They might be gifted the gear. I’m not getting shit for free.

I was not expecting that answer. But yes. Awesome.

I love free gear. I love getting shit for free. Yeah, but I’m not getting anything.

It’s so annoying.

[Martin Jensen]
Oh, so annoying. I need more free stuff. Yeah, me too.

I want the free stuff. Like it’s so much easier to, you know, get happy with. You know, and then you can endorse the free stuff.

And they have it. That’s probably why I don’t get any free stuff, because when I got free stuff, I never endorsed it and I never talked about it. So it’s probably why they didn’t want to give me any.

No more for you. No soup for you. Exactly.

Yeah, it’s super annoying. And it is what it is.

[Darran]
It’s my own fault. When you’re playing when you’re playing shows without free stuff, you know, do you prefer bigger crowds or do you prefer smaller, more intimate crowds?

[Martin Jensen]
I would say it depends on the venue. A smaller crowd can be super entertaining to play for. Where a big, massive crowd, if you’re playing a TV show or stuff like that, that’s just the most annoying thing to play for in the world because people are sitting down and they’re just standing, whatever.

And playing a small boiler room in the basement can be so much more fun because you can get so much more energy out of the crowd than you can on these big arenas where sometimes you just number on the lineup. And yes, I would like to say I prefer I just prefer where people are most energetic.

[Darran]
You know, it’s funny you bring that up. Going back to the early days of live streaming DJs online, people thought I was crazy. And one of the hardest things was the DJs.

They were basically playing like they were playing in their bedroom and they weren’t very animated. So if you went back and watched our earlier shows, you’d see me bouncing around on the camera for four hours. People would tune in just to watch that going.

What is he on? What drugs is he taking? What is that all about?

Is the show the guy dancing or is the show about the DJ playing music? And you had to do that to keep the DJ energetic and moving because something was going on. But you’re playing to a video camera and you’re playing to thousands of people live watching you at home sitting in their chairs.

And we wanted to get them up and dancing and moving and trying to translate that to this from from the studio, to the screen, to the living room. People just weren’t ready for it. I mean, I remember doing a DJ show back in the day and people like who would want to watch a DJ live online?

I’m like, have you ever listened to the radio before? Yeah, that’s true. Well, that’s if you ever listened to an online show and like that’s a bad ass track.

But yeah, having to translate that and get people up out of their seats can be a very hard thing to do. And that’s why I love this nightclub we had in Seattle a long time ago. It’s called the Sea Sound Lounge.

And it was about 200 people total. But you were never more than 10 feet away from the DJ playing and doing a shows there. And it was just really that intimate, cool vibe.

I now know DJs that say, I don’t like playing shows like we just, you know, the big stadium, the big festivals, the number on the lineup type shows. I want to be connected with my crowd. Dr. Fresh just did his tour a couple of years ago. And one of the things he did was he was in the round, you know, like his DJ booth is in the middle of the floor. They didn’t put him up and up in the DJ booth. And, you know, everyone was around him.

And, you know, you got a club here. It’s not a huge club, about 650 people. And you’re in that intimate vibe around.

And, you know, I don’t know if you know how animated Tony is, but he’s pretty animated and out there. And I love that intimate feeling you can get that. You can almost like fist bump.

What’s up? You know. Yeah.

About the DJ. You know, it can be pretty annoying, though. OK, OK, I’m going to go off topic here really quick.

What’s the weirdest request you’ve ever got that you’ve been annoyed with? Baby shark?

[Martin Jensen]
Oh, a song choice.

[Darran]
Song choice?

[Martin Jensen]
Oh, I don’t know.

[Darran]
Wait, wait, wait. What are you thinking about?

[Martin Jensen]
What kind of request is that? I’ve got sick, weird requests like I cannot even tell here. That would be…

Sign my boob.

[Darran]
Sign my boob.

[Martin Jensen]
Oh, I’ve done that many times. Yeah, many times, many times. That is pretty often.

No, not really. Anything I would say, I don’t know. I don’t know.

No, I don’t know.

[Darran]
It’s off camera conversation. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Mark Jensen, the secret sessions.

That’s what we’ll do there. Is there something you would like to say to new and up and coming producers to watch out for when it comes to making their career successful? Always carry a sharpie.

That’s rule number one, right? Make sure you can sign those.

[Martin Jensen]
Yes, exactly. And didn’t ask them to get it tattooed afterwards. So you don’t have to do it next weekend again.

[Darran]
Okay, I’m supposed to get tattooed. I never thought about that. He signed my breasts.

Now I’m going to get tattooed. And then does that give him free access? Or does it give him a guest list pass?

Or what would that get somebody?

[Martin Jensen]
Depends how it looks.

[Darran]
It’s also… Okay, this show is going way off topic right now. I’m not going to go there.

You know, after weeks of heavy touring and traveling around the world and all that fun stuff what do you like to do to chill out when you come back home? Do you have a base home or do you have multiple homes all over?

[Martin Jensen]
No, I just have one home. That’s Copenhagen, correct? Yeah, exactly.

Just relax. Watch the series. Cook some nice food.

Drink some wine with my friends and my wife. I think that’s what I like the most to just wind down and get grounded somehow.

[Darran]
Now, if you’re a chef and you said cooking you’re hitting my heart right now because I’m a foodie myself what is one of your go-to signature dishes that you like to make?

[Martin Jensen]
That would be a very, very, very nice steak.

[Darran]
Very, very nice steak. I love steaks. I got a sous-vide a few years back and I love using that thing.

My friend, she’s like you’re cheating. I’m like, I’m not cheating I’m just getting the meat perfect. I love my sous-vide.

She’s like, just put it in the oven for 7 minutes on each side and you’ll get it perfect. I’m like, that works but no, I want to use my sous-vide. I paid $350 for it.

I want my meat perfect. I love a good steak. A good porterhouse filet mignon or New York is at the top of my list obviously.

Sometimes it’s a porterhouse and a New York and a filet mignon on the plate. People like my food picks. That’s a lot of food.

It is a lot of food. There’s enough just for a baked potato. You got to do a fully loaded baked potato and you got to have all the fixins and you got to drench it in sour cream and bacon and chives and all that fun stuff.

If Hollywood were to make a movie about your life, who would you pick as the main actor?

[Martin Jensen]
To play me? To play you. So it has to look like me.

Then I would take The Rock.

[Darran]
The Rock? So The Rock does Martin Jensen. I can’t do the eyebrow thing.

No, I don’t know. Maybe Zac Efron. Zac Efron?

Ok, Zac Efron. Cool. We’ll have to see if we can get him on the books.

We’ll pencil him in for something.

[Martin Jensen]
Best of luck.

[Darran]
Other than that, how would you describe success as a DJ slash producer? Having Zac Efron play you in a movie. Would that be Hey, I finally made it to the top.

They cast Zac and now we’re ready to rock and roll. How would you define success as a DJ producer? Is there a level to it?

Is there a goal? Is there an end goal to all of this for you? To be a DJ and a producer?

Is there a goal that you’re trying to attain or trying to reach in the sense of once I hit this once I get a grant or looking to get this, I’m looking to blow up a mountain I don’t know, whatever it could be. A million dollars.

[Martin Jensen]
No, as long as I think it’s fun to do what I do and as long as I as long as I think it’s fun that’s the most important thing for me and there’s no end goal there’s no I think the end is just going to be when I don’t think it’s fun anymore and it’s going to be a pain instead of a game in my mood.

[Darran]
Yeah, you know, it’s definitely some people have an end goal, some people just are living the dream and it sounds like you’re doing that very well out there in Amsterdam. Is there anything else you’d like to let our DJ Sessions fans know before we let you go?

[Martin Jensen]
Come to Amsterdam, right now.

[Darran]
I think that would be the easiest thing because right here You’re tempting me to literally jump on a plane right now and come over there and be at the Spinning Records I think you should. Amsterdam, I miss Amsterdam I love that city, it’s so fun especially the espresso martinis they’re a lot of fun too.

[Martin Jensen]
I’m going for one tonight of those.

[Darran]
Awesome, so where’s the best place people can go to find out more information about you and what you got going on? That would be my Instagram, I would say. Awesome.

That one right there? Right there. DJ Martin Jensen, well Martin thank you for being on the DJ Sessions today it was a pleasure having you, going to send you back out there into that wonderful world of Amsterdam and ADE and we’ll follow up with you here shortly I want to give a shout out to the Urban Rebel crew Bas, Aliyah and all those wonderful people over there as well so you have some fun over there in Amsterdam for us, okay?

I will, definitely. Awesome. Alright, on that note, don’t forget to go to our website thedjsessions.com find us there with all our socials and all our awesomeness that’s going on over 700 news stories a month live interviews just like this, exclusive mixes music and more at thedjsessions.com I’m your host Darran, coming to you from Seattle in the virtual studios, wishing I was in Amsterdam with Martin right now having an espresso martini for the DJ Sessions and remember, on the DJ Sessions the music never stops.