Welcome to our new section of Be-Tronic, your faithful electronic music media! This article is part of «Between soap and stuff» where we explore the most important news in the show biz, electronic music, and more throughout the week. In this week there were many strange and curious items that made this world even more colorful and interesting to explore.

1. The Be-Tronic director talks about the artist management in a Mexican university

Minerva Ocampo, the Be Tronic General director and one of the most important figures of the show biz in Mexico recently talked about some management essentials in a Mexican university as part of a series of conferences on entrepreneurship and unconventional jobs. In this talk, she discussed what it means to be a manager and how he gets involved in a symbiotic way with the artist, to the point of becoming a second father/mother.

The venue that opened its doors for the event is the Universidad Latinoamericana. It is pleasant to find an interest in the educational institutions on the work of the music scene. In Mexico working for and for music is usually quite complicated, we consider this as part of the first steps towards building a strong and solid scene.

2. The Grammy Awards, ¿No porter Robinson but yes Marshmello … WTF?

The Grammy Awards nomination has arrived, and It left a bittersweet taste in the people’s mouths. On the one hand, we have artists who, although they presented things, were not the great sensation, but they were nominated. On the other one, we have producers who literally released the best albums of the year, but for one reason or another are not on the list.

The most disappointing thing? Porter Robinson released this year Nurture, one of the book’s albums. Many people were confident this would receive enormous recognition from the academy but it didn’t. Neither Nurture nor Porter himself is on the charts. This caused many fans to rage against the institution, arguing that it is always the same, every year. Curiously Marshmello is nominated, although this DJ is lately exploring the confines of the genre to have a darker touch in his productions.

May the best win!

3. French nightclubs could become cultural institutions

A couple of French nightclubs united forces to create a new group called Club-Culture. The 38 clubs that are part of all want to become cultural institutions. Rather than being a noble cause, it is actually a response to the nightlife industry being hit hard by the pandemic. France is now the second country this year to see club owners asking for cultural status. As a matter of fact, Berlin’s Club commission successfully obtained a cultural status for the nightclubs in Berlin.

French nightclubs play a significant role in the country’s economy. Research has found that the 38 venues involved are responsible for over 1,000 jobs. Each year, these clubs attract almost three million visitors, host more than 5,000 events and bring in almost €60 million. If this proposal is approved, it may be the beginning of a change in perspective on the cultural value of music clubs and venues. At the same time, an effective strategy to cope with the effects of global crises that expose many of its financing and maintenance problems.

4. No Mana recreates one of his most iconic sets to honor his late friend

2020 and 2021 were years full of tragedies for electronic music, from the fall of many things we love due to the severe economic and social crisis, to the death of various legends and emerging talents. In November 2020, Garrett Lockhart, i_o for the friends, tragically passed away due to complications derivated from an autoimmune disease. Many people were shocked by such news, and many have not been able to believe it, despite the fact that this past November 23 commemorated a year. Fortunately, artists who were his colleagues and friends, remind us that DJs never die, they only return to the eternal party, where in our opinion they should only go out to eat some good tacos.

No Mana set out on a journey to recreate the two’s iconic B2B at the parliamentARTCAR from EDC Las Vegas 2019. The set ended up more packed than either of them would have expected and it’s a tribute that only No Mana could make. We can listen to songs by various artists, some special edits, and remixes with the irreverent style that characterizes both producers. You can check out the full set here.

5. More COVID restrictions in Germany

When we thought that we had finally been able to control the coronavirus and be able to live without its fatal ravages, it comes to tell us that we are light years away from being able to tame it, with everything and a vaccine. Recently Europe is facing an outbreak and Germany decided to take some measures so that this does not get out of control. Nightclubs in Berlin will be forced to lower capacity limits to 50% from Saturday, November 27, amidst rising COVID cases.

The restrictions will stay in place for just under a month until December 19 where they’ll be reassessed. Punters will now also be required to show a negative test upon entry into nightclubs in line with the new ‘2G Plus’ rule, even if they’ve already recovered or have received both vaccines. The «2G» rule refers to Germany’s current COVID guidelines for large-scale events and nightlife spaces – which requires patrons to hold one of two «Gs» – either ‘geimpft’ (vaccinated) or ‘genesen’ (having had COVID in the last six months).

6. Spotify and its ways to reproduce albums

Until now, album pages on Spotify have featured a large play button that by default shuffled tracks in shuffle order. In order for the platform to play the album as the artist intended, the user had to click on track one to play from beginning to end. Although many consider the concept of an album to be outdated, artists still take great care in the order in which they present their songs. There are artists who hope that someone will listen to their material the way they wanted to expose it.

In order to amend its mistake, Spotify changed the functionality of its platform and said in a statement:

“As Adele mentioned, we are excited to share that we have started to implement a new Premium feature that users and artists alike have long requested – to make ‘play’ the default button on all albums.

For those users who still want to shuffle an album, they can go to the Now Playing view and select the ‘shuffle’ switch. As always, we will continue to iterate our products and features to create the best experiences for both the artists and their fans»

All of this came after Adele went public and argued her disagreement with the way Spotify played her albums by default.

7. A software that Allows the DJ to control the lightshow

SoundSwitch, one of the leading lighting software developers and hardware manufacturers, has developed a DJ-friendly controller to control lights directly from the unit, or via the Denon DJ PRIME range. The hardware called Control One allows DJs can control the lights without a laptop, sync’d to the music they’re already playing from their PRIME device. And if they analyzed the music in ENGINE OS, it automatically creates a lighting show per track, which can then be manipulated from this tool.

Control One also works with Ableton Link, meaning live artists can sync the lights to their show wirelessly, and it’ll also connect to Virtual DJ and Serato. The Control One features onboard memory for saving settings for individual venues and shows.

8.ASOT 1000 México, a misunderstood event

A State Of Trance, the radio show that became a concept of events commanded by Armin van Buuren had a stop in Mexico to show the best of the genre. The problem with this edition, in addition to the obvious budget cut due to the pandemic, was seen with the artists, since many of them were not exactly the ones Mexicans are looking forward to. This was due to travel restrictions, in addition to the fact that Dreamstate was held in California, the quintessential trance festival in the American continent.

Despite that and many other problems, the festival gave the best of itself and all the lovers of the concept ended up more than satisfied. Witnessing from Armin van Buuren playing techno and progressive to Gabriel & Dresden or Allen Watts bringing out the caste in their performances. Although the surprise of the night was Blastoyz, who with the best of psytrance gave an epic closure of the return of live trance and the events in general.

9. Music: New Boris Brejcha and REZZ album

Regarding releases, we have two albums by artists who have given a lot to talk about in recent months in their respective worlds. On the one hand «Never Stop Dancing» by Boris Brejcha who with the pure power of High-tech minimal proposes a journey where darkness and confusion dominate from the beginning to end with a feeling of warmth and hope with the return of the dancefloor to a world where virtuality and anxiety reigned.

On the other hand, we have the Canadian REZZ with her most recent work «Spiral» where we find several singles that we already know if we closely follow the trajectory of this artist and several surprises that left more than one astonished. What happened with this album is that the girl went out on some songs from her comfort zone and presented real works full of dubstep, pure mid-tempo, dark synthwave, and even house … House! Which enclose us in precisely a complete spiral.

10. Last but not least: you can now order weed in Canada on Uber Eats

And to finish this news report, let’s go with something that made us tremendously curious. It is incredible to see the complete opening the world is having to weed, this to the level you can order it in your favorite food delivery or at least, you can do it in Canada. Weed smokers in Canada can now order cannabis from Uber Eats after Uber takes its «first step into the cannabis market»- as reported in an exclusive report by Reuters.

Customers will be able to place orders for cannabis shop Tokyo Smoke in a specialized part of the app and pick them up at a nearby shop. Users of Uber Eats will have to verify their age on the app before being able to pick up their orders within an hour, according to the firm.

These were the news of «Between Soap and Stuff» that marked the week of November 20-27, 2021, follow us for more info like this, and do not worry, Spanish will be the king language in Be-Tronic, but it is not bad to do it from time to time in English. See you next time