Hello!
I’m in Berlin till mid-january.
Whats up? Anyone around these parts?
i am in berlin … wanna hang?
Berlin is at the top of my list for places I’m going to travel to / live in for small period of time.
Is anyone a working electronic musician over there? Is the scene so big that there is regular work?
Every dude at McDonalds counter, every toilet cleaner, almost everyone in crap city is a DJ,Producer or has other “amazing” projects in the pipeline.
I still can’t get what the city has become in the last 10 years. It became so superficial, it’s embarrassing.
Since everyone is working on their"career" you have to be very very very talented plus you have to be at the right spot on the right time OR you don’t mind a brown tongue ( you know what I mean) .
Anyway, the city is so crowded, rents exploding…it’s really going down very fast.
I’m happy that I witnessed the 90’s in crap city.
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born, raised and still around.
whatcha up to?
Me, making Berlin Techno
Wew that’s pretty condescending. As if working at McDonalds or any other job for that matter excludes you from being genuinely interested in making music.
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That’s not the point I wanted to make. I just wanted to point out that everyone is coming to Berlin to “buy in” in a long running, already established scene rather than build a scene in their city (take Leipzig for example.
Berlin is not only techno city
It is more like an art city
Always new and cheap placess.
I used to live in kreuzberg, neu koln was the place NOT to go to
Then kreuzberg over-hipstered, and neukoln became Nice (and cheap)
It is logical to me artists like to go to cheap places with a lot of inspiration
Ok so then the wording was just a bit off. I cannot really speak on the matter, as I didn’t experience that time and moved to Berlin just recently. But I get your point. There are a great number of people who come to Berlin to consume and live a certain lifestyle but do not necessarily contribute to the culture that much.
Exactly. I mean, there are soooo many young fellas which are desperately trying to “make it” in Berlin and they adopt the Berlin sound aesthetic as well. They don’t even TRY to be original. As if some generic “painted by numbers” techno is opening the door for them.
They get sucked into the nightlife, have to take shitty jobs, are knee deep in debts etc.
I mean, I met this Spanish dude a few months ago at a party. He told me he just moved to Berlin and he’s (of course) a techno producer,DJ and mastering engineer. I had a nice chat with him, he invited me to his flat/studio for a beer the next day.
Turns out his “mastering” studio was a shabby small 1-room flat which he shared with THREE !!! other dudes. Just to live in Berlin. It’s crazy…
That is just one of many things I experience in Berlin techno scene nowadays. It became an industry, selling dreams to young people like everything else.
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no reason to share a small room in Berlin, it can be cheap and nice
people I know who went to Berlin to live there to make music… are ambitious and serious (and pretty successful
idiots can be found everywhere
people who talk too much bullshit can be found everywhere
people who use too much drugs can be found everywhere
I was amazed about the you call ‘industrie of dreams’, soo many wasted people in Berlin…
yes
but… if you want to, you can have a cheap life, spend a lot of time on making music, and find a lot of inspiration there…
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this might have saved me money thanks
What is cheap to you these days? When I moved out of my parents house and got my first own flat in Kreuzberg (which was around the year 2001), I had a huge flat (around 70 square meters) and the rent was like 240,- Euro.
I doubt you’ll find these prices in the inner city ring these days. Unless you move to the dead ends of Berlin you better bring a packed wallet.
I spent about 12 months in Berlin around 2009-2011. I can see what Squadron is saying, but I still very much miss the city and hope to get back there and stick around some day.
It is a city of art and music. If that sounds appealing, you will find things to like there. No city is perfect. If I go to a club where I am now, I might not get in because the bouncer doesn’t like my shoes or my vibe, if I do get in, it’s full of preening boys and girls taking selfies while the DJ plays their faves from “now thats what I call house music vol 44”
When I would go out in Berlin, no photos allowed in clubs, and they were full of people who genuinely liked the music played and just wanted to have a good time. Every night of the week you could go and enjoy an inexpensive and good music performance, electronic or otherwise. There are very few places in the world where this is the case. It was heaven.
If I lived in NY or London or some other places I wouldn’t bother with Berlin but if you like music and art there are few places better to be. The downsides are the weather sucks, terrible food/coffee, having to learn German and surly Berliners. It is still ridiculously cheap for an international city, but it is not really a place to go and make money (like NY or London).
Terrible food? Well, that must be the only thing which changed for the better. I know some pretty decent food stores and restaurants.
Anyway, don’t get me wrong folks. Everyone has the right to live where they want. Who am I to judge.
But to all the people which trying to take the Berlin shortcut (Techno /House etc.), here is my advice: Rather than being ONE goldfish amongst millions of other goldfish in the Berlin bowl, try to become the shark in YOUR city.
The chances of getting the attention of the big players (in Berlin and elsewhere) are much bigger than being the gazillions’ " me too"- Berlin techno producer.
it starts to be more expensive, I understand
the intercity changed to a modern city within 20 years
but still with a lot of space
and still one of the cheapest capital of Western Europe
just compare with London, Paris or Amsterdam
on the other hand…
for me, western holland (Randstad) feels like one city
to go from one place to the other takes the same time as in Berlin
and it contains Amsterdam, The Hague and Rotterdam
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