Chew Blog

After our recent trip to Into The Valley Festival in Sweden we thought it would be a good idea to put together a playlist of some of the best tracks we heard!

Lot's of music from Bicep, Denis Sulta, MR.G, Danny Daze, Mall Grab, Mano Le Tough and plenty others.

When we first discovered Into The Valley Festival we couldn’t believe it was a real place. Everything about it looked incredible from the pictures and even the story behind the venue was insane. Apparently, 360 million years ago a meteor crash landed from space in the forests of Dalarna where this crazy festival now takes place.

After a 14 hour journey, spread across trains and planes we finally arrived at the festival site. Before we were able to see our Swedish techno paradise for the weekend, we were checked into our KarTent aka the cardboard boxes aka the techno kennels. They were actually surprisingly decent, let pretty much no light into them and withstood the heavy rain that comes with visiting Sweden.

As soon as we had unpacked, refreshed ourselves and ate consecutive packs of Oreo biscuits and tortilla chips we headed towards the entrance. Passing through security, looking down into the quarry we were completely overwhelmed by the beauty and realisation that we had finally made it. It was a good 5 minute walk to the stages from the top of the quarry, but the music was already shaking the venue and we just knew that the weekend ahead was going to be madness.

We managed to catch the end of MCDE’s set, where he was dropping various groovy tracks along with a bit of acid (not the drug). The excitement for Mano le Tough’s set was starting to build even though the main stage was not open on the Thursday. The sound at The Temple stage was faultless and Mano’s music selection was absolutely flawless. We grabbed a few beers (the most expensive beers we have ever bought) and partied long into the night until the music ended and the Swedish night slowly turned to day.

Friday was the official start date of the festival and, after the amazing opening party the night before, we were incredibly excited to see what the main stage was going to offer. After our trek down, just in time for the wonderful Nastia and her underground Ukrainian vibes, our minds were completely blown. We had never experienced sound so loud in our lives! It was echoing off every rock and object within the quarry, making the floor shake, leaving us literally bouncing along to the music. Nastia had a really cool mixing style, with some moments of magic and some great techno to get the day started.

Following Nastia’s set; we managed to see Bella Sarris, Tini, Sonja Moonear & Raresh, DJ Tennis, Move D and The Black Madonna. What a crazy list of DJs, especially all to play at the same festival on the same day.

Finally, we ended our night seeing Ricardo Villalobos b2b with Zip providing some of the most obscure tracks we have ever heard. At one point Ricky V took a good 10 minute nap on the floor before getting back up and carrying on with his set. You never know what to expect with him, making it a thoroughly entertaining experience. Before the night ended we headed over to Dixon where a mixture of techno, tribal and house vibes were played. Again, the track selection was so unique it well and truly made the night special.

The Saturday line up was just as crazy! You could literally go to any of the four stages and see a big name DJ. We started the day a bit later than we hoped, at Paranoid London who completely blew the roof off of The Pyramid stage. They performed live and probably had one of the greatest energy levels we have seen. Following Paranoid London was Bicep who pretty much dropped a full set of their own unreleased material, edits and classics. The room was electrifying, everyone was partying and the vibe was unreal. Definitely recommend checking out the Bicep album when it’s released, you will not be disappointed.

Then we saw Joy Orbison b2b with Ben UFO at The Temple where the vibe got even better. Kink followed on, where he wowed the audience with his live performance, waving his keyboard to the crowd whilst he created impeccable melodies and loops on it. Again, the energy was another level.

There was no one better to be given the job of closing the festival than the one and only Nina Kraviz. Every single track she played was an absolute belter (check out our Instagram for some amazing videos). She played one of the best closing sets we have ever seen, which was majorly helped by the sound system and lighting that the festival provided.

Into The Valley 2016 was one of the most enjoyable festival experiences we have had. No other festival has provided a venue, a line up, sound and lighting to the level we were given in Sweden. We would love to return next year and do it all again. Thank you for the wonderful experience Into The Valley!

It’s been a whirlwind eighteen months working on Chew.

When Ben and I launched the platform during our time on Ignite early last year, I’m not sure either of us knew how the story would play out.

Today, Chew is now a small team of passionate, dedicated people sharing our vision of connecting the world’s DJs, music producers and personalities with an engaged global fanbase.

We’ve welcomed nearly 30,000 users to the platform — creators who’ve shared over three years’ worth of content to an audience in 190+ countries, who’ve consumed over 25 years’ worth and posted a quarter of a million chat messages.

It really has been a whirlwind eighteen months working on Chew.

But today, things are going to get even more exciting. We are delighted to announce we are in the process of integrating Mixify’s community, our closest (and largest) competitor, into Chew’s.

Over the last few months, we’ve been in discussions with Mixify founder and CEO David Moricca about the possibility of combining the two communities. David and the LA-based Mixify team have been focusing on a new product in a slightly different space (more on that below) and, as such, were looking for a team to support their incredibly passionate userbase (while allowing the Mixify team to focus on ClubcastLIVE).

David goes into some detail about how the next month or so will work in his update to the Mixify users below, but we’ll be bringing you up to speed as things progress over the coming weeks. We’re incredibly excited to be working with David and the team as we transition the Mixify users to Chew and are really pleased to be able to continue building towards the vision they set out when Mixify launched in 2012.

Greetings Mixify Community/Extended Family. I wanted you to be the first to know some exciting news regarding Mixify. As of today, Mixify is joining the Chew family.

Over the last several months, the Mixify team has been chatting with Wil Benton and the Chew squad about ways to join forces. I have been so impressed with Chew’s product roadmap and commitment to the DJ community that this marriage made perfect sense.

As you know, over the last 18 months, our development and customer team has become increasingly occupied with developing our ClubcastLIVE solution and building out our customer relationships across multiple verticals (mostly non-music). During that time, we have not been able to support what I feel is one of the best online communities I have seen and naturally you guys have become frustrated with the lack of progress on our end. We understand the concerns and have been working hard to find a good home with a similar vision for such an amazing user community. That home is Chew.tv.

In practical terms, we will be keeping Mixify.com live during August as the community transition happens. All tip payout requests will be honored during that time, as will monthly subscriptions. Annual subscribers will be reimbursed for the time remaining on their subscription (though you can change your plan to a monthly now if that is easier). We’ll be reaching out to both communities in the coming days and weeks to give you guys more information about what happens next. If you have any immediate queries, please comment below or email [email protected]!

To celebrate both communities and the new relationship between Chew and Mixify, we would like to invite the Mixify Extended Family/Community to join a partnership digital festival on Chew later this fall. If interested, please post in the comments below and our friends at Chew will start organizing.

It's always amazing to see a variety of shows across the Chew platform. This week, buried in the archive of streams (a record number of hours broadcasted this week by the way) we discovered a show where nature, music and art have all been combined. This week’s #ChewsChoice is Darai with his show called Natural.

Quoted by Darai - “The environment we experience influences our creative process. When we experience variations in lighting, colours on the walls, different smells and different types of sounds, they evoke different feelings within us and in turn these experiences invade our creative process.”

“I will invite DO|CO through a deeper form of electronic music, which is going to orchestrate his brushes. The result of his painting will represent what he felt through that music. By this experiment we also challenge ourselves to satisfy any individual by provoking a spiritual journey through our inner secret-garden.”

We are finally back on Instagram!! What an exciting day for all of us!

Head over to our page now, drop us a follow and check out all the cool arty photos that we have taken! #ChewOnTour

Farr Festival returned this year with an even stronger line-up than ever before. The woods had been heavily decorated and everyone was ready to party deep into the night.

Our journey started by releasing a two second pop up tent from the bag, setting up a few chairs and cracking open some good old warm festival tinnies. It was early midday Friday, the weather perhaps was not as hot as we all expected, although it did not stop us British troopers from wearing our beloved shorts.

We strolled up to the festival site, passing the golden fields and then finally heard the music travelling through the woods. We were pretty hungry so we went straight over to the food stalls, picked up a few sizzling hot dogs and headed into the forest to The Shack to see Brian not Brian. From that moment on, it was nonstop grooves (until the generator had to be changed over). Brian dropped tunes such as '3AM Jazz Club'by Dan Shake and ‘On My Side’ by Adryiano. The crowd danced away and the energy was strong bearing in mind it was an early set.

We took some time after his set ended to explore the other stages and see what Farr had produced visually. All the stages had been decorated in such a cool way we fully felt like we were no longer in England.

Later on, we had the big decision of whether to see the mighty Midland x Joy Orbison x Ben UFO b2b set at The Terrace stage or head back to The Shack and catch Dolan Bergin, Move D, Jeremy Underground and Hunee.

We decided to check out The Terrace stage first where we turned up to the sounds of Tirzah ‘I'm not dancing’. It was strictly groovers as the sun came down; however, the stage became overly busy so we headed over to The Shack for the Electric Minds Takeover and first up was Dolan Bergin. The lights and visuals by this time of the evening were amazing, as the forest lit up in shades of purples and yellows, Dolan blared out a mixture of deep house vibes and a few darker tracks.

It was then onto Move D for my favourite set of the evening. He played so many unbelievable tracks like the new Mr. G – ‘Transient’ and my track of the summer Midland - 'Final Credits' Although, once again there were slight power issues and at one point the stage blacked out, it did not ruin the atmosphere one bit. The music came back, the lights got brighter and the party continued.

Jeremy Underground carried on the groovy vibes with lots of old disco weapons and then finally Hunee closed the stage with a crazy variety of tracks. At one point, dropping MATRiXXMAN – ‘Protocol' after several disco tracks. It worked so well and his loops and layers on each track made for one of the most insane closing sets I have seen.

Overall, Farr Festival was one of the better festivals I have been to in this country for great music and a good atmosphere. The sound could have been a tad louder but apart from that it was a truly enjoyable experience and I hope to return next year.

The Chew Techno Picks Spotify playlist has now been fully updated, with lots and lots of new releases and music for you all to listen to!!

This playlist will take you on a journey through various deep and dark Techno and underground sounds with new music from Fango, Truncate, Slam, Recondite, Cleric and many others.

For a very long time we have been waiting for a talented hardware live show to appear on Chew. Well this is our lucky week. An amazing setup of various synths, buttons, dials and cables have been transported into the Hoxton FM studio.

Saytek Live from Traxsource was invited over to Hoxton FM to play a crazy live set using mainly analog hardware. It was so impressive to watch and the sounds and vibe that were created on the equipment was beyond insane.

Additionally, the level of coordination and skill needed to operate such a large number of devices definitely was a massive factor in this week’s #ChewsChoice decision.

When browsing the Chew archives this week, it was really impressive to see the large number of streams from the Chew regular broadcasters and the many new DJs who have signed up.

With constant growth to our user base, continuous updates and site improvements, the Chew content has reached new levels making it really exciting picking #ChewsChoice each week.

This week we have decided that the winner is Korrupt and Influenza. This shows provides such a powerful dubstep track selection from Korrupt and absolute vibes on the mic from Influenza. What a team these two make!

Over the last 18 months, we’ve made great progress towards our goal of connecting the world’s DJs with an engaged global audience.

Since we launched on the Ignite accelerator last year, Chew’s grown to become the community where 30,000 DJs, producers and personalities delight and inspire their fans. To date, our creators have shared 25,000 hours of content on the platform, and our consumers have watched well over 20 years of content back (sharing nearly 250,000 chat messages along the way).

But the broadcast experience for our creators isn’t as intuitive as we’d like it to be. There are a number of applications our creators can use to broadcast to Chew — all offering different experiences that point to both Chew and other live streaming services.

That’s why today we’re launching Chew Broadcaster. Broadcaster offers a dedicated experience for Chew’s creators; allowing our users to create, broadcast and manage their shows from within their streaming software. Broadcaster streamlines the ‘Go Live’ process to a few clicks; giving our creators more time to do what they do best — creating amazing content on Chew!

We’ve built Broadcaster for both PC (97MB) and Mac (67MB) users and updated the Guide with all-new step-by-step walkthroughs too.

Broadcaster is an OBS fork, which we’ve open sourced for you to play with. From today, you can find the project on our new open source GitHub account!

It was always inevitable that Echobreaker would end up being chosen for #ChewsChoice of the week!

 His week has arrived and what a stream he has provided to go with his win. Lake side views, scorching sun, jet skis, bikinis, plenty of bass and nonstop vibes - what an amazing stream!

#ChewsChoice was really exciting to choose, so many amazing shows and mixing from the Chew DJs.

Again, we have a very groovy winner this week, Lars with his amazing Deeper Shades of House show. If you have not seen this show yet, you are majorly missing out!

Lars is one of the best house music selectors at Chew and will keep you dancing all night long!

Another amazing week of shows and music on Chew, so many we could have picked for this week’s #ChewsChoice!

That being said, the show that kept us grooving the most in the office this week was ‘Looking for the Perfect Beat’ from Irvin Cee. What an amazing mix, took us straight out of the office on a very rainy day and left us poolside in Ibiza sunshine. Such a variety of house and disco tracks which makes this the ultimate summer mix!

Well what another wonderful week it has been at the Chew HQ! We have now reached 200,000 chat messages - a jump of more than double the number we were at in March. 

As the content on Chew is dramatically getting better and better, we have decided to introduce 'Chew's Choice of the Week' which will be announced every Friday at 9pm (UK). We will pick one show that has produced amazing content and engagement and this show will receive an exclusive blog post and will be featured on the Chew homepage.

This week's winner without a doubt is the RAM Records show with Audio at Underground Ink in London! Not only was this one of the coolest venues we have seen a stream at but also the music was absolutely banging!

Back in August last year, we launched what we called Chew2.0 - a reworking of the Chew homepage experience (which was followed by new Channel and Watch pages). 

Over the last few months, we've been improving the Chew2.0 concept with a focus on data-driven curation. Using our audience analytics from the last year or so, we've zoned in on what content consumers want when they come to Chew. We've used these learnings to rebuild the site - making it easier to discover more of the content you love from across the Chew platform. 

Today, we've launched the first step towards this new vision for Chew. You'll see a more focused homepage; one that displays more sets, DJs, genres and crews on Chew. The new homepage also features all-new Popular, Live and Latest pages - where you can find the most popular shows on the platform, all shows that are live right now and the latest archived content across all genres on Chew. 

Not too far in the future, this new look and feel will be rolled out across the platform; updating the Explore, Channel and Watch pages. We'll also be adding a bit more intelligence behind the scenes, so your Chew experience will start becoming unique to you and your tastes - but that's for a future Inside Chew Tech update.