Richie Hawtin Twitters using Traktor Pro

Richie Hawtin: Tweeting his beats, sort of.
Richie Hawtin: Tweeting his beats, sort of.

Techno star Richie Hawtin has always been keen to make use of the latest technology in his music-making, so it shouldn't come as any great surprise to learn that he's now employing Twitter when he plays his DJ sets.

Before you start thinking that he's sending mid-song Tweets to his mates, though (which would surely be the height of bad manners), we should say that his feed is being updated automatically via the broadcasting features in Native Instruments' Traktor Pro software.

This is thanks to a new custom Twitter app developed by Hawtin's label Minus: song metadata is automatically posted on his feed every 30 seconds while he's playing. This means that the crowd instantly knows what they're hearing.

The good news is that Minus plans to make this technology public, so soon, every Traktor DJ will be able to Twitter while they work.

Ben Rogerson

I’m the Deputy Editor of MusicRadar, having worked on the site since its launch in 2007. I previously spent eight years working on our sister magazine, Computer Music. I’ve been playing the piano, gigging in bands and failing to finish tracks at home for more than 30 years, 24 of which I’ve also spent writing about music and the ever-changing technology used to make it.