Soberboy is asked to listen to a lot of unreleased music. His most common note is not about mixing or arrangement — it is that the track sounds like a hundred others. I asked him what he means by that, and what to do about it.
What makes a track stand out to you?
Something in it that I have not heard before. It can be small — a strange chord, a vocal treated in an odd way, a groove that sits slightly wrong on purpose, a sound that is clearly not from a pack. That is enough. What does not stand out is a technically clean record built entirely from the same tools everybody else is using, arranged the way everybody else arranges them.
People think the competition is about quality. It is not, because quality is now normal. Everyone can make something that sounds professional. The competition is about being identifiable.
Why does sounding like everyone else fail so completely?
Because there is nothing for anybody to hold on to. A DJ hears hundreds of promos. If your record sounds like the last twelve, there is no reason to remember it, no reason to file it and no reason to play it — they already have something that does that job. You are not being rejected on quality, you are simply not being registered.
Being different does not mean being difficult, either. It means having one thing that is unmistakably yours.
How does someone find that?
By narrowing down instead of widening out. Most producers try to do everything, so they end up sounding like an average of everything. Pick the part of your music that people react to and push it much further than feels sensible. If it is your chords, write everything around chords. If it is the atmosphere, let the atmosphere take up more room than the drums.
Also build a few sounds you actually own. Record something. Resample your own material until it stops sounding like its source. Break one instrument and keep using it. Nothing off the shelf will ever be a signature, because it is not exclusive to you.
Is there a shortcut?
No, and that is the part people do not want to hear. This takes years, not weeks. You will make a lot of music that sounds like your influences first, and that is a necessary stage, not a failure. The sound arrives from volume and from time — from finishing enough records that your habits start showing up on their own.
Give it time. Chasing whatever is charting this month guarantees you arrive late and sound like a copy of something that has already peaked.
Where does branding fit in?
It is the same question asked visually. Your artwork, your name, your titles, the way you write about the music — they should all point at the same idea as the music does. If somebody could swap your cover art with any other artist’s and nothing would feel wrong, you do not have an identity yet, you have a template.
Branding is not decoration on top of the music. It is the promise you are making about what your records feel like, and it needs to be true.
You often tell people to ask whether they want to produce at all. Why?
Because a lot of people are producing out of obligation. They want to DJ, and somewhere they were told that you are not taken seriously unless you release music. So they spend years making records they do not really care about, resent the process, and get worse at the thing they actually love.
Producing and DJing are two different crafts. One is solitary, slow and mostly spent alone with a problem. The other is social, immediate and about people in a room. Being excellent at one does not require the other.
So is it acceptable to be only a DJ?
Completely, and some of the best DJs alive are exactly that. Their skill is curation, programming and control of a room, and it is a serious skill that takes just as long to develop. If that is what you love, put your years into it and get genuinely great at it. Half-hearted production will not help your career, but a reputation for never disappointing a dancefloor absolutely will.
The only wrong answer is doing both badly because you never decided.
What would you tell a producer feeling stuck right now?
Finish the next ten records instead of perfecting this one. Somewhere in those ten, the same choices will keep reappearing — that is your sound arriving. Then commit to it hard, and stop asking whether it fits what is popular.
