(thanks beatportal for image)

Richie Hawtin will not be playing this year’s Detroit Electronic Music Festival, but the twitter app he unveiled in partnership with Traktor leaves room for a lot of opportunity at DEMF 2009 for other DJs using Traktor. Beatport and Traktor have previously partnered for Beatport Sync and it seems like the companies are a great match, so no reason they should not be working together now.

So why don’t they put something together for DEMF? Having the Twitter feed shown behind the DJ may be a bit too much, especially considering that DJ’s like to be able preserve a certain mystique on what they play and not have the track instantly appear 30 seconds after playing. There is also the risk that it just confuses people. Matching the track’s information text with the track being mixed may not be 100% error free. Integrating Beatport sales into the feed could also represent an ethical dilemma for artists: what do you play when everything is a buy link? should artists get kickbacks? On the other hand what about giving discounts for buying from the playlists or for instant purchases?

Nonetheless, how cool would it be when hearing that track that will get you humming for the next 24 hours, you can check twitter and find out what it was. The more technologically advanced you are the easier it will be too, so if you have an iphone with a nice twitter app, you can discretely monitor what the DJ is playing. Not only that, but you can now support the artists you love by buying their music or just by being there and listening, since ultimately the app serves as an amazing start to performance tracking, so that the underground artists can get paid royalties as well.

There is a significant educational element to it, which will undoubtedly improve people’s musical knowledge and strengthen artist followings.

One thing is for sure artists and labels in electronic music can thank Richie for making the leap. You can read more about some of the pros and cons given by Beatportal and more on the techier side of the news at CDM.