Sound Advice: Daniel Allan

Join Daniel Allan on Sound Advice, the weekly interview series covering artists’ journeys and their creative process. In this episode, we discuss his new music, tips for great collaborative studio sessions, live performance and more.

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Welcome to Sound Advice, the series spotlighting artists’ creative process and their SoundCloud journey. We’ll get the inside knowledge straight from the source on how musicians, producers and creatives are leaning into everything SoundCloud offers to elevate their sound, get heard and catapult their careers. Sound Advice is now available in audio format on the SoundCloud Stories profile.

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On this episode of Sound Advice, we’re speaking to producer, DJ and songwriter Daniel Allan about his musical trajectory. He started as a teen in Louisville, Ky., making rap beats and has since graduated to one of Los Angeles’s brightest rising producers in the electronic dance music scene. He has gone on to play at festivals like Lollapalooza and EDC, as well as has collaborated with the likes of Louis The Child, PARISI, Mike Posner and The Chainsmokers, to name a few. 

In this conversation, we discuss the importance of finding community and collaborating, how Daniel Allan uses SoundCloud and his experiences of navigating the world as an independent artist. Daniel also talks about what sounds he’s working on at the moment, and offers some motivational advice and strategies for aspiring musicians on perseverance, overcoming writer's block and developing your individual style. There’s plenty of food for thought here about creativity and the music industry, so fellow DJ/producers take note.

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LISTEN TO THE AUDIO EPISODE OF SOUND ADVICE FEATURING DANIEL ALLAN

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LISTEN TO ‘NOISE POLLUTION’ BY DANIEL ALLAN

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Things We Talked About In This Episode of Sound Advice

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Daniel Allan’s Hip-Hop Roots in Kentucky and Being Inspired by the Pop-EDM Crossover Era

• Daniel Allan greets Sound Advice from his studio in LA, which he explains he’s spent years building up into his music-making haven. It’s a long way from his hometown of Louisville, Ky., where Daniel used to make beats in his bedroom. In his characteristically positive tone, Daniel shares that he’s never been happier; having hosted sessions with over 150 artists to date in his studio, it feels like his most peaceful and productive place. 
• Daniel takes us back to his roots in Kentucky, and how he started making music. As a young teenager, Daniel absorbed his older brother’s love for classic hip-hop. He shares how a gifted iPod Classic loaded with .mp3s by artists such as Rakim, Nas, Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac influenced his own musical tastes.
• Surrounded by local kids who would spit bars during school recess, he shares the story of how he first approached them about making music together and how these aspiring rappers using YouTube to get beats became a source of inspiration. He shares how he saved up cash to buy a microphone, and began making beats on Fruity Loops for rappers to record over in his DIY bedroom studio set-up.
• As Daniel was honing his craft with hip-hop, he was slowly dipping into the world of electronic dance music. As he tells it, it was the era in which EDM was crossing over with mainstream pop music, citing influential tracks such as deadmau5’s “Faxing Berlin,” Lady Gaga’s early hits, Max Martin’s production work and Britney Spears’ “Toxic.” He explains how these artists helped him realize how EDM’s fluorescent melodies and buzzsaw riffs could be folded into pop songwriting. 
• As a music producer, Daniel saw EDM as an opportunity to have full creative freedom. When he was making beats for rappers, he needed to collaborate with rappers to give his music a voice, but with EDM, he could produce and perform that music without relying directly on others. Gradually, Daniel started shifting over his focus from hip-hop to EDM.

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Developing Creativity, Curiosity and Community Through SoundCloud

• Looking back on his teenage years, Daniel gives advice to fellow artists who are starting out on their journey in music. Most importantly, he says, approach your work from a place of fun and take it one day at a time. “Your sound is a mix of your tastes and your production habits,” he says sagely. He elaborates further, noting how it’s important to treat your issues with a track as a chance to research online and discover more information. As he puts it, the more you absorb and put into action in the making of a track, the better an artist you’ll become. Through that specificity, you’ll keep your curiosity alive and gradually find others who share that sensibility — and one place where Daniel found others was SoundCloud.
• Growing up in Kentucky, Daniel used SoundCloud as a place of musical discovery. As he explains it, there is a beauty in being able to make a track and upload it to your SoundCloud profile the same day, giving him a sense of freedom and directness that feels keenly linked to mixtape internet culture.
• Daniel didn’t just find new music on SoundCloud; he also found new people. Through an on-platform community group he joined, he found his first roommate in LA, who he bonded over a shared love of EDM duo, The Chainsmokers. The group’s close interactions with their SoundCloud fans — encouraging them to remix their hit tracks, upload them to SoundCloud and share them with the group — made a big impression on Daniel, and has influenced how he interacts with his own fans today. In his early days in LA, too, Daniel’s studio sessions were often with artists that he met through SoundCloud, bringing his internet friends into his daily life.

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How Daniel Allan Creates Memorable Festival Performances and Connects Authentically With Fans

• A big part of Daniel Allan’s artistic persona is how he taps into sentimentality in a sincere way. Looking back on his early days in EDM, Daniel explains that he was an avid attendee of festivals, particularly the Chicago-based behemoth Lollapalooza. As a bright-eyed 16-year-old, Daniel recalls going to his first Lollapalooza and how he was blown away by the power and connectivity of artists like Skrillex and Above & Beyond, who took what he saw as great effort in making their festival shows as memorable and engaging as possible. 
• Today, he wants to give those feelings and memories to his own audience. When it comes to planning a set for a festival stage, as opposed to a club show, Daniel shares some wise words. When you’re at a festival, not everyone in the crowd has necessarily come to see you perform, but it’s an opportunity for you to turn those people into fans. 
• Per Daniel, if you have one hour to show strangers who you are, don’t be afraid to share yourself to your fullest. If you have hit songs? Play them. If you don’t? Explain your taste to the crowd, and don’t just copy what other, bigger acts might be doing at the same festival. By not shying away from yourself, you’ll win people over.
• As a kid who grew up on social media and a music-obsessed internet culture, Daniel sees the active relationship between artists and fans as crucial to not just the longevity of the artist’s career, but for the health of the fan experience, too. As he thoughtfully points out, a follower of your social media isn’t automatically a fan of your music — that’s an experience you have to bring into the real world, most notably at shows. 
• Sharing advice on this, Daniel goes back to his foundational points: Make your fans feel seen, heard and appreciated for their relationship to your music, engage with them sincerely on a human and not-just-transactional level, and it’ll make your music career feel all the more worthwhile.

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Daniel Allan’s Evolving Sound, Advice for Collaborations and What’s Next in 2025

• In 2024, Daniel released his latest album, ‘Noise Pollution.’ Learn more about the making of tracks from the project, exclusively on SoundCloud’s Voice Notes. 
• Speaking about the evolution of his sound and where’s heading next, Daniel shares the story of his recent time in London. After booking multiple studio sessions with potential collaborators, he found himself drawn to the dance music genre, UK garage. Wanting to bring his own flavor to it, he explains how he drew from his own background — including his love for synth-led, bright EDM tracks by artists like Flume — and incorporated those styles into garage’s 140BPM, four-on-the-floor drum beats.
• His time in London also made him reflect on one of the core elements of his craft: collaboration. From his early days making beats for rappers in Kentucky until now, Daniel has always made collaboration a priority in his music. Most recently, he’s released “Better With You” featuring Port London and “Start To Slip” with DEEGAN, and he’s readying the release of his next collaboration with Louis The Child, too. So what’s the secret to a successful collaboration?
• For Daniel — noting how in 2023, he did an astonishing 352 studio sessions in the span of one year — it all comes down to confidence. “You have to realize you belong in a session for a reason,” he says, because “someone liked and trusted your taste enough to have you there.” The quicker you realize that an artist doesn’t want to re-hash their old material with you, but to focus on what’s next, the smoother and more productive your sessions will be. 
• Daniel goes on to share more tips: Don’t over prepare, so you can work in and enjoy the present moment, and do your utmost not to copy another artist as a creative shortcut. If you copy someone, you can only be partly as good as them – but if you focus on yourself, you’ll be 100% you, and that’s who other people will want to work with.
• Part of this inspiration for Daniel comes from Skrillex, one of his all time favorite producers. After watching Skrillex absorb himself in a music culture before trying to make music in that style, and seeing how that focused time and attention gradually paid off in Skrillex’s own music, Daniel encourages fellow artists to interact with a genre and its creators as authentically as possible — that way, whatever you bring to the table will feel real. The only failure in music is when you stop trying — if you’re trying, you’re still in the race, he says.

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Links and Extras

Follow Daniel Allan’s journey on SoundCloud.
Press play on Daniel Allan’s 2024 album, ‘Noise Pollution.’
Listen to Daniel Allan’s exclusive Voice Notes. 
Listen to Daniel Allan’s 2023 breakout hit track, “I Just Need” feat. Lyrah.
Check out Daniel Allan’s upcoming tour dates here.
Listen to Daniel Allan’s latest track, “Better With You,” featuring Port London.
Hit play on Daniel Allan’s collaboration with Louis The Child, titled “White Claw.”
Go back to where it all began with one of Daniel Allan’s first tracks, “Carry On.”
Explore some of Daniel Allan’s wide-ranging influences, including Skrillex, Above & Beyond and deadmau5, to name a few. 
Listen to the Festival House Bangers playlist on SoundCloud.
Never miss an episode and follow the official Sound Advice playlist on SoundCloud.

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Getting The Most Out of SoundCloud

Learn more about using DMs to connect with fellow artists and potential collaborators.
Learn more about how to make a custom playlist on SoundCloud.
Learn more about unlimited uploads, available with an Artist Pro subscription.
Learn more unlocking access to unlimited distribution, available with Artist Pro.
Learn more about getting heard with SoundCloud’s updated algorithm, available to Artist and Artist Pro subscribers.

To discover additional features a SoundCloud Artist or Artist Pro subscription offers, visit here. To catch up on past installments of Sound Advice and make sure you don’t miss out on future episodes, visit here.

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_{CREDITS: Host: Vivian Host, Executive Producer: Mike Spinella, Producer: KC Orcutt, Audio Engineer: David “Dibs” Shackney, Coordinator: Trevor McGee, Editorial Associate: Lauren Martin}