DJ Earworm

DJ Earworm
DJ Earworm at the NYE Siloso Beach Party, Sentosa, Singapore, 2009
Background information
Birth name	Jordan Roseman
Also known as	DJ Earworm
Origin	San Francisco, CA
Genres	Mashup
Occupation(s)	DJ, producer
Years active	2007–present
Website	djearworm.com

Jordan Roseman (aka DJ Earworm) is a San Francisco-based mashup artist who has achieved recognition for his technically sophisticated, songwriting oriented music and video mashups. His annual “United State of Pop” mashup features the top 25 songs of the year according to Billboard's Year-End Hot 100 chart in one mix.

Roseman was born into a big family of musicians and raised in eastern Iowa and Evanston, Illinois. At the University of Illinois, Roseman started as a physics major, before changing to music theory and computer science.

Roseman started creating mashups in 2003, which he said "was a relatively unexplored art form," with most people doing "A vs. B mashups [that featured] an a cappella of one song and an instrumental of another." He began by using ACID Pro, and after showing them to DJ Adrian at Club Bootie and receiving encouragement from him, Roseman created the moniker DJ Earworm ("earworm" referencing a song that repeats uncontrollably in one's mind) and began releasing his mashups online.

DJ Earworm's style involves gradually layering song samples over each other, which adds texture and builds momentum as a song progresses. In 2006, he published Audio Mashup Construction Kit, a how-to manual for creating mashups. Earworm uses Ableton Live and Adobe Audition to create his mashups and also DJs live with Ableton. For the videos that accompany his mashups, he uses Final Cut Pro X. In 2010, Earworm started VJing in his live sets.

Earworm's "United State of Pop" videos from 2008, 2009 and 2010 were featured in a FACT exhibit titled, The Art of Pop Video, that ran from March–May 2013.

When creating the yearly mix, Earworm tries to find the top 25 songs from that year that represents the feeling of the year that he will use for the main track(s) in the song. He also takes into consideration if the songs he uses are "mixable" and are able to be transposed without taking away from it originally, to determine the amount of each he uses. Finally, he looks for an instrumental of a song to drive the mashup. To isolate each song for use in the mashup, Earworm looks for unmixed files from the studio on the internet or through connections. If those files are unavailable, he will process the full song with Adobe Audition or Prosoniq sonicWORX Isolate to isolate the vocals.