02/06/2026

Oliver Koletzki on Why Risk Matters in a Saturated Release Cycle

Oliver Koletzki continues the rollout of his forthcoming album 12 with the release of “I Don’t Need Your Love,” out back on January 30 via Stil vor Talent. The single follows December’s “Trip With Me” with Frida Darko and offers a second preview of the full-length project due April 10. Built around vocal hooks and syncopated drum work, the record reinforces Koletzki’s long-standing balance between melodic detail and direct club functionality, while marking the next phase of a catalog that spans more than two decades.

As both a producer and label co-founder of Stil vor Talent, Koletzki operates inside a release cycle that demands constant awareness of new music. His approach to discovery remains structured and consistent, shaped by years of vinyl digging and now anchored in weekly promo checks, Beatport purchases, and archive revisits. That discipline feeds directly into his DJ sets and informs the production choices shaping 12.

In this interview, Koletzki outlines his current digging routine, how he organizes music inside Rekordbox, and why filtering through large volumes of releases has become a necessary part of maintaining identity in 2026. His answers provide insight into how consistent discovery influences both his DJ programming and the creative decisions behind “I Don’t Need Your Love” and the broader direction of 12.

Interview With Oliver Koletzki

Do you make music discovery part of your regular routine? What does that look like for you?

Back in the day, when I was still playing vinyl, I’d usually go to the record store whenever I actually had the money to buy records.

These days I have a pretty fixed routine: either Thursday night or Friday morning I go through my promos, check out the latest releases that just dropped, and I usually buy them on Beatport.

Since I’m normally DJing on the weekends, I try to do this shortly before, so I’m as up to date as possible.

Where do you usually dig for new music—online, in stores, or through your own archives?

I usually check out the tracks friends have sent me to test.

Of course, I go through promo emails from Inflyte or Fat Drop.

I also look at the latest releases on Beatport and Juno Download, and then I’ll check SoundCloud or Hypeddit for new edits that have just come out.

But right now, I’m obviously also playing a lot of tracks from my new album 12, which is coming out in April.

How do you keep everything you find organized so it’s easy to use later on?

When I download music, I store it on my laptop hard drive in folders organized by year and month.

Once I transfer it into Rekordbox, I organize everything into folders like Indie Dance Hard, Indie Dance Soft, Tech House, Percussive, Tech House Vocal, Downtempo—so at that point I’m mainly sorting things by genre.

Has digging consistently changed how you approach your sound or identity as an artist?

Doing this on a regular basis definitely influences my own artistic work and production, because you’re listening to a lot of music and, naturally, great tracks inspire and influence you.

With the sheer amount of releases out there these days, you really have to listen to a lot of music to find tracks that truly stand out, that you really connect with or that fit you.

But you also keep coming across new influences and exciting production approaches. So yeah, I really enjoy digging—even though it’s very time-consuming.

Have you gone through times when you were finding tons of music but none of it sparked anything for you?

Yeah, that actually happens more and more lately. There’s just so much music coming out, and you have to listen to a lot to find something that really works. Sometimes that’s exactly what happens to me.

I’ll find a lot of tracks, because there’s a lot of music where I think, okay, this is functional – it’ll probably work on the dancefloor. But very often it’s basically a copy of something, or even a copy of a copy.

You can really tell that a lot of new producers are playing it safe, chasing success, not taking many risks. And the result is that so many tracks end up sounding very similar, which is a real shame.

So sometimes I’ll actually buy like 15 or 20 tracks. But then I leave them for a few days, load them into Rekordbox, listen to them again, and I’m like, oh no… not that great after all.

And in the end, I might only end up playing two or three out of the fifteen I bought.