Deadmau5 Fan Gets Feature on New Song ‘The Veldt’ Thanks to Twitter

Twitter, like most social media networks, is frequently derided by outsiders as being a pointless forum for people to overshare the meaningless trivia of their lives. But like any tool, its value depends on the way it’s used — and as one enterprising artist recently proved, it can help create major opportunities.

It all happened last weekend, when the electronic artist known as deadmau5 decided to let fans watch online as he assembled a new song, titled ‘The Veldt’ after the Ray Bradbury short story that inspired it. With a virtual audience watching him create, deadmau5 assembled the musical bed for ‘The Veldt,’ then remarked to his followers that he’d need to start working on lyrics and vocals.

At this point, a fan (and producer in his own right) named Chris James took it upon himself to come up with some lyrics, record his own vocals, mix the whole thing into the samples that had already been streamed, and publicly tweet the result to deadmau5.

The result? A profanely enthusiastic deadmau5 tweet (“DUDE… YOU F—ING KIDDING ME????”) and an unexpected collaboration that, while still unfinished, has already been enjoyed by scores of fans — and uploaded to YouTube, as evidenced by the clip below.

James and deadmau5 aren’t the first artists to stumble into working together after meeting via social media — Curt Smith of Tears for Fears has been working on an entire album along those lines — but ‘The Veldt’ is still illustrative of the way it can foster useful connections. Play it the next time someone jokes about Twitter being a place for people to talk about what they had for breakfast.

Listen to Deadmau5, ‘The Veldt’ Feat. Chris James