SAM FELDT Interview - teasing new music, Miami plans, and being environmentally conscious

Foreign.

935, Miami's number one dance music station. Jordan Sanchez here, and I'm really excited because I am joined by someone who has this uplifting energy, really happy dude as far as his music and his character, his Persona. But we're gonna get to know him a little bit more and I think I vibe with that kind of uplifting energy. It's none other than producer DJ Sam Felt. What up, man?

Hey, what's up? Happy to be here.

It's good to have you. I'm a big fan of Dutch DJs and Dutch producers. I have plenty of Dutch friends myself. So it's really nice to have a Dutchie on the interview today. And I don't think I've ever sat down with someone like you. You know, you're deceptively very complex. And I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean in a very, very good way. You tend to think outside the box a lot. So I'm very curious to pick your brain today. Tell me about why you find it so important to go above and beyond just being a musician, just being a producer. You know, you have projects like Heartfelt Me, which is very tech reliant. You also speak about the environment, which I want to get to a little bit later. But your extracurriculars talk about why that's so important to you.

Well, I think being an artist, being a DJ is just one side of being Sam. I've always been an entrepreneur, Since I was 13 years old is when I actually dragged my dad to the Chamber of commerce to register my first business. Did a lot of web design, web development. Just an all time, all round nerd. So making music was just one of the ways I nerded out as a kid. And I mean, I still love, you know, starting businesses, being creative in the sense of marketing, design, video. So I love to incorporate that in my day to day life as well.

Yeah, I mean, you could definitely tell. And I remember getting the first impressions of you, aside from your music, but through your live events and again, we'll revisit that. But I want to get into your involvement in environmental causes here at Revolution in Miami. We're really, really big on that. Our owners are all our on air staff. We make it a point to be a local environmentally conscious organization. We team up with a local organization called Clean this Beach up and we literally physically clean up beaches and we spread awareness about, you know, local environmental causes like the manatees, the mangroves, stuff like that here in Miami. I know you're Very passionate about that too. And it's a big part of your life. So tell me why you've decided to take on something so daunting that you think, hey, maybe a music, this might be a little too daunting for a musician, but you're doing it anyway.

I mean, for me, it was more of a personal decision and also kind of a moment of reflection. It was. I don't remember exactly the dates, but it was around New Year's a few years ago, and I realized I was living a pretty polluting lifestyle as a DJ, flying everywhere, basically throwing shows, literally spraying CO2 into the air. That wasn't very sustainable. And, you know, it kind of struck me that that wasn't the way that I was brought up by my parents. You know, like we. They were both vegetarian hippies. Like, they. We always, you know, grew our own vegetables in the garden and never ate meat. And I kind of. I think I strayed away from that a little bit as the years passed and. And I think it was a moment in time where I was making my New Year's resolutions for the next year. And I looked at my own life and I said, hey, this needs to change. I love being on the road. I love making people happy around the world, but how can I do so in a more sustainable way? So decided to take a look at my own life, see what we can do, you know, what I could do. And also we as a team, to make that a little better, and then decided to launch the Heartfelt foundation as kind of a platform where I can hopefully inspire other people to follow in my footsteps a little bit.

And what are some of the. Some of the missions and causes of the Heartfelt Foundation?

So we work based on four pillars. Give, do, inspire, and empower. So give is all about raising money. So, for example, 1% of the royalties for my label, for my label, Heartfelt Records, go directly towards charitable causes that, that benefit sustainability. But we also raised a bunch of money. For example, during the last Amsterdam dance event, we threw a carbon neutral event, asked for donations instead of selling tickets, and were able to raise around, I think, 20 to $25,000 with that, with that single event. So that's kind of the gift part of it. DO is more about leading by example. So, for example, offsetting your flight emissions, removing plastic from your rider, looking into more sustainable alternatives to sfx your shows, all that, all that stuff. Taking the car on tour, if possible, taking the train instead of flying, and then give or give do an AF Inspire. Inspire is mostly about using Your audience. So using the, you know, the profile that I've built on social media, on the tv, talking about it, in radio interviews like this one, to kind of raise awareness. And then the last but not least is empower, which is all about supporting companies that do good. That's kind of like the model which we built, and we have a lot of initiatives around that. For example, cleaning the beach during Ultra Miami this year, so.

Oh, that's awesome. So, okay. I definitely want to get to Miami because one of my. One of my favorite memories of Miami Music Week was going to the Heartfelt pool party. But I was curious about what other things, because I'm a DJ as well. What other things should I be doing personally? Because I want to be better myself. Right. What should I be doing to be more environmentally conscious?

I think it really differs from person to person. I think what you should do is kind of create a analysis of how you pollute. And for me, that's mostly flights, because I fly a shit on. So that's the number one thing I needed to look into. Hey, okay, how can I choose wiser flights? Also take less flights. And then for the flights I do need to take, find a great partner to offset those emissions. So that's what I did. But for you, it can be different. Like, if you're. If you're mostly in and around Miami, it can be helping local causes. It can be eating less meat. It can be, you know, if you drive a lot, I know you guys in America, you take the car everywhere, so maybe that's. Maybe that's your number one thing to focus on. So I think it very. It can change from person to person.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I agree. It's always. Each person's fight is slightly different. And I'm glad that you brought that up about. You seem to be very keen on some of the things happening in Miami. You mentioned that you're going to clean some beaches in the area during Music Week. You know, about, you know, our reliance on cars here. It's pretty, pretty terrible. But let's talk about the good things about Miami. You know, Miami is a very special place. We all come together in March, and it's actually right around the corner. And like I said, one of my favorite memories was the Heartfelt pool party. Getting to know you and your sound and. And actually going to these events was really cool for me. I mentioned before we went on the interview, I went to the one in Amsterdam, which was crazy, despite it being super, super cold. But the vibes, you know, the vibes are there. I love that ambiance that you establish and you do everything around the event correctly to build that ambience, whether it be booking other DJs or the decorations, the lighting, all that stuff. What can we expect this year in Miami?

So I haven't announced any, any Heartsfell pool party yet, but we're working on one. So details to come, but I think we're definitely going to do one, most likely together with another big DJ that I can't share the name of right now, but you'll see that popping up in the next couple of weeks. And of course I'm playing Ultra, so the main stage. So happy to be back there, happy to be back at Bayfront as well. Really excited to see Ultra back in its full glory. So I'm just excited to be back in Miami in about two months, a little less.

I mean we're all excited that it's back at its in its home right there in the heart of downtown Miami. I, I got my tickets the day they were available, by the way. I'm like a fiend. I had to jump on that really, really fast. I. I'm very excited now. You know you're going to be there. I'm very excited to see you and I'm actually curious about any new music that might come out before Ultra. I know a lot of people try to push some new tracks, maybe to debut them at Ultra. Is that something that we can expect?

Yeah, definitely. My track Follow Me with Rita or is of course still rising in the charts. Every week it's going up in the airplay charts, it's getting more streams. So you know how it works on the radio, right? You don't want to come with your next single while you're previous one is still climbing. So we're kind of looking at how that goes. I've got a couple of really sick remixes for Follow Me coming up, including one of my own. So it's a club mix by Sam Feld. We got sick individuals, Moti all dropping remixes in the next couple of weeks. They'll definitely play those at Ultra in my pool party. And who knows by then I'll tease or maybe drop the next single ready as well. But that's a little bit tba.

All right, cool. So I like that there's a little tidbits of secrets that, that you're teasing because now I'm. Now I'm getting excited. Now I'm looking forward to Ultra a little bit more. But you did mention your song Follow Me with Rita Ora and I want to talk about that track because we played here on Revolution 935. And when I first heard about it, my first thought was, man, what a massive collab. You know, Sam Felt and Ritoha.

And then I.

Then I thought, wait a minute, almost all of your collabs are pretty huge. You've even done a track with. With a freaking Avenger, for crying out loud, Jerry Renner. So how do you approach these collabs? How do you deal? How did you deal with this one in specific? But also other collabs with big names, like, do you feel the pressure? Is there any pressure to deliver? What's that like?

Well, for me, it starts with the right vocal sound, and that can be someone like Rita Ora, who is, of course, a super pop star, but it could also be smaller acts. It can be, you know, very weird collabs, like me collabing with Shaggy, which I've done, like Akon, or even a singer songwriter like Joshua Radin. So I always try to go for the. For the interesting ones. And in this case, for Follow Me, the song I wrote together with Ella Henderson a while back, and we were just looking for the right female feature on it. And then Miles, who I'm sure you know from the Miami nightlife scene, managed to get it in front of Rita, and she loved it. She recorded it in the studio in la. We got together to film a music video in California, which was awesome. And, yeah, I'm just pretty excited for that one to be out. But, I mean, in general, it can go lots of different ways. I did a Trek with Sam Fisher last year. I did a Trek with Kesha, and they kind of all landed in my lap in different ways.

Cool. Yeah. I love the stories of how different projects come out of almost Thin air sometimes. And it seems to me like you've taken advantage of all the weird ones, as you say, the ones that you don't necessarily expect. And I think this one is an amazing track. It's perfect for this time of. Of the year, you know, it's perfect for Miami radio. And it's almost like after hearing all these little teases that you have, it's almost making me excited for more Sam Felt music. So I'm very, very excited for that. I wanted to thank you so much for sitting down with me and taking the time for this nice, quick little sit down and giving us an update on what you're doing. Is there anything else that we should be expecting coming from Sam Felt?

A whole bunch. I've got about 30 songs that are just sitting on the shelf, that are almost finished. So who knows, Maybe an album somewhere this year or next year. But we'll see. Like, I'm focusing on just getting the next single ready, getting it out, and also, of course, announcing all the fun stuff we're going to be doing around Miami Music Week. So Miami, if you're listening, I hope to see you there next month.

Yeah, I mean, you have plenty of listeners. We're definitely going to be out there in full force, at least the Miami dance music fans. It's the best time of the year for us. So hopefully.

I agree.

We get to link up soon and be easy. My man, thank you so much for the time.

Thank you so much. Have a good rest of your day.

You too, man. Have a good one.