DJ Swivel

Early career (2005–2010)

After graduating from Full Sail, Young moved to New York City, where he began working under Ken "Duro" Ifill at Desert Storm Records.^[12] During this period, he served as a mixing assistant and engineer on projects for Jay-Z, Fabolous, Mary J. Blige, Kanye West, Rick Ross, Britney Spears, Mariah Carey, and others.^[13]

Beyoncé and The Chainsmokers (2011–2018)

In 2011, Young served as vocal engineer on all tracks of Beyoncé's 4 and also mixed "I Care" and "Schoolin' Life".^[3][4] He continued working with Beyoncé on Live at Roseland: Elements of 4 (2011) and as an engineer on "Flawless" from her self-titled album (2013).^[13]

In 2013, Young was credited as an engineer on "Love on Top" by Beyoncé, which won the Grammy Award for Best Traditional R&B Performance.^[1]

In 2015, Young co-founded the music technology startup SKIO Music. That same year, he began working with The Chainsmokers, mixing their Bouquet EP and the single "Roses".^[13]

He was inducted into the Full Sail University Hall of Fame as part of the class of 2015.^[14][11]

His collaboration with The Chainsmokers expanded to include mixing, production, and engineering on "Closer" (2016), "Don't Let Me Down" (2016), "Something Just Like This" (2017, with Coldplay), "Paris" (2017), the Collage EP (2016), and the album Memories...Do Not Open (2017).^[13]

Young won the Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording at the 59th Annual Grammy Awards in 2017 for mixing "Don't Let Me Down".^[1]

From 2018 to 2020, Young served as mixer, engineer, producer, and co-writer for BTS on tracks including "Euphoria", "Magic Shop", "Love Maze", "So What", "Mikrokosmos", "Moon", and "We Are Bulletproof: The Eternal".^[13]

Software development (2020–present)

In January 2020, Young released The Sauce, an effects processor plugin for vocals.^[15] Later in 2020, he released Spread, a plugin for converting mono tracks to stereo.^[16] He subsequently released additional plugins including Knocktonal, a drum resonance tuning tool,^[17] and HitStrip, a channel strip plugin comprising nine processing modules, released in November 2024 after three years of development.^[7]

His plugin line, which also includes BDE and Click Boom, was rebranded as Swivel Audio and distributed through Plugin Alliance beginning in August 2025.^[18]

Young also owns a music publishing company, Waves With Words, in partnership with Concord.^[19]

Hooky and AI voice technology (2023–present)

Young founded Hooky, an AI voice technology platform that provides licensed artist voice models for use in music production.^[6][10]

In November 2023, singer Lauv used Hooky's AI voice modelling technology to release a Korean-language version of his single "Love U Like That". The process involved Korean singer Kevin Woo (formerly of U-KISS) performing the Korean vocals, after which Hooky's AI applied Lauv's vocal characteristics to the recording. The release was described by Billboard as the first instance of a major Western artist using AI voice modelling to release a song in a new language.^[6][20][10]

In April 2024, Young was quoted by CBC News in coverage of broader music industry concerns about AI, comparing the challenges to the Napster-era disputes over digital file-sharing.^[21]

Hooky launched as a subscription platform on 5 June 2024, with initial voice models from artists including Jay Sean, Eric Bellinger, and Bonnie X Clyde.^[22][23][24]

Television

In 2023, Young served as a judge on Banded: The Musician Competition, a music competition series on AXS TV that premiered on 13 May 2023. The show, hosted by Brandon Jenner and co-hosted by Didi Benami, placed 25 individual songwriters into five multi-genre bands.^[25]