Build Your Club Night and DJ Career w Guest DJs – Part 2

Written by Phil Morse on September 14th, 2010 34 Comments

Picture 9

In Part 1, we looked at why you might want to book guest DJs to help you establish a solid underground club night in your town or city. In this part, we’ll look at how to go about it.

As we said last time, unless you have considerable resources (lucky you…), paying for a good guest DJ every week will break your bank. The way around this is to only book guest DJs every 3 or 4 events, making the other nights appealing using other promoting techniques.

This means your DJing skills and ability to hold a crowd remain paramount for your night’s success, which is important as the whole reason for all of this is in order to let you improve as a DJ, not to hand the responsibility over to your guests to make your night a success.

For the same reason, you need to be sure you still start and close your club night yourself (or yourselves). You add consistency by warming up the crowd and by playing afterwards, the latter set allowing you to spin the tunes the crowd were maybe expecting that the guest didn’t play. Giving your guest a peak-time slot in the middle of the night is the right way to do it.

WHO TO BOOK

So now we know when and where you’re going to use your guests, we need to work out who to book. Using the guidelines below, come up with at least 30 DJs: This will be your shortlist for the next few months’-worth of events.

  1. Make a list of all the DJs who would complement your night’s musical style
  2. Look through your music collection and list the DJs/producers who have made the tunes you and your crowd are loving at the moment
  3. List guest DJs who’ve played other clubs locally in the past couple of years who you liked. (Don’t assume they’ll always play at those clubs – things change)

Concentrate especially on up-and-coming DJs – often they’ll be much bigger by the time they play your venue than when you booked them.

WHO NOT TO BOOK

Avoid residents of other local clubs – it makes no sense to have people in the same position as you taking your deck time. Also, avoid producers who don’t really DJ (producers will often take your money and cobble out a DJ set – who wouldn’t? – but check they can do it well first!

Be wary of booking DJs who nobody has ever heard of but whose mix CDs you like. You can do as well as that, and again they’re taking your valuable deck time off of you, even if they say they’ll do it for next to nothing. Be business-like – book the DJs who will clearly benefit your night. Being tactical is not selling out.

THE BUSINESS OF HIRING DJS

DJs will play from a few hundred dollars up to many thousands. Let’s look at how to get them at the lower end of this scale.

Before we get going, a word about your business arrangements. Firstly, you ideally need to be keeping a percentage of the door take, if not all of it. (The venue will always keep the bar take.) You may be asked to pay a hire fee too (to cover doormen, for instance) but even so, this basic set-up allows you to profit from your carefully chosen guest DJs.

Secondly, treat guest DJs as “loss leaders”. As you’re not booking them every week, they are the ones exposing your great little club night to a wider audience – an audience who you are counting on to come back on other weeks when the guests aren’t there.

Finally, have partners. They can share the risk and the expense. Promoting is hard, sometimes thankless work. Have people to share the good and bad times with. You’ll be stronger that way.

ALL ABOUT AGENTS

Established DJs have agents. The agents are there to take bookings for the DJs; hold their diaries; liaise with promoters to collate itineraries; issue and chase invoices; and assist the DJ in his or her career development. Agents are, in short, your contact with the artists you want to book.

To find someone’s agent, check their web page online, ask other promoters, do some Googling… agents are pretty visible online. Be aware that DJs often have different agents in different territories. Agents in countries where DJs don’t often play may be little more than “diary holders”. Many DJs are represented by a handful of different agents, even in the same territories.

So, how to get the DJs you want at the right price – the big question! The following techniques worked time and again for me, and applied with diligence they’ll help you to book names you want at prices you can afford.

girldancing

Photo: U-g-g-B-o-y

1. Try approaching the DJ directly
You can be bold (email them, even call if you can find their number). More than likely, you can begin to get on their radar through Facebook or Twitter (the vanity of checking your mentions means this is likely even with pretty big names). Try emailing them through their website.Many DJs are happy to take bookings away from their agents. You don’t know until you ask, so ask.

2. If you can’t do that, find their “principal” agent
The “principal” agent (ie the one with the DJ’s ear rather than just someone listing them on a long list of acts) will be more able to negotiate on price. If the DJ is from somewhere else, don’t be scared to pick the phone up and ring their agent in their home state or country – it’s what secondary agents would do on your behalf anyway, so what’s to lose? Once you make contact and confirm you can negotiate, you’re ready to…

3. Negotiate hard
You’re probably dreading this but really, it’s the fun bit! First, know what you can afford. Start your bidding at half of that figure. Don’t ever feel stupid doing this. Get used to people telling you “no”. Always be polite, always be professional, and always remember the agents and the DJs need you as much as you need them.

Your opening line is always the same: We’re a small venue, but a well-respected and loved one, and we’ve chosen your guy because of his music. At this stage it’s very much your job to hit them with all the arguments as to why you only want to pay the amount you have suggested. Those arguments can include:

  • “We’re a great “music”-led club night, not like the commercial gigs DJ Z hates.”
  • “DJ X or Y has played our venue and loved it (make sure DJ X or DJ Y are a contemporaries of DJ Z) – surely he/she doesn’t want to miss out?”
  • “He/she is not a big DJ here yet, we’re offering them the chance to play to an influential crowd in a new place and conquer it!”
  • “We can get him radio/TV/press/web exposure.” (make sure you can)

Remember that the agent needs to get a booking for their act. If the DJ isn’t booked at all for that night, your offer is by default the best that’s on the table, and the agent knows that.

NIGHTS WHERE YOU CAN NEGOTIATE A DISCOUNT…

  • Keep an eye on DJs’ websites for cancellations – you can snap up gigs at cut-down prices this way, and one rule of live music promotion that has carried across to DJing is that you “only need three weeks to promote a gig”.
  • Offer the DJ an early or a late DJ set (by throwing an all-nighter at your venue) – this can work if they already have another set in the next town or city on the same night; in effect, you “share” the fee with the other promoter. (I’ve actually done this formally, and it also works well if you’re flying a DJ in from abroad.)
  • If you have big-name DJs who happen to live locally to you, offer them gigs on holiday nights that aren’t Friday or Saturday, which are likely to be nights when the DJ may not want to travel far but wouldn’t mind a gig (eg Christmas Eve, Easter).

You’ll always pay the agency upfront – they typically charge 10-15% on top of the agreed fee (another reason to nail that fee down!). You may pay half or even all of the DJ’s fee upfront. Sometimes you can pay the DJ on the night; this is more likely when you know the DJ or have a relationship with the agent.

Dublin airport

HANDLING THE DJ ON THE NIGHT

Make sure you check arrangements with the agent a week or so before the booking. Ensure you have any equipment the DJ needs sorted out.

You’ll be expected to pay for their drinks in the club and often a meal beforehand. If they’re not local, you’ll probably pay for a hotel room. If they flew in or had a driver, you’ll be paying for the transport too. You’ll certainly have to collect them from the airport and get them there safely again the next day.

If you’re expecting your guest DJ to want to party with you beforehand, bear in mind that they’ll probably have had a gig last night too, and may well just want to go to their room for a shower and a couple of hours’ rest before the gig. Don’t be offended if they do; but likewise, if they’ve never seen your town, they may well want a tour. Play it by ear.

When they’re DJing, keep the crowd (and yourselves) away from them and let them do their job, and if they want to party with you afterwards, great! However, normally they’ll have a busy schedule and will want to get a quick drink then back to the hotel. Sort this out for them. And if you’re paying them on the night, do it promptly.

Never forget that the DJs are the good guys
Finally, in all your one-on-one relationships with your guest DJs, always remember that they are the ones with the musical talent, and so out of everyone involved in your night, they are the people who are most likely to recognise the worth in what you are doing.

They’re the ones you really want to impress – so treat them as you’d like to be treated. You’ll reap the rewards in time.

I wish you the very best of luck in fast-tracking your DJ career through booking guest DJs.

Co-founder and resident at Manchester (England) club night ‘Tangled’ through most of the 1990s and early 2000s, Phil Morse is also a music journalist and currently edits the Digital DJ Tips blog. He has DJed across Europe, and nowadays lives in southern Spain where he plays Balearic beach sundowners on the weekends.

Filed under: Business of DJing, and tagged , , , , .

  • dstep

    great article!!!!

  • http://www.myspace.com/bestlegsinhd BestLegsinHD

    good article!

    dont be afraid to bid on people. when we first started talking to booking agents we were really nervous! felt kind of stupid lol

    a tip i learned= dont give the booking agent the capacity. if they ask dont lie, but dont be too direct. we usually say something like “the venue is a small/intimate”
    sometimes if they know the true capacity, they hike up the price and refuse to go down. this is a major problem for us as the venue very rarely fills up for EDM events (houston=huge hip hop town).

  • http://www.ali.dj Ali

    Very good article Phil.
    I liked this one better than the first part.

    Some suggestions would’ve been helpful to make the first Midi-Fight-Club less troublesome.

  • http://soundcloud.com/tos ToS

    Good article. There seems to be a problem with CSS, some right-hand charactere of text are not visible.

  • http://listn.to/lafindumonde Str8upDrew

    Quality stuff here. This series really makes me want to start planning shows again.

  • http://www.maxonemusic.com/ Max One

    yeah man, quality tips!

    Couldn’t agree more with most of what you said, particularly that the residents should open and close the night.

    At Step Back, I always played the last half an hour or 45 mins, to play the absolute old skool bangers. Finishing on a high and leaving people wanting more is critical to success.

    I remember we booked LTJ Bukem for a 2 hour set, at the Academy and he arrived late. He wanted to finish his two hour set which would have meant he would have closed the night. As amazing as Bukem is, after an hour an a half of ‘inteligent’ drum and bass in a massive arena, we new that was probably enough. We also new from experience that our crowd always want to end on a massive tear out high…

    So we politely and diplomatically told him his set was being cut short. He wasn’t over the moon but at the end of the day we’re the promoters. Then we went on a smashed it leaving the crowd screaming for more…

    At then end of the day the last half hour is what people remember as they stumble out and it’s got to be electric and as the promoters and residents it’s your duty to make sure that happens every single time, even if you have to gently bruise some big name egos.

    What i’m saying is probably more relevant for established nights than for booking your first few big names… but still, opening and closing a night yourself is key as the resident (also the most fun :)

    Mx1

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  • http://www.scottbrio.com Villinus

    Excellent tips. I will be using this as reference :D

  • http://www.d-jam.com D-Jam

    Excellent article.

    I especially agree on the “don’t book another club’s resident” thing.

    I’ll never forget my old boss trying that, only to see no one came out for him, but instead came out later to the club he normally plays at.

    It’s not always the DJ who brings the heads, but the combo of DJ, club, vibe, promoter, etc.

  • http://www.myspace.com/djrodrigosm RodrigoSM.br

    I’ve been a DJ for 10 years now and, 9 out of 10 times I’ve been booked for gigs, things go like this: aspiring DJs are unprofessional and cheap when hiring people and promoters are generally jerks whou will bite you on the ass given a chance. I’ve always thought: “There’s gotta be some middle ground”. Man, I wish I had been treated the way you suggest in this article: reasonably, repsectuffly, professionally. Thanks for a lot of valuable advice, especially for those starting.

  • http://Soundcloud.com/jabanayot Jabanayot

    Hey Phil morse, I’m a small dj in California and am moving to the canary islands in Spain in a couple days, wanted to start djing in Spain and was wondering if the same advice would work over there, an if there was any way you would recommend starting, or even any small gigs around Spain that I could get involved with.

  • Bruno Seibert

    Really nice and usefull article! Thanks a lot mate!

  • DasGood

    man where did you get the DJ Domokun toy……..

  • http://listn.to/d3rkinlistn.to/discopimpsproductions D3RKIN

    I believe that no matter what you should think of your night as a business and set ground rules for the club, most of the time you are doing them a favor. I try to get the club to run drinks specials just for my night I also try to get them to invest in the night by asuming some of the cost for the headliner they have as much to gain as you. It is much easier to throw a club event than a rave there is less overhead. In the 90′s we used to throw rave parties in Chicago under Disco Pimps Productions and there was alot of overhead, space, sound flyers, lights, and sometimes paying off the right people so you don’t get shut down. This is such a easier time now than then since every bit off your success doesn’t have to depend on just flyers. There are alot of tools out there use them.

  • http://www.jacklndn.com jackLNDN

    Great article but a bit farfetched for someone with a smaller budget.

  • http://www.djpc3.com/ Dj PC3

    I hate dealing with promoters… for the most part, they are all a bunch of d-bags & I feel like I spend too much time hunting them down for money. They all say one thing, then pay another… now I work with bar managers/owners directly, they pay on time everytime regardless of how the night turned out…

    I think every promoter should read this article to learn how to treat people

  • http://listn.to/nicnoice Nic Noice

    Very very well written. Inspiring in every way.

  • http://www.RSDJz.com RSDJ KayPlaya

    Real good information. On the last post (pt.1) I mentioned that its a little difficult to apply most of these tips in Las Vegas, however they still are excellent tips and guidance tools. Can definitely try em to at least see what happens

  • http://www.digitaldjtips.com/2010/09/guest-djs-pt-2/ Building Your Club Night and DJ Career with Guest DJs, Pt 2 | Digital DJ Tips

    [...] This is a guest post from Digital DJ Tips for DJ TechTools, that appears in full over on that site. [...]

  • http://beatbangerspr.blogspot.com Tek

    Very helpful, THANK YOU!!

  • http://VIATOURISTA.COM DEEPDOWNINSIDE

    I don’t understand why most of you say this won work here or if you’re on a small budget. There was nothing the article said about how much money you must have.

    You don’t have to get A-listers grab some local djays you like. For instance if you live in a major city LA, NYC, DAL, DET, etc… I am sure you can find solid djays who by just their name on your flyer makes your night legit and may bring in a healthy crowd.

    Unfortunately, I live in the boonies and most folks here listen to classic rock and or country music. My dream is to have my own night to spin at. The nearest “cities” are college towns but at least an hour away. But I am sure these steps would help out if I decided to start a club in my area.

    Soon I am planing to move Santa Barbara, CA and open a up a night there so thanks for the tips.

  • http://www.digitaldjtips.com Phil Morse

    You know there’s something that all entrepreneurs have (and as a DJ/promoter you are an entrepreneur, make no mistake). It’s what you might call stick-a-bility. It’s the ability to see opportunity and pursue it single-mindedly, through good and bad, to neve let go, and to build ever so slowly until your idea has legs, and then stands up, and your effort and passion and belief pays off.

    And the thing is, this can’t be taught. Words can encourage but people who say “that’ll never work here” aren’t looking hard enough for a way to get there. You’ve got it exactly right, Deepdowninside, and like I said in the first of these two articles – to pursue this dream, you may have to move town. I did, it’s hardly the end of the world. Just do it! :)

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    [...] Business Tools Midi Tips & Tricks Promotional Tips Studio Tools Technology 2011 2010 RSS 2.0 feed Build Your Club Night and DJ Career w Guest DJs – Part 211-02-11 00:10 Filed in: Promotional TipsWritten by Phil Morse on September 14th, 201021 Comments [...]

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