Alex Moschopoulos

The main take-home points I’ve got from running a couple of my own nights

• Friends are unbelievably and unfathomably unreliable. Even the diehard ravers. Expect 50% of promises to be delivered.
• DJ friends want to play, play, play, but aren’t remotely interested in the graft/risk required to host the night in the first place
• Most venues have a preconceived “theme” or expectation in the mind of locals and that absolutely determines whether they will come or not, regardless of the fact that what you’re doing is nothing like the normal.
• Attracting women is key

Welcome to the world I knew…and why I wrote many articles on the topic. 😉

I went through the same experiences when I promoted, and it taught me much.

How do I find my target audience and persuade them I’m worth listening to? How can I turn my one, true passion in life into a regular thing? I’m not even bothered about the money or making a career of it (as nice as that would be), I just want to DJ because I absolutely love it!

Here’s the thing, despite what you’re saying, you’re still pushing events mainly to have somewhere to play. You have to think about it all from the patron’s eyes. Some average Joe or Jane who listens to pop music wants to go out and have fun, and there you are playing your style of music that might not mesh with that…thus they leave and roll over to the packed venue where DJ Jukebox is playing the hits like a robot.

In my experiences, gaining a local following comes more from a few factors:

1. Being active in your scene…meaning you’re out at events, supporting, networking, and not just being a DJ showing up with demos, but leaving immediately after giving said demo.
2. Making consistent mixes, podcasts, blogs, and/or music production. The local success stories were consistently making “content” and sharing it, gaining followers from it. It doesn’t come quickly by the way.
3. Aligning with local promoters and joining their teams. Work your way up until they’re pushing you. Usually they might make you an opener and you work your way up.
4. Playing to your local scene…meaning you’re playing music they can get into, and cleverly slipping in stuff you believe in. You think Danny Teneglia went and played 12=hour sets from the get-go? He too must have had to play small sets and work his way up.

My suggestion is to consider production, or get into podcasting, or something where you’ll consistently make new content and post it online. Learn how to utilize Social Media the right way, and thus slowly gain people to lock on to your sound…rather than you begging people to like you. Eventually when you can get 50 people out to hear you, promoter will notice.

Again…it doesn’t come quickly. You have to have a strong skin, stay positive, and persevere. I always bring up Dani Deahl as an example. Back in 2003 I remember she was only playing some local spots to near-empty rooms. Thirteen years later and she’s writing for DJ Mag, producing, promoting, and playing larger events…including big festivals. Bear in mind she had to be persistent and ambitious…and plan/book her own tour (because the labels wouldn’t support/help her).

As a user of Traktor for years, I have to agree with many here. I’ve found some workarounds when you place in cuepoints on spots where you need to re-align the grid, but it can cause issues if you’re using the master midi clock.

This is why I speak to many about how “sync will fail” and to learn manual beatmatching for these occasions. Granted in my own uses, I’ll see most modern music grid just fine, but anything with varying tempos, breakdowns that aren’t in 32-beat increments, or even old school music done in a more “analog” time…I’ll see grid issues.

Don’t let technology limit you.