Friendship Games

I need to vent about some really unprofessional club promoters.

I have a few clubs I work for around town and mostly things are good, but I've noticed a trend lately. The trend is club promoters booking their half assed "I can't even beatmatch" DJ friends (who dont even practice, or ever get any better), instead of booking DJs that actually know how to work a room.

Normally I wouldn't really care, its their problem and if they run their shitty little club night into the ground it doesn't really hurt me.

But what really bothers me is their total lack of loyalty to DJs that have worked for them in the past pulled a crowd and made their club good. In the past few weeks I've seen several good DJs on my Facebook account complaining about the same thing. They worked for a club for years building the night for them always doing a good job, then the next minute some new promoter comes along and starts booking their crappy little friends and completely stops booking the good DJ who works hard to do a good job.

I don't see how the owners of these clubs are not doing something about these promoters running their club into the ground. It's not just destroying the clubs its destroying the whole scene.

well all i can say is

welcome to the level of understanding what actually happens in the nightclub community Nakkanen.
Hate to say it but this is nothing new, and its not just with djing

lets pretend just for this sentence, that you were a hair stylist.
Do you think it would be any different?

Yes youre right.... you dont see why club owners arent doing anything about it.
And its because you are a good guy, looking at it from the objective point of view, with long term ideals.
But the club owner.... all club owners, only care about what happens "TONIGHT"
and the only thing they are going to want to see are "Numbers, dollars, cents"
To them, they dont care if you have 20 ppl arrive that spend 40,000 for the night total
But they will care if you have 1000 people arrive and they only buy ONE drink each. because it wont be good business.


You are looking at it from the wrong pair of shoes and its not your fault.
The problem is there is absolutely NO "teamwork" involved anymore at that point.

Its a shame, and im sorry to see yet another dj go through it.

Yeah, it's all part of the game. I had the same problem new years eve(see: thread I posted an hour ago lol) and I don't forsee it ever changing. It's just a practice in communication and keeping your address book full.

Well, I've never had the opportunity to work on that level, but I do seem people complaining about this same problem as well.

Its so annoying, especially when there is heaps of great DJs out there that actually put in the time to hone and improve their skillset that have trouble getting gigs because they dont spend all their time networking and blowing people.

Oh well not long now and I'll be running my own night :D

My take:

Thing is; you can be the best bedroom DJ in the world. However, if you're the only one who knows it, you're irrelevant. Promotors are incentivized to get bodies into the door, and most punters won't know the difference between a good DJ and a bad one so skill is largely irrelevant when it comes to getting gigs.

Think about it this way though; what does booking YOU offer the club? If you have no following, you're not making them any more money than your competition by bringing people in. Sure you're spinning and maybe you have a great set; that's unlikely to bring people in the door the next week though, and they're already there when you're spinning because of the promotors, not your unknown DJ talent. Unfortunately getting gigs, like most things in life, has nothing to do with being a meritocracy. If you want to get booked you need to make the promotor want to book you; whether it's because you have 10,000 Facebook fans or because you're a personal friend of him/her. Being a friend tends to be easier than the former ;)