I need more gigs. Aside from going from club to club handing out CD’s to staff, can anyone give me some pointers on what other avenues I can cover? Is it worth phoning head offices? Is it worth emailing?
Also, how keen should I get with CD aesthetics? I’m guessing people are going to say don’t just write on the front with a CD marker, get a design on the front. But would those home made sticker jobbies do the trick, or are they still a bit amateur?
I’ve been cushy in my weekly gig for so long now I haven’t really pushed myself for more work, but now I’m thinking I should pull my thumb out my ass and get on the case.
Your CDs should have an “audio watermark” saying you dj name. Helps protect anyone nicking em them and looks / sounds a bit more pro. Also your web address if you have one.
have a website and host more mixes on there. Add more mixes, photos from gigs and a bio on there etc
Then hand out physical cds at gigs and with a website you can email people links directly.
Oh shit, fuck sorry man, I completely forgot to phone you. I didn’t wanna call you until I had a proper inspection of them seeing as I knew you were interested. Yeah he’s still got them. I went round there the other day and had a ganders. They are all good, only thing is they got a few chips on them, nothing major. The tone arms are all nice and proper. Everything works fine, one of the lids has a bit of a crack in it so he’s taped it up. Yeah, all good apart from surface chips here and there just from general wear and tear and probably being moved around. If you want pics I’ll ask him to send me some to send you. Or if you wanna have a look you can, what ever you wanna do mate.
Is the CD thing really helping a lot?
This is a serious question because I am trying to find ways to get regular PUBLIC gigs, at all.
Also, how usual is it to actually hand out CDs on gigs? I’ve never seen anyone doing that. And to whom should I give them? The DJ or wait for the club owner to show up?
i used a current residency to pimp myself out a little more. i get more random gigs now. i also have emailed college radio stations (still in school lol), which have ‘promised’ me a gig on their dance music night.
physical cds are always best. not sure what market you are targeting, but labeling even the home printer kind works wonders! i agree with the audio water mark. i think ean golden wrote an article on promoting yourself.
haha… it feels kind of wierd trying to give advice to someone who has a residency… when the only people I play for are my neighbors on the other side of the apartment wall haha.
This might not apply to you specifically, but personally, I’ve been trying to gather a bit of a support by throwing good house parties. Those types of situations are not necessarily about the quality of mixing, its really just about assuring all people involved are having a good time. If you succeed in that, you have gained a bit of a following. hand out cd’s of your mix tapes to those people, or give em a card with a link to your website. When they sober up, they are more than likely going to give it a listen, and hopefully they will both like what they hear, and remember that you were partially, if not entirely responsible for the god time they had the other night.
All that pans out to more of a following overall, which will get your more gigs (theoretically. I could just be a bedroom dj viewing the world through a golden lens).
So what I did was just hang out at bars I liked to DJ in, talked to the staff, talked about DJ’ing. Then I would bring a big crew of my friends. Eventually people will get to know who you are and if your style fits, your in.
I swear you could do it all for next to nothing… and you don’t need any real design skills
Write your dj name in Word and pick a nice font for it. That is your logo sorted.
If you’re feeling fruity, download a free font that is a bit different… google free fonts - there are loads.
Ok, get a facebook page (free)
Myspace (free)
or get a blog (free) - I suggest typepad or wordpress - (blog not cms) - (google em). they are flippin easy to set up
Host your current couple of mixes on Soundcloud (free) and post these on facebook or blog. when your free account runsout archive em on media fire or something and put new ones on soundcloud (rotating them).
You want a proper website with your own domain, it really isn’t dear.
£4.50 per month. It’s easier than you think. there are shitloads of tutorials online. Take you half a day i swear. I’d even help you if you said you wanted to do it. Take me 15 mins to talk you through how to do it.
Business cards here for £4.50:
and you can design em yourself on the website - easy.
Sorry but you can do it all cheap man.
there are so many djs out there unfortunately no one is just gonna hand you gigs unless you put yourself out there a bit.
not sure about the ‘big’ part, but i’ve produced several tunes and released them myself on juno download. and having found the ‘link to buy this track’ on soundcloud i’ve decided to put a couple up with that on.
that should get a bit more awareness up that way round towards my own tracks
and inversely i’ll be putting something up on juno for free with a link to my soundcloud in the description part, so should build more followers toward the dj part, as that’s where i put my mixes now. and who can resist a free track?
(toying with putting the track together using the 2 decks, mixer and couple of samplers paradigm in traktor, something i keep wanting to try but haven’t yet)
putting blogs aside, i think that should help with (re)building my web presence without using a website on both sides of my fence
Yeah, thats nice man. Thats putting yourself out there.
Dont get me wrong, putting yourself about in person is key. But if I’m a promoter and you come up to me in a club and chat to me i’m gonna ask if you got a cd.
If you hand me a cd with a nice label on and your info clearly written - that’s a good first impression.
If I like it, and now i’m considering booking you from all the other many demos i get, I may want to hear more. If you have a web address mentioned on the cd i’ll check it out.
If I can see photos of you playing at other gigs and stuff and hear more mixes that might clinch it…
If I can see you got a few hundred fans on a facebook page or whatever i might think that booking you will bring a few more heads to my gig - which ultimately is all i care about.
dismissing web presence as a way of marketing yourself is insanity
