My first show as a promoter - DatA in Edmonton, tons of pics inside!
I’ve been DJing a residency with a group of friends for the past 5 months and we just threw our first show as promoters (promoters in the sense that we booked an artist for a show). We brought in DatA from France and the show was absolutely killer, here are some (well, many) pics:
Seems like it was a blast Miyuru!
NICE!
Nice! I have a quick question on bringing in DJs from other countries - what do promotors usually pay for the artist?
I’m assuming they pay for flight tix + somewhere to stay but I really don’t know, plus that sounds kinda expensive? Or not? Or yes? Or borkdf?
Nice pics! Seems like a great night!
The club seems like a pretty cool place, arcade cabinet and all 
dude..love data
Nice picks, nice party!
Thank you for the kind words, everyone! I really have to admit, working for YOURSELF and promoting your own parties is definitely the way to go once you’ve met all the right people. You can do whatever you want, however you want, and it helps if you have a ton of friends as it makes promoting a lot easier. I almost think we should have a forum just for promotions so we can share ideas on how to get parties hoppin’.
The way it works is you contact the booking agent for the artist and negotiate a deal. Once the contract is written up, both parties will sign and you’re golden (well, unless you have problems like delayed/missed connections, or problems with customs…).
Anyway the standard seems to be a fee for the artist to play the show him or herself, plus a hotel for one night and flights. The artist will probably be on a tour and not just playing your city, so you’ll probably pay a flight share which means (I’m assuming here) the agent figures out the total flight costs for the whole tour and splits them between all the promoters in each city. This evens things out as DatA flew in from Paris for the NA tour, but it would be unfair to make me pay for that whole flight since we were the first NA show.
As well you’ll have to cover the rider, which is everything the artist expects to have. The tech. rider is just the gear they’d like to play on, i.e. 2xCDJ1000 and a DJM-800, etc. They’ll have another rider that will say things like I want vodka and beer and snacks in the green room etc. Riders are usually very standard and are really loose. Plus when you actually meet the artist as long as you keep him happy everything is usually good.
All in all, if you want to be successful you need to crunch all the numbers beforehand to find a ticket price that will work for the show. I’m not going to talk about my show, but let’s say for example your total costs are $3000 and the club’s capacity is 500. To err on the safe side, let’s say you know you could get at least 250 people, so you could make that your break even point. Doing the math, $3000/250= $12/ticket. Then 250 would be the magic number that you have to beat, with a $12 ticket. The show’s success really depends on your promoting power:
-How effective is your poster?
-Is it all over the city? Are you checking on your posters daily to make sure they didn’t get covered up?
-How many promoters are on your team reaching out to people?
-What selling tactics are you using? I would always sell to groups of people as individuals will never buy an advance ticket as they don’t know if their friends are coming or not. I sold +50 tickets on my own doing this, and I would also drive the tickets to the people. It helps I only work 2 nights/week during summer haha.
-What other tools are you using? Facebook is central to everything with an event page and such.
-Is the venue on your side? For example, our venue is part of a very powerful chain and there were even radio ads for our show (that’s what people told me!). They also helped out with the booze on the rider etc.
All in all there’s a lot to it, if you want any specific advice feel free to message me. As you can see, the actual DJ aspect is rather minimal when you’re throwing a show, but to the crowd, it’s super important.
awesome pics holmes. looks like you really brought out the people and showed em a time. big ups to edmonton!
Thanks, that’s dope that you’re in Van! Add me to Facebook and let’s get it poppin’ over the whole of Western Canada!
wow! dope party! If I’m ever in Vancouver I need to hit up one of your shows!
You mean Edmonton 
word, added you- holla!