If you’re talking that sort of money, you can either get someone famous, or someone talented.
The question is, do you want to give your audience a fantastic musical experience, or do you just want to draw people in with a big name? They’ll be more likely to come back for future events if you do the former.
I speak from experience here; one of the venues I work at has “famous” headliners every week (DJs, not pop artists), people like Oliver Lang, Brandon Block, Foamo, Jonathan Ulysses etc. And unfortunately, they just play track A into track B and it just sounds like EVERY OTHER DJ out there. To me, it’s boring and does the audience a disservice; if I was booking DJs for an event I’d want people like Moldover or Bass Kleph, people who can do live work and give the audience a completely unique performance; something they can’t get just by listening to the latest Ministry of Sound album.
Personally, me, Patch and a couple of others would be happy to split £6k between us for an hours’ set each
Well in Australia a ‘Standard’ set length is usually 90 minutes, that said a decent promoter will negotiate a longer set time… Although you do see a lot of 90 minute headline shows in clubs.
That even goes for guys like Digweed, Sasha etc..
There was a huge shitstorm a few months back when Digweed was advertised as playing an ‘Extended’ set and it only ended up being two hours..
Yeah I wouldn’t discuss it on here, but if you’re UK based, upcoming grime/urban artists are quite cheap and eager to do the club scene (for example, Stylo G) and other hip hop legends like Grandmaster Flash and Jazzy Jeff aren’t too much of a stretch either.
Best option, do some market research, find what people want that you can afford, get yourself an established promoter to sort out the nitty gritty so you can carry on doing your own work.
You could always use that money and make your own celebrities, that way the club will get a rep as a stepping stone, a major player in who hits the big time next, which in turn will create more revenue, and if you have any talented DJ friends that could rock the big time, you’d be doing them a solid that they could return later down the line.
Behind the scenes business is always where the money is, but what do I know.
USUALLY, yes. People at that level start to feel like they have nothing to prove, and get lazy.
It’s not my place to make a judgement on that one way or another; what I CAN tell you, however, is that I put a lot more effort into what I do than I’ve seen them do (with the possible exception of Brandon Block; he actually spent time with the headphones on, checking phrasing and key matching).
But my point stands; these headliners - compared to someone like Dirty Secretz, who did a completely live Twitch/F1 set from stems - command a price premium and don’t offer anything MUSICALLY above and beyond what any other DJ who can beatmatch (or use sync effectively) can offer.
Why DON’T you? If you can’t see that it takes more skill for a “producer” DJ (as you put it) to perform a track live than it does to just blend two tracks together for 30s, then there’s no point in even discussing it with you.
And just to clarify, we’re not talking about me here, we’re talking about booking headline acts.
Again, your thinking skill and doing lots on various hardware surfaces/software makes for an entertaining performance. Have you ever listened to a real house DJ like knuckles or Vega and heard how they blend and flow in and out different tracks, build up and drop moods in a set? i suspect not.
you’re like a stuck record - sorry, glitched mp3. you simply cant see that there are other aspect to Djing and performance that mashing the shit out of multiple stems and FX. Its about the CROWD not YOU!
And before you get on your “oh you’re just a prehistoric DJ” etc etc - i use a Z2, X1, Ableton, Various other controllers as i see fit as well as native vinyl and 1210’s . but I use them when needed - NOT ALL THE TIME!!!
And yes, its about booking top flight DJ’s - who do you honestly think is goign to be a better bet for a promoter, not you, a PROMOTER. A well known DJ that can bring a crowd or a navel gazing button masher?
