How To Book a Gig In a City With Different Musical Tastes

Hey DJcRave. Try and negotiate a deal were you name a reasonable price to play and the bar or club profits from alcohol sales. tell them you’ll promote it yourself and get flyers made up and hand them out at the colleges a few weeks in advance. Make sure you have a link to some of your mixes on your flyers so people can check out your work leading up to the gig and even hand out some mix cd’s. Those that like your style of play will spread the word on your behalf. Advertise your gig on your social network sites aswell. Its a bit of work to land a gig i know but if you pull a good crowd and the bar makes alot of money from sales, you can be sure they’ll ask you back.
Thats how alot of dj’s operate where im from.
Just my 2cents

The Black Rag, post: 35802, member: 7330 wrote: What if,to spite the fact that you know that there is a scene for your music style in the entire country,there doesn’t seem to be a scene for the type of music you do in your city.Any advice for guys like me who no matter what just can’t seem to locate the scene for they’re music style,no matter how hard they try.And pleas don’t give the awnser”You’re friends are your scene” as i don’t make friends and don’t have friends,i have A Friend and everyone else is acquaintances at best.

Hit the street and meet the people! Is there a hostel in your town with a bar? A college/university with predominantly student housing around it?
Go to where the people are partying and talk to them. Become a regular at a venue that you want to play in and get to know the staff. If there’s no scene in your town for your genre yet, create one! Put on a monthly party with your one friend and a few acquaintances that like to party to the music you’re into. All it takes are a few people who are also tired of the absence of your preferred genre of music in town. There’s a good article on the site about it. Getting your first gig or something like that from the free email series possibly.
It will be slow for the first few months, but you can start to syphon the party people from the other, more common parties. The club night regulars who are possibly tired of the generic tunes, but know of no other place to hear something different. If you have a good sound and stick with it, you will eventually find yourself hosting your own event, inviting other Djs to come perform! It all starts with hitting the street and meeting the people!

I’m not very experienced on this but this is what I would do if I was in your case. Living in a smaller town of 100k people I’d take some gigs just to get some DJing experience under my belt, even if it’s not my style (can’t help to learn other stuff too). After that, if you’re really serious about DJing you may have to move to another city unless you’re okay with driving that much. It’s the same as getting a job, sometimes you have to leave home and start somewhere new.

The Black Rag, post: 35840, member: 7330 wrote: I live in my countries second biggest city,what makes it worse is that my city is hailed as the cultural center of my country.There’s so many colleges and everything and it’s full of young people,yet they all act like their parents did back in the 50’s,literally,music over here seems to have stoped it’s development about 60 some years ago.

You’re from Serbia right? In Croatia those islands are already developing into one of the premier international party spots. Maybe take a few trips there to find gigs? It’s easy to find excuses as to why something won’t work. What genre of music is it that you want to play? You mentioned that the parties that you did host cleared out in a few minutes…tune in your selection of who to invite to the next one.