How to get your first club gig

never play for free… otherwise you will never get paid

+1 for Maximlee: DON’T play for FREE! Ever …

What’s free has no value and will be perceived as “worth”less.

A possibility is to offer no cure – no pay. This has several advantages: they know upfront what your regular fee is, they know upfront they’ll end up paying you that fee if they like what you do, they can’t tell you that you weren’t good enough (to save them from having to pay you your fee) when they actually thought you were good because then they can’t ask you back for another time and finally they see you as a professional who is confident enough to postpone payment til after the performance, not someone aching/desperate to get a foot in the door by playing for free.

Not sure if it was Sun Tzu or Machiavelli, but it was something along the lines of “show weakness and be taken advantage of”.

Paying for free or drinks sends a wrong message imho.

Greetinx.

I understand what you are saying, I just don’t agree.

I’ve walked away from several DJ gigs because they would not pay me what I asked (this is after I initiated contact and expressed a wish to work somewhere).

Had a friend who went and did what you did. Got in one night to play for free drinks. Was asked to come back a week or two later because the resident was sick. Pay: free. They told him they had doubt after the first time but would give him a second chance. He never became resident there. He filled in for the resident on two more occassions at (what he later learned) was about 60% of what they paid the resident. When he confronted them with it, they told him the resident had been with them longer, had already proven himself, blablabla. My friend had nothing to work with and decided to keep his honor by turning his back on the place. It slowed down his looking for a place by more than 2 months since he was really thinking he could become like a parttime resident at this place.

I have quite a few contacts in the pub/club scene from back in the day. I occassionally talk to these guys and most of them will NOT let people play for free. Reason behind it is: if they are willing to pay for free, how good can they be.

It’s why I recommend no cure no pay. There can be no unclarity about your regular fee and you don’t play for free, you are just willing to take the risk of them/their audience not liking you. At least it will be a one time thing even if they send you packing without getting paid. You will still have worked for free, BUT … they’ll never be able to take advantage of you on subsequent occassions. And if they like you, they’ll have to pay you your free from day 1.

As far as “why would they pay you to play when they already have a paid resident?” goes, they won’t. The thing is though, residents get sick, take leave, have other gigs from time to time. And those are the moments you want to be there doing your no cure no pay thing.

It’s all personal choice of course and if you feel it’s working for you, by all means stick with it. If I were coaching you though, this would not be in the program 🙂 .

Greetinx.

Playing for free is not a foot in the door. Playing for free only shows the promoter/manager/venue owner that you are desperate and he can rip you off for quite some time and while he may pay you sometime in the future it will always be less than you could make and he will never respect you.

Sad honest truth about our job….

Also never lie. Tell him you are starting out, you are able to cut him a discount as he is taking a risk, but that your usual fee will be higher. Also tell him that though it is your first time you are confident in your abilities and are able to show reference and mix tapes to prove it or are willing to give him a 15min audition. Stay truthful and professional. Always be calm, honest, humble but stay true to your goal and also demand him to be professional and treat you with respect. This way you will get accepted… and this is the way, not playing for free and having no value after that…

Maybe instead of tell them flat out ” I Play for free!!!”, you could approach it differently, when I was first started I approached a “DJ Community” around my local area, instead going straight to the club manager/owner, if you make a good connection to these “DJ Community”, more than likely if they have a show at the club they will ask you to participated not for a free per-se, but with “sharing profit”. Of course most of the times, I did not get any % at all from these “sharing profit” but you make a good connection with the “DJ Community” and the club manager/owner that you just had your show

By all means its a long due process, it took me around 3-4 years, until finally this year it start to pays off, these “DJ Community” start asking me to go on the tour with their first-line-up DJ’s, in different cities, with a flat-rate plus plane tickets and accommodation, I finally can enjoy my DJ Rock Star Syndrome, lol

Playing for free when you’re starting out is not a totally bad thing. It’s good for starting DJ’s because it gets your foot in the door. It exposes you to people and other potential gigs. There is a way to go about playing free though. It should be kept confidential between you and the person that is hiring you. You don’t want the world to know you’re DJ’ing for free. Your “free” beginning gigs should be used as a stepping stool to your paid gigs.

Chuck is absolutely right, now let me spice it up with a story of mine…

I was resident DJ in a very big club mainfloor for roughly 800 people. They had a second floor for more independent music still about 200 people and a tiny chillout lounge thing for about 100 peeps.

Now as the chillout lounge was on the backburner (how many party people want to chill out when the party is raving anyways…) it was the testing ground for younger DJs… sometime there were so many new DJs asking for a spot that they started to play for free… so the whole lounge was now a freebie thing for the owner and never got any upgrades in PA or lights and had the worst waiters… (funny all dudes since the hot girls were serving in the mainfloors).

Zap a year later the deal was even worse (yes there is a worse to playing for free!): If you wanted to DJ in the lounge area (they then called it DJ audition floor) you actually could play any music now but you had to PAY 200 bucks to DJ there. Now there was an official count taken how many people visited the lounge on your set (yeah right?) and you got back 3 bucks per visitor. So you needed roughly 70 people to show up (or to make the counter say that) to play for free or else you would pay money… how sad is that. But it gets worse, they even put up a tiny fridge behind the DJ booth, so you could bring your own booze since drinks are not free in the lounge area…

Now would you like to know in the 3 years I have DJed there how many of those DJs made it to the mainfloor? -> ZERO.

How many made it to the second floor? -> ZERO

How many of those lounge DJs did I ever encounter again in any club or any agency I worked for? -> ZERO

And for reference mainfloor DJs earned 1000+ per night plus expenses…

Now do not get me wrong if you are a hobby DJ and you do not need the money, then by all means playing for free can be a fun thing. But if you want to go professional or at least earn some side money to your normal profession, then playing for free will get you nowhere… I know the above example is one of the worst and things can go different, but in my 20+ years of experience I have yet to come by anyone in the business who started for free that made it up at least to my level (and I am by all means no high level big name DJ)