Top Djs

No is he answer to ure first question.. there playing other peoples music… and the answer you you second question is… they get pay 1000s cau they entertain millions and have to perform at the highest level week in week out and travel all over the world getting hardly any sleep and eating really unhealthy and maybe go weeks without seeing family or friends.

You make it sound so easy… gettting in the top100 doesnt just happen by accident…. its alot of hard work. Its not only technical ability either cau i know djs that are better than alot of people in the top 100 but havent got the confidence to play in front of people

If you think you can be as good as sasha, digweed, armin van burren, richie hawtin, jamie jones, james zabiela….then practise your ass off and get out there.

And lucky. Every single big name DJ has been fantastically lucky, regardless of whether or not they’re any good. There is also the factor of it’s not what you know, but who you know.

I’ll be honest and blunt, it’s somewhat a formula. You need to:

1. Have something unique about you. Guetta was the face people put to electro house. Deadmau5 as well. Tiesto and AvB were the faces people knew of trance. Skrillex for Dubstep.
2. Produce anthems. The guys who end up on every DJ’s playlist are the ones who get noticed and booked more.
3. Be likable and charismatic in some way. You need to look nice for the cameras or have a personality people can jump on with. Doesn’t mean you have to be good looking.
4. Have a marketing powerhouse backing you up. Like it or not, the big names have marketing and PR behind them.

Terry_42, post: 31522, member: 1843 wrote: Like what D-Jam said, especially you do not need to look good, Skrillex, Deadmau5 and Guetta all look like geeks…

The thing however is the above formula does only work to some extend, what you then need to add is:
A LOT of stamina, as this is a really long haul and the chances you ever make it to a place where you get called in line with Guetta, Tiesto and Oakenfold are prolly below 1% even if you have everything that D-Jam writes.
As you have to be in the right place at the right time, meet the right people AND be lucky enough that those people pick you up and talk to you…

I forgot to mention that, but you hit it on the head.

Practically all the “top DJs” have put in 15-20+ years in it all. Carl Cox was playing in the second summer of love back in the late 80s. PvD was already known around Germany in the early 90s rave scene. Oakenfold was going to the Paradise Garage in the 70s and then later playing in England while the Hot Mix 5 were blowing up here in Chicago.

It doesn’t come quickly…if it ever comes.

Kent Sandvik, post: 31552, member: 3967 wrote: One way to get noticed is to jump in on a new musical trend with a longevity factor. You are one of the first and when the style takes of and grows over time, depending if you develop the trend and produce plenty of material, you are definitely noticed. It is of course a must that you enjoy this genre.

Now, jumping in to an existing genre with plentiful of producers and DJs already involved with this, the more unique you are the better. But it’s hard to be unique when most options have been explored…

new trend with longevity i like that….lol it really depends on why your getting into djing… is it for the money or for your love of the tunes… cau if you walked into any bar that plays your kinda or music and gave them a promo and said you play for free then i say would get gigs. 99.999% would say.. im not playing for free….but you wouldnt be… you be getting experience and also the freedom to experiment. Its all about getting fans and getting heard…. you got to think outside the box.

Kent Sandvik, post: 31563, member: 3967 wrote: I guess crappy bars hire any DJ for free but then they go bust anyway due to such decisions.

i knew this would be taken the wrong way….lol i didnt think that one the whole way throu. You have to want it so bad that you are willing to dj for free is a better way to put it then. There are simply thousands and thousands of djs out there…. you gotta think of new ways to approach the market and get heard. Putting on ure own night is actually worst than djing for free…its going to cost you money and alot of it.. but its definely the number one way to get out djing.

Its interesting that you say that Terry, because i think alot of DJ’s are prepared to DJ for free purely because of thier love and passion for music. I think even if you want to make it big it’s all about gaining experience right?

People always seem to say it’s like learning to drive, you only truly start to learn the ways of the road when you actually pass you test, and i think it’s pretty much the same ball part from playing out and getting noticed.

I don’t think people should be so demanding when it comes to getting paid, and i know that i would rather DJ a 100 times for free just for the pure pleasure and goosebumps i get from the music then the dollar in my back pocket. 😉

To do it for free is to be desperate and nobody in the end will take you seriously.
I compare it easily to a friend of mine who is a cook. He has worked his way up from being a fry cook in a sort of diner like place, to a michelin decorated chef of a star restaurant in our town (yes it took him 20 years…). Never has he cooked for free. Yes sometimes he made exhibitions and had expenses that barely came in with what he made, but never did he sell himself off for free.

If you have such a passion and love for music that you want people to hear your stuff, you need to factor in what they think of you. I have yet to see any of the free play DJs who played warmup sets in the clubs I played, to ever make it even into the 9pm to 11pm slot, unless (again) they did it for free again, at which time I would deny to play the slot after them, as the manager is clearly too cheap to hire a real DJ.
You also have to consider the whole business. If you do something for free, people will expect that this service comes with no price tag and hence if enough people would do it, you would ruin the industry as a whole. We had this very bad situation with car repairs in southern Austria. We have a lot of “car heads” there, who had regular jobs and on weekends would fix cars for free (just bring the spare parts…) and even pimp cars for free. Hence in the early 2000s the whole tuning and car repair shop industry here collapsed and several cool tuning companies went down… hence nobody could get spare parts except the from the original car makers, aka no more cheap parts, so even the freebees went out of their “non-business” and nowadays the market is dominated by 2 big franchises that rule pricings… aka the fans of cars actually destroyed their own business and still whine about it today in the clubs there…