Promotion 101

Because it came up, here's -


How to Throw a Successful Event - the MINIMUMS:

The goals:
- Make everyone feel like everyone *else* is going.
- Make everyone feel like everyone else *went*.
- Make everyone who is going like they want to bring their friends.
- Make everyone who went feel like they want to come next time.

The Basics:

1. FILL A NEED. If there's a million [genre] nights already, don't bother. Don't throw an event for the sake of throwing an event!
2. VENUE, VENUE, VENUE. If your venue is amateurish, your crowd will feel the same about your night. If your sound system sucks, you do not have a product. Venue is part of your creative vision, and it MATTERS.
3. DON'T COMPETE. If there's a [genre] night on that night, don't bother. Even if you can out-do them quickly enough, it's bad business.
4. It's 2011 - PROMOTION IS ONLINE. If you have a flyer design, you have a website. GoDaddy is cheap. HTML is taught in highschool. Figure it out.

How to promote:
1. Set up email account for the night.
2. Collect a spam list. Rape, pillage, and plunder your own inbox if you must. See spam suggestions, below.
3. Set up a google calendar for the event, and promote/share the hell out of it.
4. Spam the hell out of your website on online venues - Facebook, and to a lesser degree Myspace are a prerequisite. Have a page for the night AND file calendar events for EACH night.
5. Make friends with other event coordinators & promoters. Allow them to promote to your audience THROUGH YOU (ie, don't give away your spam list, but promote for them in exchange for their promotions to their audience.
6. Seriously, if you can't put a facebook event up, don't bother.
7. PUBLICLY THANK PEOPLE FOR MAKING YOUR FIRST NIGHT A SUCCESS (even if it was an utter failure...)

How to (properly) spam-promote:
1. DO NOT CC: YOUR SPAM LIST - BCC: ONLY. (Basic promotional spam rule #1).
2. Get 3x the number of legitimate email addresses than you hope to have show up for the opening night. If you don't have this, you better have an amazing street team.
3. Include all relevant details. (Seems common sense, right?)
4. Genre and suggested dress code are BOTH relevant details.
5. It's 2011 - link location to google maps.
6. It's 2011 - link to your DJs websites and SoundCloud pages.
7. Allow - and respect! - unsubscribe requests.


Street Team:
1. Street promoters work best with incentives. Have a small bit of whitespace on each flyer. Tell each promoter to write their promoter number (you assign) on each flyer. Give a significant discount to people who bring the flyer in. Count flyers from each promoter - and incentivize your top promoters (free drinks, give them a guest list, etc.).
2. Pound into their heads: WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST. Women bring their boyfriends. Men don't bring their girlfriends. College kids bring their entire clique. BOOBIES SELL.
3. (advanced) Include a promoter ID value on website links to the event. Monitor hit counts to that ID.

The Wub-Wub Monster Eats Rebecca Black

If we do this enough to the shit we're being forcefully spoonfed by die musik wehrmacht... well, it won't be the egyptian revolution, but at least we'll have made our disgusted message clear.

Words I Never Said

Goddamn, Lupe Fiasco's album may just have been worth the forever wait:

Oh no, I know a dirty word...

Another in the "I really, really wouldn't have thought..." pile for dubstep remixes -

Where is my mind?

If you'd have told me, Pixies, dubstep... I would have responded with an emphatic NO, JUST... NO.

But still, there is this:

For you Cure fans out there... new Crystal Castles - Not In Love, ft. Robert Smith...



...begging for a remix with an epic bassline to fill out the screechy synths flooding the top end, but you can really see this becoming a huge track...

I suppose I've never really been a 'purist' dj. I mean, I prefer to spin vinyl but if -you- wanted to rock CDs or virtual dj'ing, I frankly could care less what your preferred tools are so long as you get the job done.

It's true that the dancefloor cares about a few things. (Dance) Music should (usually) be beatmatched. Music should be played from a suitable quality recording. Music should also be appropriate to the event. What the dancefloor doesn't really care about is HOW you accomplish those goals... which is where I'm struggling to see why some DJs are so vehemently luddite when it comes to virtual DJ systems or even hardware DJ gear.

I don't see a single reason why I should spend time beatmatching tracks if software can do it better and faster - and allow for seamless loops and hotcue points in the track that allow me to -remix- rather than just mix tracks. I fail to see how it's "cheating" or somehow a lesser-quality performance if I use these tools. Drummers play to click tracks, electronic musicians don't manually sync arpeggiators and drum machines - no, that's why there's a MIDI clock signal. I don't see how manual beatmatching - when there are good tools available - makes me a better DJ (though I agree it's a good skill to have for times where the tools are unavailable).

With Traktor - especially the new Kontrol S4 - I'm completely sold on software djing. Due to virtual dj software's capabilities, I am able to create, rather than replay. Not having to worry about clocking and sync'ing tracks (and maintaining that sync) means a lot more time to work with elements of tracks, rather than whole tracks. Loops and samples forming a library of material at my disposal. With full MIDI control out - including clock out - my world is open even further, to include sequencers and actual gear.

I only hope that electronic music hasn't truly waned in popularity... because these recent improvements in capabilities for DJs promise to take the experience to an entirely different, more energetic, more complex level.