Social media that does not eat your week, mixes that get listened to, networking that is not cringe, press pictures, and the ask that gets a gig.
Social media, without losing your week
- One name everywhere. The same handle on Instagram, TikTok, SoundCloud and Mixcloud, and a domain if you can get it. Check it is free before you print anything.
- Two platforms, done properly, beat five done badly. For DJs right now that is Instagram and TikTok, with SoundCloud or Mixcloud as the home for the mixes.
- Post the set, not the selfie. Thirty vertical seconds of a transition with the crowd in shot, captioned with the two track IDs, outperforms everything else you can make.
- A rhythm you can keep. Two posts a week for a year beats twenty in a month and then nothing.
- Reply to every comment for the first year. It is the only growth trick that works.
Mixes people finish
- Thirty to sixty minutes. Nobody streams two hours from an unknown.
- Tracklist in the description, always. It is how people find you from a track they searched.
- A title that says what it is — *Deep house, warm-up, September* — not a pun.
- Cover art that is a photo of you or the night. Stock waveforms say nothing.
- Send each mix to five people who might play it: a radio show, a podcast series, a promoter, a DJ you like, a friend who talks.
Networking
Go to the nights you want to play. Every week, not once. Stand near the booth, not at it. Talk to the promoter at the end of the night when they are relaxed, not the start when they are stressed, and talk about *their* night. Support other DJs' gigs and they will support yours; the scene is smaller than it looks. Open decks (see the appendix) are where the promoters who book warm-ups actually hear people.
Press pictures and a bio
- Three pictures: one landscape, one portrait, one square. Taken by someone who can light a face, in a place that looks like where you play. No sunglasses indoors, no logo on the wall, no wedding photographer poses.
- Deliver them at full resolution *and* at 2000 px on the long side, in a shared folder with the link in your bio.
- A bio in three lengths: one line, fifty words, two hundred words. Written in the third person, present tense, with no adjectives about your own passion. What you play, where you have played, what you have released.
- All of it — bio, pictures, three mixes, contact — on one page. That page is your press kit. A PDF is fine; a website is better.
Getting gigs
- Ask for the warm-up. It is the set nobody wants and everybody needs filled, and playing it well is how you get the next one.
- Send one message: who you are in a sentence, the night you are asking about and why you fit it, one mix link, the press-kit link. Nothing attached. Nothing longer.
- Follow up once, ten days later. Then leave it.
- On money: the first gigs are free or drinks. Take them, play them like they are paid, and after three, ask for a fee. Have a number ready before they ask.
- Never pay to play. That is not a gig, it is a ticket.
Do this now
Pick your handle, set up the two platforms, and post the best transition from your class 8 recording with the track IDs. Write the three bios. Send one mix to five people.