[Is mise le key]

Originally Posted by jonnny68

and...

And the Dublin's ravers holy grail in the 90's the Schott bomber jacket




sorry ive gone off topic here

Na jonny wouldnt have been my attire now.......i was going with the full on scumbag 3/4 length leather jacket with indigo 501's & air max

[cipher_neo]

been thinking about starting up my own night and am following this thread, hopefully some good ideas pop up.

Seems to me that the best way to promote a night is to bring in a big name DJ. That always seems to pull a good crowd...

now if I could just find Nic Fanciulli's moblie number... I had it here somewhere

[Logical Fallacy]

Okay, so i've been promoting various nights for under a year, so am still fairly new to the game but i have learned many things.

1) Find a good venue you can work with. This can be hit and miss. I wouldn't really rate the business practices of many of the venues i have worked with. Some have been okay, some have been brutal. Where i am now i really like, they understand we are starting something new and a regular crowd will take a while to build up...they are helping to promote and are really helpful and quick to make changes to whatever we need altered on the night.

2) Double check EVERYTHING. I now get to the venue at least an hour before the night is due to start so i can check the decks, the mixer, the sound system etc. I've had every kind of **** go wrong, from venues promising me sound systems and decks and showing up and there being nothing in the room (big respect here to the Audio Terrorists for being my go to guys when i need a sound system ) to be told that the monitors went 2 weeks ago but only on the night itself. Be happy with where you are, but don't have too much faith. Expecting bad **** to happens means you will be prepared to fix it.

3) Flyers, they do help. Drop them into the local vinyl shops (I've never had the lads in All City, City Discs or Spindizzy say no when i asked could i leave in flyers).

4) Record the sets. The surefire way to show people they music being played will be music that they like is to record it. I'm pretty sure that my night is the only night in Dublin being broadcast live as it happens and i'm not sure why but it seems like a good idea to me.

5) A bit of variety is nice i reckon. Last weeks night was dubby styles, the next one is Jungle, after that will be a garage night. Mix **** up a bit and keep things interesting.

5) Respect your DJ's - I am eternally grate full to all the DJ's who have given there time and hard learned skills to play a Stomp set and try and make sure i convey this to them on the night, i genuinely appreciate the fact that these folk would take the time out to play a set for me. So big ups to Exec Steve, Welfare, Bonz, DJ Class A, Gandalf, Siriken, SubOne and CJ Fitz, Modok, Zyme,Tom Lann,M.B Glitchcore and Colz. And in advance to Don Rosco and BeatNik.

[electrogrimey]

Ok, I'll have a go sharing what I've learned too.

1) Unfortunately, Facebook is a bit part of promotion. Two handy things: 1) make a friend list of your friends for promo. This way you can go filters - promo list - invite all to anything you're inviting people to. It also means you can leave out anyone abroad, or your granny etc. 2) This code selects all on an invite list. Pop in into the address bar and hit enter. Use it wisely.

javascript:elms=document.getElementById('friends').getElementsByTagName('li');for(var fid in elms){if(typeof elms[fid] === 'object'){fs.click(elms[fid]);}}

2) The launch is definitely important. In my experience, (although not always) unless a night kicks off well, it's not going to go well. The usual thing is to get every DJ in Dublin to play the launch, so they all promote it for you. That's a bit gammy though.

3) Try and half more than one 'area' on the night - i.e., if someone doesn't like hardcore breaks, they have somewhere to go other than the hardcore breaks room, they could try the uplifting piano house room for example.

4) Be smart about the deal you make with the venue about how much bar take/door take you get. Don't rip yourself off.

5) Do not ever start booking acts/DJs just because you think they'll bring people. Once you start doing that it's over.

6) Sort out a decent monitor system etc if the venue doesn't have one, even if that means bringing speakers from home. DJs aren't gonna have good things to say if they didn't have a good time DJing your night.

[Hamiltonion]

@ Grimey, it was a one time spike but we used it for our launch night with the idea of actually getting people in the door and those who liked what they saw would become regulars. It worked well at 1st but our night had somewhat of an identity crisis which slowly killed it off. Too many chefs...

[electrogrimey]

Originally Posted by Hamiltonion

@ Grimey, it was a one time spike but we used it for our launch night with the idea of actually getting people in the door and those who liked what they saw would become regulars. It worked well at 1st but our night had somewhat of an identity crisis which slowly killed it off. Too many chefs...

What went wrong? Saying what not to do is just as good advice as what to do.

[jonnny68]

Originally Posted by Is mise le key

Na jonny wouldnt have been my attire now.......i was going with the full on scumbag 3/4 length leather jacket with indigo 501's & air max

urgghhh jaysus no way would i have been wearing that

[Hamiltonion]

Well I'd say the other lads would say different but IMO it was a combination of being in a niche venue, albeit of a very high standard, on the wrong side of the city, and sticking to proper house and electro when ideally it should have been more accessible, ie some indie rock and accessible electro. Granted it was meant to be a serious music night, but it was still midweek.

We tried things like art installations but they were badly planned and too sporadic.

Also we had stiff competition for the same small market from Wax and Antics at the time.

Long story short its become far more difficult to draw an audience in the past two years alone

[seannash]

Ive always wanted to do a night where the dj isnt announced until your in the club and he walks into the dj booth.

You'd need to make it a genre specific night though but can you imagine the buzz if you got a really really good dj for the first mystery gig.

The word would spread like wildfire about the night and anyone who was there will kinda feel like they stumbled upon a secret party.

The whole unknown element would drive the whole thing,you actually have to turn up to find out who was playing and as such the quality of the night would actually dictate whether its a success or not.

Im sure its been done before but i reckon it would still work

[Is mise le key]

Originally Posted by seannash

The whole unknown element would drive the whole thing,you actually have to turn up to find out who was playing and as such the quality of the night would actually dictate whether its a success or not.

Im sure its been done before but i reckon it would still work

All sounds very oldskool to me sean, if it aint broke dont fix it

[seannash]

Originally Posted by Is mise le key

All sounds very oldskool to me sean, if it aint broke dont fix it

Ah no,oldskool was still promoted.
If there was a big name dj coming over it was promoted(were not talking about illegal raves here)

My way would be to have big name djs(not stadium fillers but good well known djs) but dont ever mention who it is right til the last second.

The whole night would be a surprise.Its very risky though

I know what your getting at but you cant simply return to the oldskool way and ignore facebook or online promotions.

[Is mise le key]

Heres something you can do, it wont have punters flocking through the doors guaranteed every week but can have the name of your website popping up in front of people on their PC's etc,

I have MP3's that have embedded into them the names of websites they originated from but i didnt get them from there, see below example of a tune on my PC,





The way to do this is when at window showing your MP3's right click & select properties, then you will see a tab that says summary which will display all these editable options,





Now i just done this one as an example but anyone that has a BLOG or Web site can put their web into the summary of the MP3 & whoever ends up listening to it will see the embedded info in their media player like below,





Windows media player will scroll through all the info embedded into a file but even when being viewed it is visible,







If someone digs a mix you put up on soundcloud & see the website address they will log on to see if there is any more of what they just heard & in doing so will see your latest gigs. Even if someone downloads your mix/file & re ups it to another site, unless they actually go in & edit the summary it will remain with your file. Also if its copied to CD's or one ipod to another etc the info is carried with the file.

[Executive Steve]

Originally Posted by electrogrimey

4) Be smart about the deal you make with the venue about how much bar take/door take you get. Don't rip yourself off.

Have someone at the door to count how many people pay in and to keep an eye on the bouncers.

We moved to a venue a good few years ago and were instantly wondering why bugger all people had followed what until then had been a reasonably successful up and coming night across the city; one night was standing out having a cheeky little memory stick when I noticed the bouncers turning away two big groups of people saying "Ah no lads, there's Drum & Bass on down there"

[electrogrimey]

Originally Posted by seannash

Ah no,oldskool was still promoted.
If there was a big name dj coming over it was promoted(were not talking about illegal raves here)

My way would be to have big name djs(not stadium fillers but good well known djs) but dont ever mention who it is right til the last second.

The whole night would be a surprise.Its very risky though

I know what your getting at but you cant simply return to the oldskool way and ignore facebook or online promotions.

That could work for another reason too, it'd be a lot easier to book DJs for a secret gig, as you could skip agents etc as it'd have nothing to do with public image, I'd say you'd get around a lot of red tape doing that.

[jtsuited]

Originally Posted by electrogrimey

as you could skip agents etc as it'd have nothing to do with public image

?????????