Understanding DJ Rates 💰

00:00: Determining Your Worth: Understanding DJ Rates
18:54: Avoiding Undercutting: Finding Your Place in the Market
29:28: Weekday vs. Weekend Gigs: Adjusting Your Rates
37:09: Holiday Gigs and Big Event Nights: Maximizing Your Pay
39:06: Setting Rates and Negotiating with Venues
42:32: The Pitfalls of Undercutting and Fair Pricing
49:01: The Role of the Top DJ in the Market
55:03: Challenges of Listening to Music for Enjoyment
01:04:06: Strategies for Finding Balance
01:09:05: Building Relationships and Collaborating within the DJ Community

Transcript

0:01

What's up guys, welcome to the 156th episode of the Grow My DJ Business podcast brought to you by Digital Music Pool and the Grow My DJ Business Discord. My name is Kareem. Gary W here. Welcome, Gar. We're finally back on a little bit of a pace here where we have weekly recordings. I think we'd like to, in a perfect world, get three out a month, maybe four, as we get back to the fall. But let's keep it rolling. Yeah, we've done two in May, two in June. We're going to get three out here in July, which is shocking with vacation and summer and all that stuff. think the same thing, hopefully with August. I know you're away a little bit. Maybe we'll have a special guest, Parari on big shout to priority for always stepping up and stepping in maybe Angela the kid because he's got some big. We're definitely due for some guests. think it's time to start bringing some people back. we'll probably see that during the fall when everybody's workflow kind of comes back to the market and gets back on more of a stable, in a stable fashion. schedule this summer is like insanity. I wear the where are the cream summer tour t -shirts I've been waiting for them I really wanted one I'm pissed I don't know if they're good enough yet. mean, yeah, it's mid July. We got to, that's it. It's over. The artist dilemma. Like, I don't know. Are my gigs big enough to even do that? I don't think they are. How many different cities are you playing I don't know, this summer, probably like 10 states. 10 states, yeah, mean that's considered a tour to me, I don't know. Even though like, of course it does. Even if it's just tongue in cheek cream summer tour, like it's still notable, it's still fun, it's still something cool to put out. We all talk about, we gotta put out content, we gotta put out all this stuff. Like, this is your opportunity to produce artwork and put merch out. We haven't seen, I'm gonna. We haven't seen a high quality DJ cream shirt since the cream team when you were trying to make it at DJ's mad long ago, which is a legendary, legendary tank. logo and made it a Cream Team logo, which was pretty fire. Yeah, it was great. So we haven't seen anything notable since then. I think that's like 12 years. You lost your hunger. You lost your hunger. You lost your hunger, Kren. Call up DJ9, tell him to create something Shout out to Nine, I can't complain about traveling when you look at Nine's fucking tour schedule, For real, for real. He's all over the joint with Paulie, kind of funny. So we predicted something that was announced this week. It was announced that the Afterlife Party will be at the Sphere, New Year's Eve. We did not say it was gonna be New Year's Eve, but we predicted that probably one of the first parties was going to be an Afterlife Party, and I think they picked the correct DJ for it. And I was a little shocked, to be honest. I was shocked that they didn't go for a more Las Vegas -based international DJ, if that makes sense. Las Vegas style, more mainstream. More mainstream, you you're Calvins, you're Getas like we said, but I think this makes the most sense for the space. So I'm actually a little shocked. I'm gonna disagree, I wasn't shocked and I think the main reason is when they bring various acts through, they wanna showcase the sphere in the best possible way. So how do you do that? You take the artist and the party that's creating the most visually cool, you know, extensive experience to fans and right now, that Afterlife stuff I would say is probably in the top one, two or three, right? So to me it makes perfect sense because it showcases It's going to be an unbelievable experience. People are going to be excited about it. And hopefully it sells out and starts this, you know, creates an open door for more EDM performances to come through I didn't, I just learned about the haptic seating that they have in there. I didn't know that this was a thing. 10 ,000 seats in the sphere are haptic, meaning they, like, are part of the experience, whether it's vibrating or moving or whatever it might be. I just learned about this. It was, it wound up being a meme on, on one of my Grateful Dead pages because somebody was like, I didn't realize this was happening. I couldn't even sit down the entire time because it was fucking me up so bad. So somebody... somebody who just like put through a meme out there like, it's like I couldn't sit for six hours because this damn seat was moving. I guess not comfortable, not comfortable for everybody. But not to say that I don't think anybody's gonna be sitting down for the, for the afterlife party. So super dope. I, that's going to be awesome. If I wasn't DJing, I would definitely try to go to that because that would be memorable and just a complete experience. Yeah, I wonder what pricing and stuff looks like for that. You you said experience and I think that's what this is. This is the most immersive cool experience that you can get if you're a fan of EDM or Afterlife or Anima or whoever, you Big shout to whoever is doing the bookings for MSG, especially with the EDM acts recently. They really have their hand or their finger on the pulse with what the popular thing is right now. Black Coffee having that really great show out in MSG that looked amazing. John Summit just recently, which looked great. A lot of great feedback out of that. And I just feel like they have their finger on it as to what to put in MSG right now. And now it's going to look like it's translating over to sphere. So really cool. Awesome. Yeah. If anybody's heading out there for that, please let us know. We'd love to hear about it. Love to get some feedback once the show happens. I know it's a ways out, All right, Gar. We're gonna open a can of worms with the first topic here. We're gonna talk right now about DJ rates. And it's something that was probably the most requested thing for us to discuss on the podcast. And I think Garry and I have sort of shied away from it because it's really hard to talk about DJ rates. Every market's a little different. The dollar amounts are a little different. And what Garry and I say about rates, maybe makes the most sense for us, but maybe it doesn't make the most sense for someone else who's on the West Coast or in another country or whatever. So we're to do our best with this conversation to keep it really broad. We're not going to talk exact numbers and we're really going to talk more about how to figure out what that dollar amount is in your market and figure out where you fit in and the spectrum of the range of money that gets paid to DJs in your market. I think that's the best way that we can attack this. Yeah, even though we're not gonna talk numbers specifically, we are going to set you up with the information to think about and the information that you need to have in order to gauge what those numbers need to be in each individual venue that you're going to walk into because not every venue is going to have, you're not going to have the same rate until you hit a certain level, which we will then talk about as But yeah, mean, everybody's tolerance for DJ money is different. And everybody's situation for work is different. So it's really hard to talk about this. I'm sure people are gonna hate on whatever clips we put out from this podcast and that's okay. But so, all right, so let's get into this. What would you say is the first thing that we can talk about or start thinking about as a DJ that's trying to figure out what should my price be? self -assessment, know where you fit in the market, right? This is the most important thing that, not just in pricing, but in all aspects of your DJ career. Where do I fit in the market? Where do I sit? And what you need to do there is you need to understand where your talent level is and who is on your talent level and then match that up with other DJs and then go and talk to those DJs and kind of have those hard conversations about what the rate They're not really hard conversations because you're helping each other out at the end of the day and you might be able to pull the rate up, right, for people that are in the same level or at the same level that Yeah, this conversation is happening no matter what level, right? No matter what venue, because it happens for me when I try to figure out an all -in price for a travel gig. Just like when I was, you know, coming up in market trying to figure out, should I accept this booking at this rate, you know? So, Gary's right. Where do you fit in the market, right? Are you a brand new DJ that has barely any experience that... doesn't have a lot of venues in nightlife on your resume, or are you one of the best DJs in the market that's played every venue and people are knocking down your door to get bookings, right? Or are you somewhere in the middle? In most cases, you're probably somewhere in the middle if you're listening to this, right? So like Gary said, sit down, go find those DJ mentors, find those people that have the experience and say, what's the range of pay for DJs for nightlife in our market, no matter what city you're So you can kind of get an idea like, all right, well, most places pay X amount of dollars. This is the middle range. The high end guys for the two hour headline set get this rate. And then the super low end bar gig where you're bringing a controller and like, it's not a real nightlife necessarily. It's just like we want a DJ is probably towards the low end. Figure out what those numbers are and then figure out where you fit on the spectrum, you know? That's the exact way you have to do it. Are you still taking some of those low end gigs, but you're getting a couple of the middle gigs? And then you're somewhere in between there, right? That's gonna be your average. And then the same goes the other way. Are you at the middle gigs and you're getting some of the higher end gigs, like one or two headlining gigs per month? Well that means you haven't built yourself up into a headliner yet. That means you just kinda sit in the middle still. Right. And in most cases, you're not going to be able to pick your number anyway, until you start getting to the high end where people say, well, what's your rate for two hours to headline at this place? In most cases, a booker or promoter or someone's going to go to you and say, hey, I have this opportunity. This is what the pay is. Take it or leave it. So the reason why it's important to know what the spectrum is, is because if someone asks you for something at the low end or below the low end, you probably want to say no, you know? Or, I don't know, maybe you just want to take whatever you get. We'll get into that a little more later. And that's what makes this so difficult because as a new DJ, it's like, I just want to DJ wherever I get the opportunity and I don't care about the This has come up a lot on a lot of different DJ podcasts in the last two weeks. I've been, it's been all over my feed on a, on a few that DJ younger DJs are just taking gigs and that's what's affecting this. That was this very topic, It's easy for me or you who have full calendars and we're DJing a ton of events and making money to say to some young DJ that is really hungry to get into the business or into the market. Well, you took a gig that's $100 less than like the lowest thing and you're messing up the market. But like to that other DJ, they just want to work. You know, how do you handle those situations as a young DJ? Yeah. You, I don't fault those guys. Like you, you were really trying to, you're trying to establish yourself somewhere and you have to start somewhere, right? Yeah. We can tell them all day, go start on Thursday night, right? Like maybe, maybe Thursday nights of the night where you're going to go get in and get in with a venue and try to prove yourself because get down DJ group. I've been hitting them up on Instagram and they've been hitting them up on tick tock and, and, and emailing them and they're not getting back to me. So what am I going to go and do? I'm going to go try to find a night and go DJ. And if, if the place thinks they could take advantage of me and pay me $150, well, I'm going to take that because I don't look at as I'm being taken advantage of. I'm getting a DJ gig. You know, there's, that's the big thing is that a lot of times as a young DJ, you're not getting an opportunity through a group or through a Booker. What you're going to do is take advantage of the slow nights in certain venues and they're going to attack And then that affects the rate. Unfortunately, what will come of that diamond, um, you know, one out of a hundred that, uh, a kid will be excellent off, off jump street, you know, and then, and then the other 99 times the venue's coming back to us, let's say, say, that DJ was terrible, but we had to take an opportunity. had to take this chance in order to try to save a little bit of money. Um, we deal with that not all the time, but we deal with So I don't know what the answer is to that. I can't tell people not to do that because it's just one way to make money if you're just just starting Yeah, I think a good way to sort of gauge this is if someone offers you a specific opportunity, go talk to a DJ friend and be like, hey, this person asked me this. I need some advice. What do you think? Is this fair? Is this right? Is this along with what most DJs are making? Ask me and Gary. Like, you can hit us up too, you know? We can in two seconds tell you if it's something that they're trying to take advantage of you or not. In those cases where people are trying to take advantage, you probably aren't gonna wanna work with them long term anyway. You know what I mean? Because as you grow and you start to understand the market and you start to build a name for yourself, you're gonna look back and say, why the hell did I do that? And why would I wanna work with somebody that's doing that to young DJs kind of Yeah, agreed, agreed. You and I used to, we did this, right? I worked during the week at a venue that I really was trying to like build my name and my relationship with for way less money than what a normal DJ booking should be. But I looked at it like this gets me in the venue two to three times a week before the weekend even starts. Right? So I'll take whatever I can get to build that relationship on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, and then get regular pay on the weekend. And it worked for me. Now, maybe other DJs were pissed. I don't know. Yeah, they definitely would have been pissed at me if they would have known that because I was already headlining. Like I was headlining. didn't, I didn't have to go to work during the week, but I was just, I was a hustler. Like I just wanted to make as much money as possible. Right. I wasn't thinking about that. And this is way before like thinking brand awareness and all this bigger picture stuff way before that was like super, super important. but yeah, those, those, those off nights are, are where those younger guys are going to make it. and make a name for themselves. I'm gonna try to compare something just to give you guys an idea of that, like these conversations and these decisions are gonna happen no matter where you are, right? Last year, I got booked or someone hit me up to book an out of state high end great venue for a rate, an all in rate, which was well above what I make in market. I said yes immediately, right? It was a great opportunity. It was a place I wanted to play at, done. in talking to some other DJs, I realized that I said yes to a rate well below what they would normally pay for other travel DJs. Not well below, but hundreds of dollars below. And one person said to me, man, I wish you asked me about this first because I probably could have got you more money and this sort of messes it up for other people. And I was like, damn, I fucked up. I didn't even think about this. So it happens to everybody, when a new an opportunity is presented to you, what should I have done? I should have went to the DJs that I know that work in that venue in that market and say, yo, this was the offer they just gave me. What do you think about this? And they'll say, oh, well, they offer me$500 more, they offer me $1 ,000 more. And then maybe I could have went back and negotiated a little bit to get the number up. It keeps the number high in that venue for all the other DJs that are working Because I know I'm gonna go there and crush it. So if they get cream for six or seven hundred hours or five hundred hours or however much money for less than this other DJ, why pay this other DJ? So it's bigger than you think, you know? And this, it's the same thing for you guys on some of the local gigs, right? It's the same thing. So do your homework, ask some questions, reach out to some DJs before you blindly say yes to Lean on your connections, We say it all the time. Lean on your connections for everything. And it's especially, if it's pricing, if it's music format in a place that you haven't played yet, whatever it might be, lean on your connections because it's a way to stay safe in this industry. Yeah. All right. So I think we covered like new DJs trying to go and work in places pretty well, right? Communications, number one thing, talk to the DJs that are playing in that room, figure out what the rates are, figure out what's going on before you say yes to something that may be well below what the going rate is. All right, that we covered. Now, mid tier trying to grow into the high tier, I think this is where we can really help people, right? If you're DJing some places in your market and it's like middle of the road, you know, again, we're not going to say numbers, higher than the low end places, maybe you're not the top tier guy, but maybe you're starting to build a name for yourself and people are starting to hit you up about, hey, I want to book you in this place and I want you to come to this state or city and book you. What's a good process there to come up with a number that's higher than what you normally mean, this is really leaning into kind of more your expertise as far as getting out of market and then, you you're getting pulled out This can just be like, I've been playing the places in the middle of road in my market, and I'm going to go play one of the higher end places or I'm getting asked to come play at one of the higher end places. Well, first of all, you need to make more point blank more than you make at the at your like maybe regular middle level place mid to high level place, right? If somebody's coming to ask you to come work, your number automatically goes up, right? You're sought after. So you have to realize that if I'm making, I'm going to put a number just out just as a round number, whatever, right? If I'm making $600 at this place this other place now has come and asked me to go work there, well, it's gotta pull me off the 600 bucks I'd make at this other place, right? At my regular spot, if at my regular spot I'm making $600, well, you want me to come work here, well, I gotta make at least seven, maybe eight, but I also need to talk to, like we said before, to the other people that they're booking to make sure that I'm staying in line with what they're making. If I'm making more than they are, then well, good for me, but at least I know So I think that's my number one rule. Like if you're gonna take me away from a place that I normally play, then you gotta pay me If someone's approaching you to come to play a new venue, it's your opportunity to try and raise your rate. So if you're making a certain amount at one place steadily, if someone says, Hey, I want you to come play at this new venue. What's your rate? I would start a hundred dollars higher than what your highest paid venue is currently that I think that's a good. That's a good start. Now, can you negotiate down to 75 or 50 or 25 even? Sure, if it's somewhere you really want to play. That's why I might even start higher if I can. That's why knowing that information of who else is playing there and what they're making, because if I could start $200 higher, then I had loved it. It's got to be at least a hundred bucks. I feel like it's got to be a hundred dollars. If you're asking me to play, it has to be a hundred bucks. There's I can't negotiate down past that. I get it. There's opportunity and whatnot, but I want to try to take advantage of this situation as much as I can, because once this situation gets past. But once you finalize it, it's hard to go up in a quick Yeah, the places that you're currently playing at, right, are paying you a certain amount of money, you're probably better than what that rate is. Hence, and you're starting to build some momentum and build a name for yourself. So if other people are coming to you, that should be a signal, it's time to raise my rates. And like Gary said, it's got it should be at least $100. If you want to start more, you could always come down. It's a lot harder to go up, like Gary said. If people are coming to hit you up to come play, that's a clear sign. All right, it's time to start asking for more money. If the highest end venues are coming to hit you up, find out what people are getting paid in those places because those places are likely paying in a different bracket than your average, you know, middle of the road venue that has a DJ. I think this constantly goes back to having that communication with the other DJs in the Now, let me throw something else out to you. This is gonna throw a wrench in everything. What if you're a middle of the road DJ, lower DJ, and a higher end place that you really want to get to comes to you and says, hey, I want you to be an opener. I want you to come play an off night, and here's what the rate is. And maybe it's lower than what you get for a standard four hour set, but this is an opportunity for you to break into a venue that you really want to get into. How would you handle this is where understanding your calendar is paramount, right? I think knowing that, okay, let's say in the North Jersey area, Premier Place comes to me, they say, I want you to headline on a Friday night during the summer, right? You know that the rate's going to be lower because, well, this isn't the premier time for North Jersey in the summertime, right? So this is the opportunity, if they're coming at you for a little lower rate, well, it's okay to take the little bit lower rate because you know all of the premier DJs have vacated the area for the vacation spots. So this is a good time to do it, right? Here's a great time to do it. that's a, understand your calendar, understand that you're not undercutting other DJs that you're trying to level up to their level because if you start to undercut the guys, while trying to level up, you will be blackballed immediately. Yeah, I think we're going to get into undercutting here in this conversation. we will get into, but I think you have to understand the calendar, understand where to take those opportunities, and understand if am I undercutting or am I not? And then you can proceed with your decision. Yeah, I think a tactic that I use sometimes if there's a venue that approaches me that I've been wanting to work at, and let's say they make me an offer like, hey, this is the dollar amount, what I would know. And if it's below what I normally do, if it's somewhere that I want to work at, or somewhere that I want to get into, how I will approach is, hey, normally, this is my rate. Can we do that? And if they say no, then I would say All right, here's what I really want to, you I want to come and create a relationship. This is a long term thing for me. This is not a short term, a hundred hours or $150 is not going to make or break me. But I want to create a relationship with you. So I'm willing to do the booking at this price. However, if you like me, if it works out, can we talk about getting my rate up to my normal rate for the next time or for the fall season when things get busy again? So I think that's the the way to approach it if it's somewhere you want to work but they offer you a little less than what you would normally get or what you think you should get kind of Classic DJ cream negotiating tactic. That's what he, this is what he does. Forget down you have to let them know that you're willing to play the set for less than you would normally get. But because you want to create this relationship, and you'll do it, right? But you have to put it on the table that you want to get to your normal rate, and you should put a timeline on it, right? So if you are doing a gig in the summer where it's slower, listen, I'll do this, whatever you guys want. I want to build a relationship. I want to be here in the fall when we're rocking. So if you really like me, if we have a great summer set, can we get to my rate in the summer? Most of the time they'll say, yeah, let's see how it goes. If it goes well, we wanna bring you back, well, what's $100? know, like what's, what is, it's in the grand scheme of things. If you do a great job, they'll give you the money that you Yeah, agreed. So you brought up the calendar. think a good way to think about your calendar is you have your residencies, you have the places you play every single month. You have a couple places that you're really trying to get into. If you got to take a little less money to go play those higher end places once or twice a month, I think that's okay. I think it's okay. Because you're trying to get into those spaces. You're trying to create those relationships. And being in the room and letting the people who are making decisions hear you play is really important. Yeah, because that's really the only way you can grow long term, This is somewhere where I may get killed for, but to me, it's not about the 100 to$200 that I might be losing for this one gig and more about, well, if I do well here, this is like a monthly booking and it's in a venue that I really wanna be in. You know what I mean? happens if that venue, what if that's just what they pay? You know what I mean? Like what if, what if I really want to get into this venue now I'm in this venue and they pay shit or they pay a hundred dollars less than my, my residency that I play that like, kind of gotten bored of. It's still a good gig, but I look at it differently because I play it all the time. Well, this is just a new and shiny toy that I can go play and something that's been on my radar for a long time, but I get there and they're like, well, we only pay this much to X DJ. Right, well, I would say then it's, is this somewhere that is high -end in the market that looks good, maybe you can get photos and videos at, you know, it helps the rundown on the monthly calendar, and you like playing there and it fits your style. If it checks all those boxes, sure, do it. I don't know, I would rather play that set for $100 less than play someplace that I don't like playing and I don't enjoy being for an extra hundred bucks. So it's really on a gig -by -gig basis, I think. I think that's on a person to person basis too, right? Like, yeah. Because some DJs might want to just maximize their dollar amount, right? No matter what the party looks like. And then other DJs want to build a calendar and build a reputation and do it for their brands per Yeah, my decisions even this many years in the game are always relationship based and not dollar based. Now, do the dollars have to be in the the ballpark? Yes, absolutely. But even now, we run our business, right? Get down DJs. We're booking a lot of DJs. I would consider going and playing a place that I would never normally play for way less money than I would ever play if it helped get that venue under the get down umbrella. Right, something. like if me going to play a place will lock in a deal with a venue where we're booking DJs every weekend, I'll do that. A lot of you guys probably don't, you you're not in that situation, but it's something Gary and I talk about all the time. Does this booking make sense to help our business down the line? So you guys can think in the same way. Does this opportunity help DJ, whoever you are down the line, or is this just a one time? I'm doing it for the money thing. I like long -term decisions, not doing it for the money one -time things. Yeah, agreed. So what are other some other factors that can that can affect rate you think in in certain markets and how to think about rates? we talked about the weekend versus weekday. Generally, your weekday pricing, Monday through Thursday, is probably gonna be lower than the weekend. And that's okay, that just is what it is. In our market, it is what it is. Maybe elsewhere it's different, but... So, you know, expect a little less money to work during the week, but that's sort of found money, right? Like, I don't expect to be working on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, really Yeah. When they come up, you take them from what they're worth. They have to still make sense. If you're lugging equipment around or depending on what it might be, it still has to make sense, you know, in terms of the work that goes into the gig. So don't get taken advantage advantage of on those days, but that is found money. You're right. Like there, if that's not a usual night in your market, then you Yeah, it still needs to fit into the range of bookings and dollar amounts that you normally get. If it's below that, I'd rather stay home and lay on the couch or work on music or whatever the case may be. Something that we've started to institute is a base rate. I'm not getting off the couch, or I'm not asking somebody to get off the couch unless you can meet the base rate. So maybe establishing a base rate for yourself on those off days. Actually, if you want to establish a base rate for yourself across the board, that's fine. But I find it always difficult Monday through Thursday, and Sunday is one of those. weird days because they could be very good in your market. They could be off. It depends on the place. It depends on so many different things. So I think, you know, the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday gig, you know, you should have a base rate. I'm not leaving my house unless you're going to give me this much money. It makes it way less gray area when you're trying to negotiate a four hour gig, you know, and you're just like base it off of And one other thing is know the max rate too, because if you throw out a number that's so high, like people are going to laugh at you. If, if, we're booking DJs in a certain range and you're throwing a number that's like two or 300 hours higher than the top of the range, like you're bugging. So again, I just want to throw that out there. That's sort of part of the same conversation of like knowing the range in your market, knowing the range in the particular venue. And the only way you find that out is by talking to the DJs that are playing I think we're thinking about that. Do you think about percentage too? Like what, like, okay, if I'm going to overshoot a little bit, like what, what's the percentage that I'm over overshooting by? Because I feel like when, if you own a business and somebody's crunching numbers and that's where this number might be coming from, they're thinking about this with, within percentages. It's like, okay, well I can get this DJ for 20 % less. Why would I go with you? Like that's a big percentage. I know it's something that we never even talked about. I don't really think about percentages. I'm usually thinking about the dollar amount and how much over the rate I would normally ask for kind of Do you think that venues think about it in percentages? I don't in most cases, I don't It's just something I thought of because it's like, well, if I'm gonna crunch my numbers at the end of the year, right? As you could tell guys, I'm the numbers guy, get down. If I'm gonna crunch my numbers at the end of the year, I wanna know, like, you know, I'm trying to move percentages every year in one way or the other. So, you know, how can I affect that end of year percentage? then accounting departments think about that. And that's where budgets come from, you just a little wrinkle to throw in. Not to make it more difficult for everybody, but like it is another way to look at it. You know, if it's a $500 booking and you're asking for 750, that percentage is quite a number, you know? So just a When you're doing this and you're throwing out bigger numbers, what's your value? Why should a place pay you more than they pay their top DJs, right? Be able to communicate that to a venue. Well, I know that I bring out this many people to big events like this. I sell two tables every time I book a high-end nightclub. So I'll book one or two tables for you. In the past, here's what I've done. I produce music. have this big of a social media presence. All of these things, if you have more pull in any of these lanes, maybe you are worth more than the average DJ or the above average DJ, you know? So be able to communicate that. Be able to explain to a booker these different things and why you're valuable. What is your value prop? Gary and I talk about this all the time behind the scenes. What's your value prop? What makes you valuable? What are the reasons why someone should choose you over anyone else? And it's gonna be a little different for everybody. But be able to communicate that and know what those things are. Super important. that, when negotiating all of that, mean, all of that should pretty much be in your EPK anyway, right? You should have something handy. I know that they're becoming outdated for sure, but I think having something handy that somebody can look at as, as, it's kind of proof of what you've done and why you're worth what you're worth. I like the one sheets. mean, I don't know how often people are looking at them, but it is a one sheet, a quick way to get an overview of all the things that a specific DJ is doing. What music they've put out, support from other big artists, all the links are clickable. Those one sheets to me are super valuable. Whether I use them 10 times a year maybe. Like maybe 10 times a year, I'll send them to somebody. 20 you know what, even if nobody asks, I I find we do this within our business. Even if somebody's not asking for something, if we feel like it's good, if it's a good piece of material that proves what we're trying to get across, in this case would be our talent, our music, et cetera, with all, like you said, clickable links, and it's very easy and accessible instead of having copy and paste things and whatnot, because nobody's doing that. I think that's just very, it can only be a positive, it can't be a negative. I put my one sheet in, I have a Dropbox, right? It has all my images and my video and anything that I need to give to somebody to create flyers or if I'm booked at a show, I have my one pager in there. And every time, hey, can I have your logo? Sure, you get my entire Dropbox folder with all my stuff. And it's there, maybe they look at it, maybe they don't. Or if someone says, Kareem, you send me your me something, send me your one page or send me some of your music or send me your social links. I send the one page because it has everything they could want to know about me on one piece of paper that clickable or one, you know, one PDF and that's where you should utilize it because somebody is going to ask you for that stuff. It doesn't even, you know, definitely a hundred percent. You're going to be asked for your music. You're going to be asked for your socials. It's a great way to, to, to convey All right, let's get back on track. think we were talking about like, what are some other situations where we're considering pay, right? So we talked about weekday work versus weekend. How about holiday or big nights where you know the venue is selling out, it's going to be packed, there's going to be a line down the block. Like, I think that's another time where you can adjust your pay. And you should. your Thanksgiving, Eves, your New Year's, Eves. mean, those are the three major ones where DJs do move their rate a or your SantaCon big bar crawls if you have huge day parties or whatever big event you might have once a year in your city on a Saturday afternoon kind of You can see when you walk in the booth that the venue is making more money that day. just, you just know it from being in the building. And if you under, if you undercharged last year and you showed up and you're like, Holy shit, there's a thousand people in this room. Well, okay. The rates got to come up the next year. Make sure you start to communicate that early, with the, with the venue. So you could negotiate your rate. Don't do it the day after the event. That's not how it works. You have to do this It's a big mistake that has been made in the past and having these conversations weeks before these big days and big nights is very, very important. And you can highlight like last year we sold out, I got X amount of dollars, you know, let's come up this amount of money and let's lock this in for years. Right, guys, you have to ask for these things. They're not just gonna give it to you. Nobody's just gonna give you extra money because they feel good in their hearts. Like this is a business. If you're valuable and they're making money and they know having you in the building is gonna help them make more money, they will gladly give you the extra couple, whatever bucks you want to do it. You gotta ask. You gotta ask for the raises. If you've been there for a while, you gotta ask for the higher pay on these big nights. Sometimes people are gonna ask you to take less money because it's a slower night or a slower weekend. And I'd say in those cases, you're not. the rates the rate kind of thing and if they want to pay somebody less, go book another DJ. That's a hard line that I generally state. When they ask me that, I'll say, all right, the next Saturday I'm here, if we crush it we make a lot of money, are you gonna give me extra money? And they're gonna say no every time. And then you're gonna say, well then I'm not taking less money That's the response. That's the response. Or do you want to give me a percent of the bar and we can move forward where I get 5% of the bar? Sure, I'll make that deal. But they'll never make that deal. So. not if they're smart business people. It's the the taking less money is a fun is a funny thing. I'm like, well, if you knew it was going to be slow, because it's such a day that maybe you should have just canceled the DJ. Like, that's not that's not my problem. Right? I can't manage your I'm not managing your place. I'm just showing up to DJ. see like, you know, in certain situations where we're booking DJs, some weekends, we know it's gonna be slow. So maybe we're only gonna put one DJ on instead of two. Or maybe we lower our budget a little bit. And instead of booking Kareem, we're gonna book someone else that'll be happy to make whatever the budget is for that night, right? So when there's a booker or someone that's sort of running the show, I think it's easier to navigate those situations than if it's just like a manager or an owner China is doing a little bit of everything. They need to do their homework though. Like we do our homework. They need to do their homework, right? Being in the position of booking, we have to deal with a lot of these, lot of these question marks, like, you know, it's, it's dead tonight. We're going to cut the DJ. I'm like, well, you're going to give them his full rate because he blocked time out guys. When that happens to you, speaking of rates, when, when a venue says they want to cut you early before you leave, make sure you talk to them about numbers, right? And if there is a Booker involved, tell them they, need to call my Booker before I leave. I'm not getting off set until there's a conversation around money, right? I know that's hard to say when you're in the middle of it, but say, can we have a conversation about rate? That's all I need to say. That's it. Because you want to make sure that you've blocked your time out for that night. You have now been booked for three weeks, four weeks, five weeks, and now you could have made 400 bucks up the block, this is just an example, and you came here, now you're gonna make 200, because they wanna cut you early. Well, you need to make sure that you make that $400, because you've already blocked your time out, and you showed up. That's not. money somewhere else, because you're an in-demand DJ. That is not your problem that they didn't fill their room. That is not your problem. And you don't need to be as harsh as how I'm saying it, but you need to just let them know that you had other opportunities available to you before walking in here. It's not your responsibility that the room wasn't filled, and I expect to get the rate that we discussed prior to the booking, Yeah. If someone's booking me and we agree on a rate, I don't care if I DJ one song or a thousand songs. If we agreed on a rate and a specific set time, that's what I'm going home with. could, I don't care if nobody showed up or we closed early. It's not my problem. We had a deal and that's what the deal is. Like, and the next time when I play the extra time or we make $20 ,000 more than we normally make, it all evens out in the wash kind of thing. So I think that's another sign if someone's trying to nickel and dime you and try to like give you 50 less dollars because we close an hour early, like you don't want to work with those people with that venue. You know, like give me a break. I hate that It is it is the most annoying part of our business in my in our other thing too, guys, do your best to not talk in hourly rates. Hourly rates kind of puts you in a corner as far as when it comes to increasing your rate or it's a lot harder when you're talking like hourly rates. As we broke into New York City, all the venues are like, well, we've charged this many dollars per hour. And like, well, we don't really, we don't think about it like that. Like you, this certain DJ is worth this much money. So what level of DJ do you want kind of So yeah, I would try to avoid hourly rates discussions ever, really. Have a set number, hey, this is how much money I make for four hours of DJing. Hey, this is how much money I make for two hours of DJing. If it's five hours and you have a four hour rate, tack some money on. It's hard for some businesses to not think about that in an hourly fashion, but you have to present it to them as, this is my base rate for four hours. I DJ for three hours, I still get that base rate. Let's go back to that base rate thing. If my two hour headlining set, this is my base rate. If I play for an hour because it's dead, I'm still getting my two hour base rate. If I play for more than that, well, then you have to add additional money onto that. Maybe you don't do that in an hourly fashion to try to stay away from that, but you have to try to make it make sense to the person that's paying you. That's the only It's a battle that I constantly have with, with, when guys are playing additional hours and girls were playing, playing additional hours and also when they're getting cut early and it's trying to find that balance and using the proper language and, just kind of the way you're coming off, whether that be an email, a phone call or a text, you have to be careful with, you're not coming off in a certain way. And really, cause when people talk money, it can get, go, it can get ugly real fast. you know, and can get there can be attitudes and tensions rise real Yeah, talking about money is never easy, guys. It's hard. It's not the most comfortable conversation, but when you talk about it you communicate upfront, beforehand, super important, things will be a lot easier. It's a lot easier to talk about money before the gig or the week before the gig, rather than during the gig or once you're there or after the gig. After the gig, you're pretty much at the mercy of the person who's paying you. Yeah. Yeah, it gets, it gets tough. All right, so think we can can wrap this in a second, but I think we're to talk about one more thing. I want to talk a little bit about undercutting, right? Like this is like the big DJs, like undercutter DJs, like, fuck them, blah, blah. Like, let's talk a little bit about it. Let's talk about why it hurts the market. We sort of touched on it a little earlier, but you maybe give an example and like talk about what undercutting would look It's going to be a lot of what we talked about before. You know, it's understanding the gig, it's understanding what level of DJ plays at that gig, and it's understanding what number is the average number in a place like that in that market. If you're going to come in and you're going to play for a hundred bucks just because you want to get in that venue and the place normally pays 400, That's gonna get around, you know? That's gonna get around the DJ community. And you, like I said before, you will get blackballed quickly. You have to understand where, you have to understand venue, you have to understand where you're at in the market, you have to understand the night that you're playing, like we said before, and understand what the average is. And you better get that average. Because if you're playing for way less, that's hard undercutting and it's just. It's a not a good look for your overall self. than a good DJ taking money way under what they should be. Because as an owner, why would you spend up when you have this really good DJ that's playing for under what they should be playing for? It's the worst possible situation. situation for any market slash venue slash DJ that DJs in that market. Not only is it the dollar amount, it's the hours. It's the hours. If you're a good DJ and you're working six, seven, eight, five, like even five hours to me is too much. Like the days of, know, when, when did five hours become the norm there now? And six and seven people are trying to get away with. Like the number of hours you work as well is something that the higher end DJs and the good DJs need to regulate, right? Like we have to, we argue, we not argue, we talk about this all the time. I don't want any of our bookings to be more than four hours. Five hours, like the absolute most. And we talk to the venues. This is a constant battle with the venues we work with. Like, well, why can't we do six hours? Well, your DJ is not gonna be that good in that fifth and sixth hour. They've been DJing for four hours already. Right. It's, it's very, this is very venue based, I feel. And I feel like it's also the venue and the owner and the managers just having a history and knowing what a good DJ is, what a bad DJ is and what their bet, what their best DJ used to take or still takes. And that might be grossly underneath what the rest of the market is taking. And it really, it skews what their view is on how much they should be Right, if you're one of the best DJs at a venue, it's your job to help raise the rate for everybody else. Like you have to ask for the raise. The fifth best DJ can't ask for the raise. The best DJ has to set the market, you know? This is a supply and demand economic situation here. Like the best DJ needs to set the top end. And then everybody else can fall in place under the top Right. Right. That's the number one DJ in your market should really dictate this whole Yeah. So the undercutting thing, guys, if if I'm going to paint the picture on a scenario, if you're trying to get into a place and there's one DJ who's the resident who's there a lot or who's been there for a really long time and the venue reaches out to you and says, hey, we want to book you on Saturday night. This is the rate. It's like, yeah, that sounds great. But you know that there's a resident DJ on Saturday and you're essentially taking their job out of respect. If it was me. I would text that DJ, DM that DJ, be like, hey man, I know you're the Saturday night resident. The owner just hit me up asking to book Saturdays. Like, are you leaving there or like what's going on? There's been so many situations where that's happened and like it creates just a mutual respect between DJs. creates, it puts you in a very high standard when you're sharing information that maybe that person doesn't know about. And maybe they aren't that great and maybe they are gonna get fired no matter what. But I think it's really important as DJs to sort of stick together and share that information with the other DJs rather than just take the booking and essentially take their job. Because that DJ is gonna be like, fuck this guy, he just took my job and he knows I've been here for four years or three years or whatever the case may be. It's, this is where the DJ culture has shifted from 15 years ago to when get down started, you know, seven years ago. Um, I remember I took this one DJ's job at, uh, in the city and gave him no heads up and he just got like, and he was there two, three times a week. He just got fired and it was done and over with in one night and, I stepped in and I was the new resident DJ. the right thing of me to do would have been to give him a little heads up and then form this new relationship in order to grow my connections. Instead, and because then about, I don't know, two months later, I go to the Atlantic City DJ conference and he's on a panel. So like he had plenty of connections and knew plenty of people. And I completely fucked myself in not introducing myself, giving him a heads up and trying to like maybe. work something out with him in the venue in order to make some kind of teamwork work. Fast forward 10 years later and you know, we're getting calls on the regular like, Hey guys, um, such a venue told me that they want me to come DJ there Thursday. I know that's your residency. That's a get down account. And it happens more often than, than not where we'll get a heads up and it's much appreciated. Um, so It makes me want to work with those And it definitely makes, yeah, definitely. It's like, well, thanks for the heads up. Let's just put you in it's a trust, it's a we're on the same team type of thing. Because guys, DJs working together, DJs working together on the rates and the times, that's the only way this works, you It's the only way you get rates up. Believe it or not, get down DJs that are listening to this right now. Believe it or not, the rate in our market was way lower when we started this thing. Way lower. Right? And it was trying to get as many places together as we can to book. All right, we're going to book all these places and then there's going to be a baseline rate Dude, it's hard, guys. It's hard. There's certain venues where we've gotten$50 raise over five years. that's, we've been working. And then other venues, we got the rate up a lot. So it varies, but it's not easy. And doing it together is really the only way to make it happen. I want to tell a quick story. I was a resident at a high -end venue on Saturdays years ago. whatever, you know, I was just doing my thing, thought things were going great, business as usual. Another DJ hit me up and said, hey, Kring, this venue just hit me up to work on Saturdays. Aren't Saturdays your night? And I was like, yeah, who told you that? And he'd be like, the owner reached out to me. So it gave me a heads up that something was happening. It allowed me to go talk to the owner and find out what was happening. So it wasn't just a bomb that got dropped on me. And to this day, I have so much respect for that person. And I know that they're never gonna fuck me. You know what I mean? Like I trust that person. I'm gonna look out for that person. I'm gonna now be able to book that person because we have a lot of booking power. So like, you never know how that comes back around later Yeah, definitely. I mean, that's just that's a that's a great lesson. It's a great lesson. In a business that doesn't have a union, the the closest thing to it is to work together more closely and be very transparent and be honest with each other and not be like, Oh, I'm making $100 more than I really am. Because that doesn't help anybody. You know, having real numbers and really having real conversations around these things and the hours that you're playing in maybe the shyness of certain owners and managers, knowing all of, having all the information, having the communication amongst each other is so important. Yeah, I think that's a great way to kind of wrap this up. I know we've been talking about this for a long time, but it's such a hard conversation, right? Every situation is different. It's so hard to work through this as a DJ, let alone talking about it and giving advice on how to do it. You know what I mean? So like I said earlier, it's one of the reasons why we sort of held off on this conversation because we could talk about this for three episodes to be honest. I think this is just going to be the rates episode because we are in, we are an hour in and we haven't even gotten to our second, our second topic. No, think we could, you know, we're on this cream rant run. Maybe we could have another couple of rants real quick and we'll wrap here soon. So, I don't know, where do you want to go, Gar? You know, something that's really happens that I love that I get the text message or the phone call or the voice note. The voice notes, the best one. So if it's great, I love the voice note. It's phenomenal. I get the real raw emotion of how pissed cream is, is just social media etiquette to paint this as a broad brush topic, social media etiquette. And so actually this one, this, this, this number one, One that pisses me off equally as much is these DJs that hit us up, you and I both, right? And they're like, yo, like what's good? Like I, you know, I just moved to the area or whatever it might be. I really looking to work. I see you guys are, are booking a bunch like, you know, and then asking about all these things and I'm like, all right, yeah, cool. Like I'll respond. Like this is, these are the ways to do it. This is how to get involved with us. And then I go and look to see if this person follows me on anything. And they don't. And then I look to see if they follow Get Down DJ Group on anything and they don't. And then I go to the Grow My DJ Business podcast to see if they follow us on Apple or Spotify or on YouTube and they don't. The fuck you think I'm gonna book you? Get the fuck out of here. Are you kidding me? Like how stupid could you be to hit up the owner of a company, and be like, I want to work for you and then have no idea about the company. Zero idea. How do you know anything about us if you don't follow us on social media either? first thing I do is click on the profile and like, this guy follows me. I'll just follow him back. He hit me up like sure. Same thing on get It's the lack of, of just, it's just pure laziness is what it is. And if you're going to be lazy enough to ask for something without doing the simplest of things as to follow somebody across social media platforms, there's no way I want to work with you ever. I'm sorry. This turns into a me brand. Sorry. But it just, it's mind blowing to me. What the fuck do I owe you? You know what I mean? I owe you nothing. Like the, they so little. It's like walking into, I don't know, Apple for a job and being like, I don't know, I don't own an iPhone. I don't have an iPad. I don't own a MacBook. Well you know nothing about the product. How if? Why? Makes no sense. Yeah, I mean, totally agree, man. I totally agree. And it's just a very simple thing. It sorta just shows me that you're not thorough. Because if you're thorough, you're gonna go and follow all the people you're supposed to follow and the get down and the venues. Like, if I'm gonna DM a venue, if I don't follow that venue, why would that venue ever even answer me? That's the first thing someone's gonna see. this guy DM me and asked me for a gig but doesn't follow our venue or doesn't follow the booking agency? Like How about just something simple like liking and commenting on the last five posts and then maybe wait a couple days and then Yeah, for sure. Like a cr and then do that across the board. Like you need to be doing your homework. That's just laziness, bullshit, laziness. It goes the same what's been happening for me lately lately is people hitting me up for guest lists or like, Hey, do have a table at this? Like, when I travel, it'd be like random people that just messaged me that see that I'm DJing like, Yo, can you put me on guest list? Bro, you don't even follow me? How could why would I ever bring you in on guest lists and put attach your name to my to me in any way? Yo, can I get on your table? Like, no, I don't number one, I don't have a table number two, I don't even know who you are. Right, you don't know what they're posting on social media, like what kind of person this is that you're putting on a guest list. Like the least they could do is follow you and then you, you know, at least be able to see what kind of person this is. It's funny. I find that that part of it is funny because like I don't even answer those people but like the DJ is just more annoying for sure. I hate the asking for something and not and not giving at all in the simplest You know what I hate, Gary? I hate when DJs or promoters or anyone tags me on shit that I have nothing to do with. Like, don't tag me on your music if you're not a get down DJ and you're not someone that I've talked to or worked with. Don't tag me in a party that I have nothing to do with, that none of my DJs are working, that I definitely am not gonna be at. I don't get Don't DM me with, yo, here's my new post, go like and do that. Please don't do that, because I'll block you in a second. Guys, part of this, don't do these things if you're doing them. Please. Don't tag people that have nothing to do with you or your business or what you're posting about. It's going to make that person not want to work with you ever. We live in a world of spam outside of our industry, right? You get how many spam phone calls a day. You get how much spam email a day. You get how much spam text messaging a day at this point, right? Getting spammed on social media with people that you loosely know is extra annoying. That's even worse than getting cold called and getting cold texted and whatnot. That's even worse. I get it. Like it's nice that you're throwing this party, but like we have nothing to do with it as a business, as a person. So don't do personal is better. Hey, cream, I really liked this release. I make music that's similar to yours. Can you listen to this and give me some feedback? I'd love some honest feedback. Like I'm gonna answer that 10 out of 10 times compared to the yo check out my new track. It's on SoundCloud. Like now bro I'm good. Right, right, because you can tell that that's a mass, that's just a mass sent DM or email or text, whatever it might be. the extra time to make it personal. Connect whatever you're sending to the person that you're sending it to in some way. You're gonna get a much better reaction. You're more likely to get a response in anything. In asking for a booking, in asking for someone to listen to you download your music, any of that stuff. Take the extra time. Show me that you care. Show me you've done a little extra homework and I'm more likely to do whatever you're asking. drives me nuts. Maybe this is like the get off my lawn portion of the program every Well, you know, this is, think these are good tips in a, in a culture that we are so fast paced and you feel like you need to just get stuff out. Ferrari speaks to this pretty well and you feel like you need to like just get content out. I got a need to get music out. So I'm kind of rushing through all of these steps in order to get whatever I'm trying to get out. Well, if you just get a little more thorough, like you're saying, you get a little more personal and you take a little more time. You will definitely see better numbers as far as listens, reactions, responses, all of those things. Your numbers will exponentially go up because people will see that you care and they think that you're trying to make that personal connection with them. And it's just, that's just human nature to just lean into that easy to make that spam message. It's easy to send an email to a thousand people. You know what's not easy? Sending a personal email to every single VIP that you want to send your music. Sending a personal DM to all the venues that you're trying to get into, showing why you want to get in, or connecting yourself to their venue in some way. It's hard to do that. It takes time to do that, and people will recognize All right. I like that. We'll keep that short and sweet. So you wrote an interesting note in our email where we keep our podcast topics and the question you posed was do you listen to music for fun anymore, right? Because I think I'll let you speak to why you feel like you don't listen to music for fun anymore. I rarely do and I hate it because the reason why I got into DJing was because how much I love the music. So it's like this catch 21, catch 22. It's a catch 22 because the reason why I got into doing to being a DJ is because I love the music so much and because I want to share the music that I like or the music that I create with the masses. But you know, this many years later, I need a break from music sometimes because I'm so into it. I'm in Serato organizing music and downloading and organizing new music. And I'm on Ableton and I'm creating music. this is hours and hours per day, right? Sometimes when I'm in the car going to a gig, I don't want to listen to music because I'm going to be in this loud environment for the next four hours for the next three to four days, you know? So like, if I'm not spending the time in... doing the things I need to do to be a successful DJ, I sort of don't want to listen to music. I want to step away. I want to let my ears rest. I want to listen to podcasts or listen in silence sometimes, you know? And it sucks because there's so much music that comes out that I would never DJ or play in a set, but I would, I love, and I would listen to in the car or in my apartment and like really get enjoyment in just enjoying the music. And I just feel like I don't enjoy the music as much as I once did. And I desperately want to get back to listening to music for enjoyment. Is bass house kind of your favorite type of music? Because that's kind of what you create. That's kind of your, your go to DJ sound. is that your favorite kind of music like to listen to away from DJ? I don't know because that's the lane that I'm in. Like yeah, I like to listen to artists in that world and hear their mixes and see what they're playing. I think that helps me a lot in my sets or helps me curate my sets. But you're doing that for work. That's strictly for work. If you had a choice and you're not doing this for work, what are you listening to? What do you want to listen to? probably, like good hip hop or old school hip hop or underground hip hop, stuff that I would never in a million years play in a DJ set. Right. So I guess that's probably the main focus, right? Like try to take time to do that and listen to stuff like that. You don't have to dedicate time. Just whenever it feels right, you just do that. I think that's kind of like, try to take the DJ hat off once in a while and the producer hat off. You don't even have to take the producer hat off because I'm sure there's amazing underground hip hop that you'd be able to sample and bring into originals and into remixes and things like that. I got of it. At no, any point I'm listening to music, I'm thinking about, this will fit in my set or ooh, I want that sample for a remix or ooh, I could do this with this or ooh, this would work as a bass house track. Like my brain is just designed to think that way. it's just really hard for me to completely remove all that stuff and just enjoy the music. And maybe it is like stuff like the kind of music or, don't set a total so we pronounce the name wrong, so I don't know. But maybe it is getting into a genre like that or even if it's like classic rock, like I love classic rock or know, Hall & Oates or like just shit that, but my brain is still like, sample, ooh sample, ooh vocal I could use. Yeah, I, my, my musical range of what I listen to per week is, so wide. It's never DJ related ever, ever, ever. But what does happen because of that is that I sometimes find ways to get some of that stuff into DJ sets and it's unique. Right? So like I went on a big disco kick just to listen to disco. Like I'd be cooking, it'd be Saturday night dancing around the kitchen, having a good time listening to disco. shit, disco house became popular. Now I can mix these disco tracks that I was listening to into my disco house sets, you know, and thinking about it in that way. A lot of times, like, I don't know, I listened to, I wanted a big piano kick in the last two weeks. I've been listening to like just straight piano, like just piano music. If that's what you want to call it. Holly Bowling actually, specifically. She does a bunch of Drake covers and dead covers and fish covers and all these different covers just on the piano. It's relaxing, it's cool, it's a way to disconnect from DJ music, but I don't DJ every weekend anymore. So that's the big difference. I'd be interested to hear what some of these other like heavy working DJs, like how much do you guys actually listen to music for fun? Or is there a way that you've found to turn your DJ producer brain off to just enjoy the music? And if so, please let me know how you do that. I don't think the producer brain portion ever gets shut off because there's a, anything that you listen to can be sampled, right? And that's the hard portion, but I think it's finding enjoyment. I'm trying to, I'm like, I'm thinking of Kanye and, and, and Pharrell at like that, at that, fashion show many years ago. And there was like some obscure, I think African beat and they were both like, you could just tell like producer brains going right. And they're next to each other. sure. And I don't think you ever shut that off. You just don't. I think, I think maybe broadening your horizons in your musical taste can help that. You know, not that you have to shut your brain off, but you can definitely start to enjoy other musics and then it will definitely help your production side. I know that's kind of opposite of what you want to do, but just a Yeah. Something else I've been trying to do is when I go listen to DJs, like, just try to enjoy whatever they're doing and don't think about like, I would have done this or I maybe wouldn't have played these two songs. Like, I try my best to not do that and just be in the moment and like, just see what vibe or what journey they're going to take me on. Unless it's so bad that it's like, this is terrible. I can't believe I'm listening to this. But in most cases, like, the DJs are pretty good. Like, I talked about Andrew set a couple weeks ago. Like, it was great. Like, I really tried to just see where he was going and enjoy it, you know? It's very difficult. That's something I think that across the board, DJs all have difficulty with. But I think when a DJ is so good that you're like, I definitely can't do that. Like it's, that's when you disconnect. That's when the complete disconnect comes. it's when you're, when you feel like you can perform better than what you're listening to, it's hard to disconnect that because it's almost I want to like coach that person. think, maybe you could have thought about this here or whatever it might be. A lot of times, I mean, a lot of DJs that I go see, I'm just like flabbergasted. I'm just like, I can't do any of this. I can, I would never have thought of that, you know, because stylistically people are just so different. You have to keep that in mind too, guys. Like when you're going out to see a DJ, like that just styles are so different, just stylistically, that person's just in a different place. You'll never do even though you could critique it, but you can probably never put together and definitely will never put together the same set. It's a struggle. It's a struggle I've been thinking about a lot lately. So I wanted to talk about it the podcast. I'm sure other people are kind of going through it as well. I don't know. Maybe I'll have to figure out a way. I'm a very routine type of person, right? So maybe there's a way to just fit in like listening to music for pleasure as part of my morning routine or part of my nightly routine or whatever, you know, whatever the case may be. Part of it too is like I listen to a lot of podcasts. I've been really hooked on like a lot of talking podcasts similar to like this. So in my downtime, I listen to a lot of podcasts and that's sort of how I get enjoyment out of listening, I guess. I'm laughing right now because I'm thinking about the Monday and Tuesday that I came off of, you know, the 10 days of working and silence on Monday. And then Tuesday on my flight home, I just stared at the back of the, on the back of the plane the flight that's like you raw dog that flight care. did. I sure did. I'd like nothing like no headphones, nothing. There's a kid screaming in front of me. I was just like in an absolute daze. That's so funny. like I don't understand why anyone would want to do that. But I guess in your situation, like, yeah, I get it. I was so dead. was like, this fucking cart lady better not come near me with booze. I don't want to hear any music. The TV didn't work. So that was perfect. It was great. I have the AirPod Max's and you could put them in like the, what's it called? Yeah, the silence mode where you can't hear anything around you. And like, I put like the running creek on calm on. And that's what I do on a flight or whatever. Like it's like the wind, the rain, something like that. That's where that Holly Bowling shit comes in for me. If I don't want to listen to anything but I need something a little calming, that's amazing music. Calm App guy right here. Big, big. I'm going to send you some of the hip hop, like the piano hip hop remixes that I have, like these more ethereal hip hop remixes that I have that are just so funny. And you can't really tell that they are in the like certain parts of the song. Come on. That's dope. I have a couple on my morning on my morning playlist. All right, long pod today, long pod today. But you know, that pricing conversation, like we said, it's a tough one. It's a long one. And it's an important one. So, you know, I hope we helped you in some way. I hope we didn't confuse you more because I know we were sort of kind of covering as much as we could. If you have any questions or concerns or comments, which I'm sure there'll be plenty of, put them in the comments below on the YouTube channel. If you guys don't follow us there, please follow us on YouTube slash get down DJ group. We have a playlist on there of all the podcasts. So you can like and like and subscribe over there and leave comments, especially for this episode, because I think there's a lot to talk about here. If you have any more direct. questions or anything DM us on our podcast Instagram I think that's probably where you can access cream myself the most I think that's what grow my DJ, grow my DJ business podcast or at get down DJ I didn't know if you put a the before that that's why I asked. So yeah, I think that's the best way to get involved in this conversation. Yeah, for sure. I would love to have some more questions that we can kind of follow up with or if we need to clarify something. If you guys have questions for sure that would, you know, we could address them in further future episodes. Part two would be fantastic. Yeah, for sure. All right, guys, we appreciate you listening. Thanks for listening to this episode, and we'll talk to you guys soon. Peace.