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your job as dj its play good music get the crowed crazy and make them drink like mofos!! a good club dj must to have the dance floor packed but also must to have the bar packed as well. :)
I posted something similar to this on another board and was told by one DJ I had no idea what I was talking about. But as a DJ you have to know what your goal is as an EMPLOYEE/SUBCONTRACTOR to the club. Just so you know, I was the manager at a local bar/club and handled all the marketing and hiring of talent (until the owner got busted for coke possession on his way back to town during a traffic stop and they closed the club).
The 2 things you should do as a DJ in a night club:
1. Bring people in the door by playing good music - it helps if you have street cred or name recognition to help bring them in.
2. You need to keep the bar busy. If you're dropping hot tracks all night long with a packed dance floor you won't stay at the bar long unless you're good enough to bring in a large cover (to offset the lack of drink sales). Bars make money off the selling of drinks, bartenders make money by selling drinks, waitstaff makes money by selling drinks. If you keep the floor packed all night they don't make money. The only exception I've found to this is in a club that's so busy that everyone CAN'T fit onto the floor and they stay 3-5 deep at the bar even with a packed dance floor.
Other than the exception above, you need to learn a term called 'turning over the floor'. If the bar isn't busy (but the dance floor is packed) I'll drop the tempo, intentionally stumble the move (crunch the beats), or just about anything to upset the groove just enough to get some people out of the dance groove. They'll hit the bar for some drinks and I start ramping it back up with a HOT track almost immeadiately. My goal? To get them to buy a drink and then hit the floor almost immeadiately so the drink gets watered down and they buy another drink when I do it again later. If you get this down you can keep the bar fairly busy and the crowd never knows. They'll dance their asses off, buy lots of drinks, and have a great time. The best part is they'll keep coming back. It's underhanded but when I was managing a club that's what I wanted. The first time a DJ comes in and plays all night without keeping the bar busy it's their last night. If they get the crowd too pumped early in the night I'd kick 'em out the door. Why? They have to make the venue money. I can care less how good you are in the bedroom or even in the booth at beatmatching, scratching, or turntablism if you can't turn over a floor and recover.
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the best thing to do is hang out in the club, dont drink to much, and pay attention to the DJ. check, is he/she just playing an arranged set, or are they playing to the crowd?
I agree wholeheartedly about this. Before I started DJ'ing at clubs I hung out at them a lot to see what they played. I asked myself why they played the songs in that order, think about if they had a goal for the night, or even for the next 10 minutes.
I've always said, and I stick with this, that DJ'ing is 10% technical (beatmatching, mixing, scratching, turntablism, etc) and 90% soft skills (salemanship, marketing, reading the room, etc). I can care less if you're the best turntablist on the planet and win every contest on the planet based on your technical skills. If you can't read a room and play the music that will get them dancing then you are a failure as a DJ in both the club and mobile scenes. If you can read a room, and have mad-skillz but can't sell/market yourself to let them give you a chance you are still at ground zero. Work on the soft skills to REALLY excel at your being a DJ.
So any other advice? (the worst vice is ad-vice).
1. Talk to the venue owner about what they are hiring you for. To push drink/food sales, your name draws them in the door, whatever. Be sure that your goals and the bar maangers goals are the same or at least you know what the manager wants out of you.
2. Watch other club DJ's and see what they're doing and why. If they don't know what they're doing but are lucky enough to keep the club packed try to figure out what they do that keeps the people coming in the door. Hell, ask the people in the club if you have to.
3. Work on your technical skills but also try to hone your soft skills. Read books on marketing, salemanship, networking, and self improvement. These can help you understand the people in the club and how to relate to them in a way that really gets them coming back for YOU.
4. Keep the BPM down early in the night. Give yourself somewhere to grow to as the night progresses.
5. Remember that BPM isn't the only way to affect the dance floor. You can use kill switches on the EQ, volume, and a variety of other things to create or remove energy from a room. USE THEM. and if you don't know how - LEARN.
6. If you have lights/fog they can create/remove enery as well. Think about the music you play, and what goes well with the song. Sometimes killing all the lights and ramping up the music can create a dramatic effect, just like adding intelligent lighting at just the right moment. Use it to your advantage to move the energy around the room.
I'm sure I can think of other things that can help you when DJ'ing in clubs, but talking with the owner about how you can impact overall sales and the methods they want you to use to do that can be a BIG help in getting you in the door and staying there.
BTW, you can't effectively turn over a dance floor with 4 couples in the room. It will happen naturally in those cases. But when you get the floor filled the mob mentality takes over and you need to force the floor to turn over.
I hope this makes sense. I know there are those DJ's out there that will say that they're told to keep the dance floor filled - period. And for some venues that's what they want, but you'll find that if you talk with the bar manager and ask them to track sales on before and after you start turning over the floor you'll likely find that the clubs will make more money AFTER you start doing it.
Side note: If you work in a club with low alcohol sales (usually because of large numbers of members on recreational pharmacuticals - ie E, X, etc) then turning over the dance floor is not applicable. For heavy alcohol-based revenue clubs this works and works well.
