Pay To Play: NYC DJs Forced To Sell Tickets To Keep Their DJ Slots?

Most musicians and DJs have heard of (and know to avoid) pay-to-play schemes, where a promotional company offers small-time DJs “exposure” and an opening set at a club or festival in return for a fee. But based on a tip we’ve gotten from DJ Roodz in the New York City area, the practice has made a comeback, with promoters forcing DJs to sell tickets to keep their set times. Keep reading for stories from DJs in the NYC area about this scheme that promoters are running.

Do you have a pay-to-play or sell-tickets to play story?Make sure to comment after the article and share it. 

Being A “Small Time” DJ In NYC

Earlier this week, the staff at DJ Techtools got an interesting email from a New York City native and local DJ who has tried to get more gigs, Christian Roodal (aka DJ Roodz). He wrote to us asking for advice on breaking into local scenes and hinted at a major problem in the NYC area of promoters requiring that DJs sell tickets to hold down their sets. We’ve heard of pay-to-play, but this sounded different – so Christian shared more details:

“Out here the problem is pretty rampant – especially in NYC and NJ. When venues like Webster Hall, Space, and Pacha [closed earlier this year] book big talent, individual promoters and “promotion agencies” (mostly by way of Instagram) are generally responsible for promoting the event – just like in their job description – and “booking DJs.”

This usually involves talking local guys to push anywhere from 5-50 tickets in exchange for a set. These sets aren’t guaranteed, more like a very strong “maybe.” For mainstage, you’re expected to sell sometimes 75+ tickets. As DJs, we’ve been promised festivals, mainstage opportunities, or even side stage sets, and have been pulled off, sometimes last-minute, even when ticket quotas are met. The problem is, there really isn’t anywhere to go for gigs besides these guys. They don’t ask for mixes, or skill demonstrations, or anything. All they care about is getting sales.”

To us, this is incredible – no DJ should ever take on the responsibility of helping to promote and sell tickets to a gig without a firm agreement that they’re guaranteed a slot. And there’s likely even grounds for legal action in a case like this – as verbal agreements are often as enforceable as written contracts – albeit harder to prove in a court of law.

How The “Selling Tickets” To Play Scam Works

We asked Christian to tell us as much as he could about the process of getting DJs to sell tickets in exchange for a “strong maybe” DJ set – and he elaborated:

“Essentially, no matter what a ticket costs, the DJ keeps $5. Doesn’t matter if it’s $20, $50, $90, whatever. The DJ returns the “ticket value minus five” to the promoter. The promoters use this as a sort of scheme to get people to play, saying things like “Check out your earning potential – sell out, make $250 (from selling 50 tickets, generally the norm) AND DJ!” However, the flipside is that, that $5 is also your bargaining room. You can take a hit on your commission in exchange for selling cheaper tickets to essentially move product and guarantee your set.

And what about the concept he suggested above, where sometimes DJs will sell tickets but still get pulled of a promised DJ set? Christian shared another story:

I’ve been pulled from a show on the day of, about 3 hours before my set time at the promoter’s office. I showed up there to cash out the tickets and had my controller, laptop, everything in tow. He took the money and told me “Sorry bud, not tonight” because I didn’t sell enough.

I had been with this promoter for over a year now, and I thought he knew my competency as a DJ, but he had never heard or even asked for one of my mixes, or anything like that. The next day, he called me up and said he wanted me to “image promote” for him – basically, host a table at one of the clubs he promotes once or twice a month. I was supposed to bring at least 5 girls for every guy and “Don’t worry if they’re under 21, I’ll take care of that with the bouncer and get you bottles.” Essentially, show them a good time so they have a better chance of coming to see me play, or come to me for tickets to other shows.”

Is this a one-off kind event? Apparently not – Christian connected us with other DJs in the greater NYC/NJ area who shared similar stories:

Stories From Other NYC-Area DJs

“I have had to sell tickets for Webster Hall and Pacha. For Webster I sold 5 actually and to keep my spot I bought 10 tickets so it became the Pay to Play type of thing and I didn’t get paid for my set at all.

For Pacha, this one time I didn’t have to sell tickets, just bring at least 20 people, I think 10 showed up, I was promised $150 a bottle, and a B2B session with my buddy, it was a deep house event.

When me and my friend got there, the “manager” said my friend and I were NOT playing back to back and that I wasn’t getting paid at all. So I took into my own hands and when my buddy was done with his set, I jumped on because no other DJ was around. We had the room jumping man everyone was dancing, I played 20 minutes, then this kid comes to the booth and says you are out after this song and he played [R Kelly’s “Bump N’ Grind”]. Everyone stopped dancing [and left for the] main floor, I packed up my stuff and left.

For Space, I sold 25 tickets between me and my ex (her dad was the owner of the club), he put me in the container spot over the bar where you first walk in, you would think the man would pay the kid his daughter has been seeing for 5 years, right? Wrong. Area Events started telling him that the only DJs who get paid [are] the headliner, everyone else sells tickets and gets the 5 dollar rip” – Aaron E., DJ Eckhaus, NJ

“So I’d been in sporadic contact with this one promoter for a few weeks trying to figure out a good first gig for me to start with him that would fit my musical style and that my friends would want to come out to see me for. Then one morning, I woke up to a few missed calls from the promoter, which was unusual because we’d only text and haven’t spoken face to face yet. So I called him back and he said he had a great opportunity for me to play at Life In Color NYNJ on the “Local Artists Spotlight” Side Stage.

I was thrilled to be even considered to play […] but wondered what the catch was. He brought up the fact that I “obviously” wouldn’t get paid as the exposure should be huge for me and then asked me to sell tickets at the face value from which I could keep a $5/ticket commission. I wondered why there wasn’t a minimum number to sell or at least strive for. He said he could only give me 50 tickets and for me to push as much as I could, but also said there isn’t a minimum I need to sell because the event was big enough that online sales should take care of it as long as I basically didn’t sell just 1 or 2.

I sold like 25-30 tickets to my friends who were super-excited to get there early to see my set. A day before the show, when I went in to cash out the tickets and get my commission. I was asked why I still had tickets left. I just responded saying that everyone else already had one or bought online and since there wasn’t a minimum I thought about 30 was fine and was happy with the $150 I’d get for that.

The promoter then said that wasn’t part of the original deal. He said that I had to have pushed all of them to even be considered for a set and if maybe I’d be able to go B2B with another random local DJ. So basically the meeting ended with me making $150 off of ticket sales, getting bumped from a festival/show that I had received promo materials for, and the awkwardness of having to tell my friends that my set got cancelled because I was unable to sell an additional 20 tickets…” -David S., DJ Davvid, NY, Boston

“Some kid hit me up on Instagram asking me to sell 30 tickets for Pacha (for the first time for me) so I took it… Sold a good amount… Bought a few just to get them out… Drive all the way to the city from Jersey with a car full of people. Turns out the promoter ran off with the money and the bouncers and management said that anyone that worked under him couldn’t come in. And the ticket codes got cancelled out. Needless to say I was left in the dust on front of Pacha cause some scumbag promoter ran off with the ticket money.

I love when promoters come to ME to DJ, have a big convo with me, then BAM I have to sell 50 tickets in 3 days OR I just got offered to play I’m shmacked and they wanted ME to pay them 500 to play! But, I guess it would have been a steal cause “main stage” buy in was 1,000.” -Anthony J., DJ Statik, NJ

“Our first two times playing Pacha NY Basement, we had to promote using a guest list and the promoter was a friend from college who got our foot in the door for sure. Once he stopped working in the industry, we realized that other promoters were marketing the “opportunity to play mainstage and clubs and festivals.”

[…] we came to realize that every single promoter we were meeting didn’t even ask us for a mix, a sample, or a resume. All they would say is “25+” in text message responses. [With one promoter], we were booked for Pacha’s basement twice, but only played once because one of the times a water main blew up down the road. We only met a quota of 5 tickets for these shows, and he was lenient about those times only. He told us that if we want to play again we have to sell at least 20.

As young adults with full-time jobs to support our passion of music, how are we expected to drive all around the world to sell 20-30 tickets for a timeslot that’s not even guaranteed? Also, the commission (no matter how much the ticket costs) is $5.

The last time we performed was at Space Ibiza NY. We drove around NYC and Westchester County, putting roughly 300 miles on my car, to sell 13 tickets because the other 7 were for family and friends. We were told that our set time was from 1am-2am. The evening of our performance, we went back to our promoter’s office to cash out the tickets. The promoter said “So yeah you guys can either play from 11-11:30 or 3-3:30.” We were furious, but maintained composure and bit our tongues because we knew this would be the last time we did any kind of business with this person. At the end of the day, finally getting to perform is great. However, it is not worth the trouble we have to go through to “start from the bottom and work our way up” according to these promoters.”  – Francesco B. and Adrian B., Hammerheadz, NY

Have you ever been forced to sell tickets and then ultimately burned out of a DJ set at a club? Share your stories in the comments below. 

We reached out to Webster Hall and Space Ibiza NY for comment, but they have not yet replied. 

Want to read more about the pay-to-play scam that companies like Afton run in the music industry? Check out the incredibly informative NeverPayToPlay.com

Don’t Wait For Disaster: Keep Your DJ Gear + Data Safe

We witnessed on Twitter last week a member of the DJTT family, Shawn Wasabi, get robbed of his entire setup out of the trunk of a parked car. His one-of-a-kind Midi Fighter 64 was stolen, and to make matters worse for Shawn, his laptop and backup hard drive also got nabbed. But there’s a lesson here for everyone: it’s never to early to start thinking about how you can prevent this type of total loss situation and keep your DJ gear safe.

Editor’s Note: We’ve covered this topic a few times in the past, but Shawn’s recent troubles seemed like the perfect time to refresh and revisit: 

Cloud Backup: Get It, Now

Particularly for DJs who are on the road and are constantly building a bigger library of projects and music, it’s critical to make sure your data is constantly being backed up some place safe. If you’re not on the road all the time, you still should keep a backup somewhere that’s nowhere near your computer (more on that below) – and a cloud-based service is the perfect solution.

We took a quick poll of the DJTT community and these were the most commonly recommended cloud-based backup solutions that real DJs actually use all the time: 

• CrashPlan: Manages local backups to local hard drives and other computers for free, also has cloud backup for $5/month. Unlimited storage.
• Backblaze: Unlimited data backup, automated, $5 a month. It’s like Dropbox, but instead of a folder, you’re backing up your entire computer. To restore, you can download a zip file or pay to have a USB/hard drive backup mailed to you.
• Dropbox / Google Drive / OneDrive / Similar: These are more manual solutions in that you’ll have to manually copy data to them – but they are good solutions for many and come with free storage.
• Splice: Already a fantastic free tool to share Ableton projects with other producers and keep versions of every iteration, it’s a very sensible solution for any hard-working producer.

Keep Your Hard Drive Backups Separated

If you’re resistant to cloud backup services (maybe due to financial or bandwidth constraints), it’s worth thinking about how you’re keeping an external backup of your files. In Shawn’s scenario, his backup drive was in the same (locked and alarmed) trunk as his computer, so both got stolen. The same situation could happen to someone who keeps their laptop at work or at home right next to their backup drive, as a thief might very easily just grab everything they find.

Here’s a simple solution: intentionally scatter your backups!

• Put a backup drive in your car (pull it out every few weeks to update it)
• Have two backup drives one at your work and one at home.
• At the very least, hide/disguise your backup hard drive if it lives near your main computer so that it isnt’ as easy to steal. You might consider locking it with a computer lock…

Keep Documentation: Lists, Photographs, Serial Numbers

You might wonder why, like Shawn, keeping a list of your serial numbers for your DJ gear, laptop and production tools might be important. It’s usually a few different things:

• Police: In the event of a loss, you want the police to be able to quickly identify your gear if they recover it for any reason – now or in the future.
• Pawn Shop: Often stolen goods like laptops and music gear is quickly sold to a pawn shop – if you go to pawn shops and give them your serial number to report it as stolen, they can quickly ID it should someone come in to sell it and call the cops.
• Insurance (see below): any insurance you have will use a serial number as a quick way to confirm the validity of your claim and assess the value of your loss. Photographs and lists also help here..

Photographic and documenting your valuables is important as well. It applies even to vinyl-only DJs – if you have a list and photos of some of the most valuable records you own, a record store could very quickly recognize when someone comes in with your collection to hawk it.

Nowhere Is Safe

In the crappy situation that Shawn found himself in last week, it might be easy to say “what the heck was he thinking?”  – but at the end of the day this kind of total gear loss can happen to anyone, anywhere. Computers and music gear have become incredibly portable, so it’s more likely you’ll take them many places with you – but that also means they become way easier to steal and hawk at a pawn shop.

In addition to the advice listed here, how do you protect your DJ / production gear and data? Let us know in the comments below. 

Review: Pulselocker In Serato DJ 1.9

PULSELOCKER IN SERATO DJ 1.9

Price

Selection

Integration

Website

3.8

Solid Streaming Library In Serato

Summary: While a higher price ($20/month) and limited in-Serato casual browsing might hold back some DJs from using Pulselocker right away, the service feels like the future for digital DJ music libraries. 

Pulselocker has been poised to become the top streaming library service for DJs since their original launch in 2012. With their new relaunch this year, they’ve expanded their collection and integrated the service right inside of Serato (with Rekordbox support on the way in an upcoming version). How does the streaming library service hold up in a real-world DJing environment? We take a closer look in this review of Pulselocker in Serato DJ 1.9.

Let’s start with what you need to use Pulselocker in Serato DJ: a Pulselocker account (they’re offering two-week free trials) and a copy of Serato DJ 1.9. After the two-week trial expires, you’ll need to get a $20/month plan to continue using the service. This allows unlimited offline tracks to be stored, and includes performance rights – allowing you to legally play these tracks in clubs and public venues.

Pulselocker In Serato DJ

Streaming Quality / Speed: All of the songs on Pulselocker that are streamed into Serato (or stored offline, as encrypted MP3 files) are 320 kbps – and in our tests all the files sounded virtually indistinguishable from local copies at the same quality.

Most of the streaming songs that we tested (on a home cable internet connection) loaded into Serato DJ in about 5 seconds or less. Of course, the speed that a song downloads or streams from Pulselocker will depend on your connection – if you’re in a venue with a slower connection, you might see a song take a few minutes.

Metadata: As soon as a streaming song is loaded into Serato DJ, it appears like any other song you’re loading in your library for the first time. The software quickly analyzes the track’s for a waveform, key, and BPM. If you change the metadata associated with the track, like the beatgrid, or add cue points, or make a Serato Flip edit, all of this is stored locally in your Serato DJ data, meaning the next time you load that track it will all come back.

Strangely, there’s no server-side metadata, so you can’t search by BPM or key. It seems like this would be pretty easy to integrate using user-reported analysis – maybe in a future version?

Browsing/Discovery: This is the clear weak link in Serato / Pulselocker integration right now – the experience that makes the Pulselocker website so great (highly curated genres of new music) is completely missing when you’re in a DJ software.

It feels like this integration isn’t designed for more casual mixing situations where you might want to try out a new track, or even explore new releases in favorite genres. We’re really hoping that some major improvement happens here in the next iteration.

Pulselocker’s Music Selection

There’s no doubt that Pulselocker is doing everything in their power to appeal to DJs – just look at the massive amount of dance music genres on their site. They also know they’ve got to be functional for professional DJs – that’s why there’s genres that are just club classics and pop classics from the 1980s and 1990s. The overall selection is impressive (over 44 million tracks from 500,000 record labels), but not completely comprehensive.

DJs shouldn’t expect to find every single request they want on this service, nor will new releases be out concurrent with their launch in music stores, but that’s no different than any online DJ record pool service.

One thing that was a bit annoying in the catalog was the amount of false matches that turned out to be covers of famous songs – especially when the original artist wasn’t present. This plagues a lot of streaming services, but in a request-oriented situation, you want to be able to quickly tell when a song is a real match or not. Have to pay close attention to the artist!

The Pulselocker Website

Because the Pulselocker interface in Serato DJ is limited to just search results and the offline playlists / tracks that you set up, it seems like the best way to use the service (aside from when you’re getting requests during a gig) is adopting a record pool workflow. Pulselocker’s website is great for this, and has one of the best interfaces for finding new music in genres that you like.

We’ve seen a number of users and other reviewers note that the actual interface experience feels pretty similar to Google Music – and they’re not wrong. The big difference comes in the DJ-oriented curation that’s happening here – it’s clear that Pulselocker has people who actually know each genre selecting new great releases and adding them to each of the genres, making it easy for a user to jump into a genre and find new great stuff. For instance, here’s the current overview of the Drum & Bass genre:

The entire website seems to be built in Flash, and there’s no mobile support as of yet – but Pulselocker does note that they’re working on a mobile companion app, which could really improve the workflow of a lot of users.

Personally, I found myself a big fan of the “Beatselector” section of the website, a Pandora-styled radio player that plays recent releases from your favorited genres. There are links in the player to quickly save the playing track to your offline library, a playlist, or just favorite it. It’s exactly the workflow that I wish every record pool had.

One small drawback of using the website to add tracks to your offline collection is that you have to then restart Serato DJ for the new tracks to show up. It’s not a big deal, but considering how underwhelming the browsing options are in the Serato-side integration, it would be great if this were dynamic.

Is This The Future?

DJs and music tech industry folk have been predicting that streaming music will eventually become the norm in every industry, even the DJ world where track ownership and local storage has been critical. Because Pulselocker takes a hybrid approach and allows offline storage of unlimited tracks, it is very reasonable for any type of DJ to use this.

But other services and integrations aren’t that far behind – we’ve seen how Spotify and Algoriddim’s djay have progressed to a state where it’s almost realistic to DJ off streaming services in the club. Ultimately, it comes down to the software that the streaming service is available in, the quality of the integration, and the music selection – and so far, Pulselocker is well on track to become the dominant player in digital DJ streaming libraries.

Update from Pulselocker: What’s Next

We just heard from the Pulselocker team – who wanted to share a few points about what’s coming up for them next:

• We just added the genres into our SDK, so they should be appearing inside Serato DJ soon
• BPM/key are in the works!  We’ve been trying to come up with the best solution to analyze all 44 million tracks.
• We’re still ingesting music from labels, and our catalog is far from complete.  We expect to have a full catalog by summer.
• Because of the last two points (BPM and catalog), we consider the site still in a “beta” state.

If you haven’t tried out Pulselocker yet, it’s worth trying the trial, especially if you use Serato DJ. If not – perhaps wait for the Rekordbox integration …. or maybe Traktor might finally jump on this game soon? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below. 

Recreating The EQ Section Of Richie Hawtin’s Model 1 Mixer In Ableton Live

On the new PLAYdifferently Model 1 mixer designed by Richie Hawtin, there’s a unique approach to the actual mixing section. Instead of a ‘traditional’ 3-band EQ, there are two filters and a “parametric EQ”. But for many DJs, the only way they’ll be able to try this style of mixing is by shelling out over $3,000 on the mixer – so DJ Soo has created an Ableton device that allows anyone to try out a very similar workflow. Keep reading for a free download!

A Unique EQ Section On PLAYdifferently’s Model 1

With the much-hyped Ritchie Hawtin and Andy Rigby-Jones PLAYdifferently Model 1 mixer making its official announcement last week, we’ve gained another high-end audiophile mixer designed for a niche crowd of sound quality obsessed DJs. Alongside the Rane MP2015, Vestax/STP’s Phoenix, and the Funktion-One FF6.2, the Model 1 appeals to those looking for a throwback to the classic, rotary-style mixers of the past, but with modern features and design in mind.

Perhaps one of the most obvious changes on the Model 1 are the EQ controls, which are different from just about any mixer on the market:

Rather than the standard 3 or 4 pots to allow either cutting or gaining a frequency spectrum band (generally highs, mids, and lows), the Model 1 uses high pass and low pass filters to cut out frequencies and then a single cut/boost knob alongside a sweepable frequency knob for the mids. Although this is fairly typical in studio and live sound mixing consoles (generally used to isolate feedback-causing frequencies and cutting them), it seems like a first for a DJ mixer.

I was really interested in trying out this unique EQ setup, but shelling out $3600 just for the novelty of experimenting with the design wasn’t happening. Fortunately, the PLAYdifferently promotional literature – and even the labels on the mixer itself – is fairly specific with its parameters. Combined with the powerful macro features in Ableton, it’s not hard to create a reasonable emulation of the EQs using stock Ableton plugins.

Making the Model 1 EQ in Ableton

As mentioned, the Model 1 EQ consists of two filters and an EQ with a frequency sweep. We’ll start by adding the relevant Ableton plugins to controls those parameters:

1. Start by loading up an Auto Filter, an EQ8, another Auto filter, and a Utility
2. Select all the plugins and group all the effects in a single Effect Rack by right-clicking and selecting Group
3. Start assigning controls to Macro knobs:

Low Pass Filter: Let’s map the Low Pass Filter first:

• On the Auto Filter, switch the Filter Slope to 12 (see below) and turn the Resonance down to 0.

• Assign the Freq knob to Macro 1 by right-clicking on the Filter Freq knob and assigning it to Macro 1.
• For the most amount of transparency in the sound, we want the plugin to fully bypass when Low Pass is completely open – so assign the plugin on/off switch to Macro 1 as well.
• Rename the plugin and Macro 1 to “LPF” by right-clicking it and selecting “Rename”

Sculpting EQ: Next, we’ll map the sweepable EQ:

• Turn off all the filters on the EQ except for one Bell filter:

• Select the activated EQ filter and map the Gain to Macro 2
• Map the Freq knob to Macro 3
• The Model 1 promotional material states that the mid EQ has a “wide” Q, so set the Q knob to a lower number – I used .5
• Rename the plugin to “SCULPT” and Macro 2 to “Cut/Boost” and Macro 3 to “FREQ”

High Pass Filter

• First, switch the Auto Filter to a High Pass filter
• As with the LPF, change the Slope to 12 and the Res to 0
• Map the Freq knob to Macro 4, as well as the device’s on/off button
• Rename the plugin and Macro 4 to “HPF”

Gain

• On the Utility, map the Gain knob to Macro 6
• Since the Gain knob does not completely mute the sound (rather bottoms out at -35db), we should also map the Mute button to the same Macro, so that when the knob is turned all the way down, the volume is completely cut off.

Mapping Parameters

So once all of the Macros are assigned, we need to adjust the mappings so they function according to the Model 1 parameters. This will make sure that the final result is similar to the Model 1 in terms of what you’re able to control.

• Click on the Map button at the top of the Rack to open the Macro Mappings window
• On the SCULPT Frequency parameter, set the Min to 70 Hz and the Max to 7.00 kHz
• On the SCULPT Gain parameter, leave the Min to -15 dB, and set the Max to +6 dB
• On the LPF Device On parameter, set the Min to 127 and the Max to 126
• On the LPF Frequency parameter, set the Min to 500 Hz and the Max to 19.9 Hz
• On the HPF Device On parameter, set the Min to 1 and the Max to 0
• On the HPF Frequency parameter, set the Min to 26 Hz and the Max to 1.0 kHz
• On the Utility Gain parameter, set the Min to -35 dB and the Max to +8 dB
• On the Utility Mute parameter, set the Min to 0 and the Max to 1

You’re done! This is now a reasonable facsimile of the PLAYDifferently Model 1 EQ section recreated in Ableton. You can map some more controls if desired: I mapped the Resonance controls of each filter to Macros as well as mapping the Q control on the EQ8 to its own knob to allow for greater control over the audio. You can also adjust the slope of the Filter cutoffs and filter types to taste.

The best way to play around with this would be to map to a physical controller with knobs – Midi Fighter Twister would work exceptionally well for a four-channel version.

This isn’t a frequency-for-frequency exact recreation of the Model 1, and due to limitations in the Ableton mapping design, finding the 0-point on some of these controls is a little tricky, but it will give you an idea of how the unique EQ section works.

Download DJ Soo’s Ableton Rack of the Model 1 EQ here for free!