Dec182011
How To Run A DJ Competition
Several years ago, I decided to give a little something back to the DJing community and put on a DJ competition event. It was during a time when I had entered plenty of live DJ competitions myself and I felt it was a really good way of helping to publicise and promote up and coming DJs.
At the time of the competition, just as it is today, it was a struggle for any unknown DJ to get any bookings without some kind of credibility behind them. I thought that a DJ competition that would give participants the kudos required as well as a prize of a DJ set somewhere so they get to play out live. It’s also just a really nice thing to do. There was no commercial gain or leverage for myself that I got out of this, I just had a lot of fun doing it and I was able to make a few good contacts in the process.
What follows is a list of the things I learned from running this competition over the course of two months and is based on my own personal experiences.
Prizes
Get yourself some good prizes. I managed to find a custom slipmat company who kindly agreed to make a pair of customised slipmats for each placed participant. So I had a pair of “3rd place” slipmats in a bronze colour, a pair of silver coloured “2nd place” ‘mats and a pair of gold “1st place” ‘mats too. It was a nice touch.
I knew a DJ agency at the time who agreed to take on board the winner of the competition in return for a little exposure and promotion of their brand. I added their logo to the flyers and promotional material and held the competition in association with them. It was a good partnership as we were able to offer a top prize of a place on a DJ agency roster for the winner.
I approached a few other companies to try and blag some free stuff too. I managed to get £150 in vouchers from Hard To Find records and UDG sent me a large camouflage DJ bag to give away which was a great prize to be able to offer!
Perhaps I got lucky but I found it fairly easy to get companies to send stuff in for prizes. I made sure I did my research to find the right person to contact in each company and send them a personal email, later followed up with a phone call. You will more chance of a response if you address your letter/email by name rather than a “Dear Sir/Madam”. A few companies such as Vestax and Technics turned me down but that’s only to be expected - not everyone will want to work with you. Make sure you use all the contacts you have and any people you know to beg, steal and borrow prizes for your event. The better the prizes, the more interest you will attract and the bigger your event. If you feel it is necessary, then get a small contract drawn up between yourself and the company supplying the prize so that they don’t change their mind at the last minute.
Venue
The location of your DJ competition is very important. It really helps if the venue is local to you and you have a good relationship with the manager. Perhaps they are a friend, or you know them on first name terms or something. Approaching a venue cold in order to run a DJ competition is a lot more difficult. When you pitch the idea to the manager you should offer to run the competition mid week on one of the venue’s less busy week nights. I found that a Tuesday or Wednesday night is best. You should explain to the manager what it is you want to do and tell them that for every DJ that plays there will be a load of their thirsty friends turning up for the event too. Pubs and bars are the best to approach for things like this - nightclub specific venues are likely to turn you away.
Don’t bullshit or oversell it, but the important thing to let the manager know is that you will be boosting their slow mid-week trade on a regular basis for the next 7 weeks as well as getting press coverage in the local papers too. If you have a plan, some examples of posters and if you have any prizes already secured then this should all be included in your pitch to the manager. If you get lucky the manager may even let you and your judges have a few cheeky free beers during each night.
Make sure the venue can supply a microphone or you bring one along yourself as you will need to announce to the DJs when to start and also to talk to the crowd to inform them of what is going on too. There are likely to be guests in the venue who didn’t come along to watch the DJ competition but who now want to watch and get involved.
Posters
No one will enter the DJ competition if they don’t know it’s happening so get yourself some A3 posters (or larger) made up and put them around the venue. Yes, it’s possible to fly post them around town but not only is this illegal, it’s also not the best use of your time. The people who are most likely to enter the competition and who are most likely to attend as punters are people who go to the venue already. Put a few posters up around the seated areas indoors, around and in the DJ booth and most importantly in the window of the venue. Liaise with the manager as to appropriate placement of the posters and don’t put posters up with sellotape - the manager was quite fond of their wallpaper till I started ripping out large chunks of it. Oops.
Any bar worth knowing will be happy to pay for the printing of the posters for you. After all it is to promote a night for them. Don’t let them make you pay for printing posters. Make sure you put the full address of the venue somewhere on the poster too so that it is 100% clear where the event is taking place.
Make sure you include all the logos of each of your sponsors on the poster nice and big. If you don’t have much room, then whoever donates the better prizes give them more space on the poster. Keep the poster simple. If I remember, my poster had “DJ COMPETITION” in block caps across the top, a picture of a turntable and something like “pick up an entry form at the bar”. Also on the poster were the prizes on offer and a closing date for entries. Don’t put too much info on the poster and don’t use really small text either. People just wont read it. Print the poster in full colour too. If you can get away with sizes larger than A3 then all the better!
Application forms
These can be small A5 pieces of paper, black and white printed forms for DJs to enter the competition. Keep these on or behind the bar and make sure the bar staff know where they are if anyone asks for a form. As an option you can also have an online form for people to apply but paper is the best way forwards with this. It’s important you have a record of the names and contact details of each of the entrants so you should ask for at least the following information:
- DJ Name
- Real Name
- Phone Number
- Music style/genre
- I will be using: Vinyl / CD / Laptop (tick)
- Today’s Date.
- Signature
You may want to ask for their home address, their favourite colour and if they like jam, but as long as you have the above info this will be fine. You also need to make sure the venue has suitable DJing equipment available or you need to provide you own. If for example you can not get hold of vinyl equipment you need to make this clear on the poster/application form (e.g “no vinyl DJs”, or “no laptop DJs” if you cannot source the right equipment). Don’t let DJs bring their own equipment as it is a nightmare changing over turntables and mixers at the end of each set. Even if you could change the equipment over like an F1 pit crew, you don’t want the responsibility of someone’s dodgy kettle lead frying the venue’s fusebox.
Have the following tickboxes too:
- I am over 18.
- I do not receive regular paid DJ work.
This kind of covers you so that you are not attracting minors into a drinking establishment and the second tick box keeps the competition fair by only having amateurs apply. This is important because I remember one DJ competition I entered where I played my socks off only to have a pro DJ enter the competition who blew everyone out of the water. I’d love to name names but it was a well known UK Garage producer of the time. I didn’t feel it was that fair. So if your competition is for up and coming bedroom DJs then make it clear.
Structure
You need to be able to structure your competition into a series of heats, semi finals and a grand final. Work out how many entrants you have and from there you can work out how many weeks you can run the competition for.
Let’s say you have 30 DJs apply and you have the venue for one night per week. You can run 4 weeks of heats with 7 DJs per night. The top 3 DJs from each heat go through to the semi finals. This gives you 12 semi finalists so you can have 2 weeks of semi finals with 6 DJs per night and the top 2 from each semi making the final. You then have a final showcase of 4 DJs and the whole competition runs for 7 weeks.
You may have noticed that showcasing 7 DJs over 4 weeks comes to 28 entries and not 30. This is to give you a couple in reserve so that if any of the DJs don’t show or are late and miss their spot then you can contact a reserve DJ to fill their place. Placements should go on a first come first served basis so whoever were the last DJs to hand in an application form should go on the reserve list which is why you should ask for ‘todays date’ on the application form.
Of course, you may have more than 30 DJs apply, you may have less. You may only have the venue for 5 weeks and not 7. You’ll just have to use a bit of common sense to work out a structure for your competition to run but remember you don’t have to give every applicant a spot and you don’t have to try and fit them all in.
The last thing you want is for any of the DJs to turn up late. So what you do is you make sure they turn up half an hour before the start of the night. If the first DJ is to go on at 7.30 then the DJs need to be there by 7pm. As each DJ arrives you get them to choose what order they go on at random. What I found works best is to get some straws from behind the bar and cut them in half. Half poked into each straw is a rolled up piece of paper with a number on it corresponding to the order that the DJ goes on. They simply pull out a straw and go on in that order. Make sure you make a note of the names and order the DJs are going in so you can fill this out on the judges scoresheets before the start of the night.
I had a rule that any DJ arriving later than 7.45 is instantly disqualified no matter what the reason. If you have never run a DJ competition before you will not know the headache involved from DJs turning up late and trying to track them down. Not only is it unfair on the other DJs who have made the effort to turn up on time but it is also unprofessional. Until you are a worldwide superstar, people will not wait for you no matter how big your ego is… and even then, those who are superstar DJs never turned up late for gigs while making a name for themselves. It’s YOUR event - don’t take any shit 
Be firm, but fair.
Heats
You need to give each DJ a respectable amount of time to do their thing while still being able to fit everyone in. I found that in the heats you can give each DJ a 20 minute set and allow 10 minutes between each DJ finishing and the next one starting. With 7 DJs per night you can start the competition at 7.30pm and be finished by 11pm which should be ideal for the venue. Again, this is to be negotiated with the venue management. If you have fewer DJs you can give them longer sets or finish your nights earlier. Just use your brain and communicate with the venue manager as much as possible.
Organise the heats so that you have a mixture of genres each week. On the DJ application forms you can sort each application by genre and make sure you have a mixture of styles on each night. There are both pros and cons for having mixed styles each night as opposed to grouping let’s say all the DnB DJs together on one night, but I feel by mixing it up you keep the crowd and judges interested.
Contact each entrant and email them the info they need to attend. Let then know the start time of the event, location, prizes on offer and a brief reminder of house rules. Remind them of your email address and give them your phone number of they need to contact you on the night.
When you are deep in the mix you will know how time can fly by without you even realising it. The same applies when the contestants are mixing too. They will not know how long they have left on the clock so it is a nice courtesy to go over and let them know when they have 5 minutes left of their set so they can finish how they want to.
You’ll also want to get yourself an MC for the night. No, I mean in the traditional sense, someone who can welcome everyone at the start of the night and introduce each of the acts before they start. The MC will also need to announce winners and do all the vocal communication to let the crowd know what is going on. I simply mention this because if you are not comfortable using a microphone yourself, find someone who is.
Judges
What competition is complete without a panel of judges? You need to be able to secure yourself at least three judges to mark the contestants and decide on winners. You may even think about being a judge yourself.
It goes without saying that you can not pick just anybody to be a judge. Each judge needs to have a bit of credibility, some kind of experience and they need to know what to look for to keep the judging impartial and fair.
When I ran my competition, I was a judge myself as I was a resident bar DJ at the time. I asked a couple of my friends to join me too, one was a veteran mobile DJ with many years of experience in every dance genre imaginable and another judge ran his own events in London. These were all people who knew their stuff. Not everyone was available on every night so I mixed up the judges each week and had some on rotation, but each week there were at least three judges all with industry experience of some sort. If you know any big name DJs you can bring along to judge the finals even better!
Make sure the judges have the best seats in the house so they can fully see the DJ and hear everything they are doing clearly. Don’t stick them where there isn’t a speaker or behind a pillar or something daft.
Something else that is very important to remember is that you can not under any circumstances have DJs enter the competition if they are friends of the judges. It makes things awkward if one of the DJs goes up to shake the hand of one of the judges just after he’s finished his set. Use a bit of common sense and if someone wants to enter who is a friend of yours, then make sure you aren’t one of the judges on the night they are playing.
It is entirely up to you what criteria the judges should be marking. I think I went for the following to be marked out of 5:
- Mixing ability
- Tune selection
- Showmanship and style
- Technical skill
- Crowd reaction
…and a few others. Crowd reaction is important to have in there but it is so difficult to judge. The reason you have crowd reaction in there as an attribute to be judged is so that each DJ will bring a crowd of their friends along to spend money behind the bar. This is essentially why you are being allowed the venue in the first place so it is important that each of the DJs know to bring their friends along to cheer for them. However it is difficult to judge crowd reaction because inevitably some DJs will bring more friends than other and some may not bring anyone along at all. You can’t mark someone down just because they didn’t bring many friends along so you have to try and be as fair as possible here.
I got a load of judging forms made up too to make everything a bit easier which had a space to write the DJ name along with a pre-written list of each of the attributes to be judged.
When the last DJ has finished you need to allow 15 minutes to half an hour for the judges to add up their scores in secret and work out who the winners are. Sometimes scores are tied and the judges will need to debate who to put through to the next round so they need a quiet corner of the venue to do this.
Press and Publicity
To help get more DJs applying to your DJ competition, you should be getting in touch with local newspapers, local radio and also music magazines to tell them about what you are planning to do. Ideally you already have some prizes on board so you can use this to help sell the night to DJs who are thinking of applying. Local radio and local newspapers will love stuff like this because often they want desperately to look ‘down with the kids’ so getting a mention or even a feature should be really easy.
Once you know who is in the finals and everything is rocking, you should get in touch with local newspapers and music magazines to tell them the date of when your grand final is. Chances are they will send one of their reporters down to write up the event and take a couple of photos too. This looks great for you and also is a nice bit of exposure for the venue too as a thank you for letting you use their premises.
Common Sense
To be honest, a lot of this is all just common sense and forward planning but I certainly learned a lot from doing something like this and I just wanted to share the experience with you. DJ competitions have had, in my eyes at least, a bit of a bad time lately. Let me briefly explain; I’ll receive offers of DJ competitions into my inbox which will involve me putting together a 30 minute mix and submitting it to be judged online. Fine, but more often than not the competition turns into a publicity contest where whoever has the most plays or likes gets the prize, regardless of talent. Surely that’s what a competition is all about, the talent, the tune selection, the mixing ability, the style, the flair? I don’t beleive there are enough live DJ competition events happening here and now, there’s not enough real talent being showcased out there, especially when its possible to throw together a mix on a computer in a few mouse clicks. I hope to see the live DJ competition kept going for a while longer as it truly is the only real way to showcase up and coming talent in a real environment, using real equipment and playing to real people.
Bench have teamed up with Mixcloud to offer aspiring DJ’s the chance to play an hour set at the sold-out 
Renowned music download store 
Following on from my previous post about the 
The project 
This competition really appealed to me and I got quite excited about the prospect of jetting around the world with some of the top DJs playing for such a well known brand.
Aspiring producers are able to submit their original productions to a special microsite where they will be rated by members of the public and judged by a panel of leading A&R bods.
