How to Become a Successful DJ in 2024
I’m always on the lookout for new advice on how to become a better artist. A more in-demand artist. I feel like I’ve read all the blogs, watched all the tutorials, listened to all the podcasts… If an abundance of information was what made you successful, I’d have so many damn diamonds around my neck you couldn’t even look me in the eyes. Yet, I feel all this advice could be replaced by a few simple principles and a lot of action. With this blog post, I want to save you a small fortune in online courses and help you achieve your DJ dreams asap. Let me know if it works for you!
How to Become a Successful DJ in 2024
Step 1: Have a Clear Goal
Step 2: Get One Fan
Step 3: Click the Button
Step 1: Have a Clear Goal
Do you know exactly what you want to do? Where you want to be?
I’m asking because the more clearly you can state what your goals are, the easier it will be to achieve them.
Imagine you want to DJ at your local dance music festival. That’s a pretty crazy dream, right? Now that you’ve set that goal, it doesn’t mean it’ll happen magically, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction.
Now you know what you want. You can tell people when they ask you what your goal is. And you can admit to yourself that you have this ambition.
From there, you can be proactive and take small steps towards making it become a reality. For example, you can do some research google things like: Who played there this year? What did they do to get there? What type of music did they play?
If you read a few interviews and poke around the internet for a couple hours, you’ll probably find several several ideas of what you need to work on to get you on the path to playing the festival in the next few years. Maybe you can even contact some DJs or whoever manages the event to ask for some quick advice.
Will it take a whole lot of effort and a whole lot of luck? You bet. Will you have to power through rejection and heartbreak? Of course.
But…
A dream that felt completely wild and unobtainable a minute ago suddenly feels a little more within your reach.
Ok, but what if you don’t know exactly what you want? Well, that’s good too. That means your next goal is to figure out what’s out there. You can go to shows, watch artists online, become a DJ maniac. Every great creator starts as a great fan.
Be that fan until you find a goal worth pursuing.
Step 2: Get One Fan
Have you ever felt like something you released was a flop because it only got 200 views?
If so, now think of your ideal gig at an intimate venue and tell me how many people would be there… I don’t know about you, but the best parties I’ve been to were in rooms filled with no more than 100 people.
If a crowd of a hundred can make a night unforgettable, how come you’re supposed to feel like a loser when 200 people watch your stuff?
Everyone wants to go viral and wake up with a million followers, but followers aren’t fans.
Followers won’t show up when you tour their town, or care when you have a new single out. It doesn’t take a lot of commitment to click follow on a profile, or to click like on a post.
Fans are different because they’re made one at a time, through a genuine connection. Personally, I don’t need fans that I don’t think are awesome. I want fans that I could become a fan of.
So how do we find our next awesome fan? There’s one person in our region that needs what we do, where do we find them? How do we create that connection?
It’s probably not that hard to make one new fan, but if you make one fan, times a million… Well, you do the math.
Step 3: Click the Button
Another thing you need to do is to click the button. And I’m not talking about the Cue button...
What I mean by that is you need to click the Export button, you need to hit the Send button, you need to smash that Upload button.
In other words, you need to act.
If you’re working on a track or a mix, you need to export it and release it to the world. Like, today. Good enough is way better than perfect. You need to get your stuff out there and start working on the next one asap. And then you need to do that a couple hundred more times.
Learning to finish things is such an important skill because it’s one that most people aren’t working on.
Everyone can start a project. That’s the easy part, that’s the part that gets you high. But finishing something takes resilience, and it takes a whole lot of courage.
If you stop procrastinating and you start releasing stuff instead, it will freak you out at first. Once in a while, you’ll release a thing that isn’t up to par. But you’ll also be releasing a lot of great stuff that could’ve died on a hard drive somewhere.
Imagine you’re having a beer with your friends and you’ll only speak when you have something great to say. You’d probably be pretty awkward to hang out with. But when you hang out, you just get in the flow, say some dumb stuff, make some joke that falls flat, but what people remember is that you were part of the conversation.
You need to do this with your creativity also. You need to contribute.
And if what you need to do right now is networking or applying for gigs, don’t overthink that either. Don’t plan for months. Don’t overthink every word of your message.
Just write that email and hit send. Just follow that person you’re terrified of talking to and DM them.
Again, you’ll end up making mistakes, overstepping your boundaries, and whatever else… But the amount of positivity you’ll receive will far outweigh the shame of a few forgivable fumbles.
Set yourself apart by doing the things everyone else is too scared to do.
And don’t wait to be great before you do the thing you want to do. Start by doing the thing, and get better as you’re doing it.
Famous Last Words
Now that you’ve read this, I have something to reveal to you. A shyamalanian twist, if you will. The truth is I didn’t write this post for you, I wrote it for myself. I want to be more successful and I needed something I could come back to when I feel lost, when I forget what my motivation is.
Or maybe I just needed to keep myself accountable, and I’d feel like too much of a hypocrite if I wrote a post about what DJs should do and then I didn’t do it myself.
It’s easy to overthink strategies and overcomplicate to-do lists. There’s only one path to success though, and it sounds like this:
Action - Failure - Reevaluation - Action - Failure - Reevaluation etc etc…