Giving People What They Want Works?
I've admitted here before that I used to be a bit grumpy about taking requests when DJing. I realized that to get out more and play a lot more, I needed to not be such a turd about it.
And, this has really served me well. Not only have I started playing requests happily, I enjoy it because I know I'm doing what people want. + more shows, magically.
For yesterday, I prepared a prefect pool set: six hours of very curated deep house. After about 30 minutes, a lady came up with a huge tip and asked for ’90s country, with a really serious but funny look on her face.
So, within a song, I pivoted playlists and started playing just that. Two songs later, she came up with another $100 (amazing!)
None of this would be possible without using a super-modern program like djay Pro / streaming. The signal was really good at the hotel, so that was nice.
I'm not sure what I was on about with all that no-request stuff. Maybe it was just a mindset and parroting other people and what they were saying.
It's really more fun to give people what they want.
Later on, somebody asked for more rock and roll. And so, again, within a couple of songs, I switched to that while making the lady who gave me the huge tips happy as well.
She left, I went full-on rock. And then I went upbeat dance to close out the three-hour set.
Super fun.
At the end of the day, if you're curating your streaming playlists, and your streaming service knows what kind of music you like, you can create these things on the fly.
For instance, I made an AOR radio playlist on the fly, and I played that for about 30 or 40 minutes, and it was getting a really great response.
A lot of fun yesterday. All I had to do was give people what they wanted.