AI is Coming for Our Jobs, How Can We Use AI to Improve What We Do NOW & The Future of DJing with AI 🤖

On this episode of the Grow My DJ Business Podcast Cream & Gary W Discuss: 

• Smart individuals will leverage AI to enhance their work rather than replace it.
• The importance of human connection in live performances cannot be overstated.
• DJs should be proactive in adapting to new technologies like AI.
• DJs must navigate the balance between client requests and their professional expertise.
• The future of music creation will increasingly involve AI, but human creativity remains essential.

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Chapters

• 0:00 The Impact of AI on Jobs
• 3:27 AI in the DJ Industry
• 6:17 The Role of DJs in Live Settings
• 8:54 AI vs. Human DJs: A Venue Perspective
• 11:40 The Future of DJing with AI
• 14:22 Practical Uses of AI for DJs
• 17:18 AI in Music Production
• 20:12 The Evolution of Music Creation with AI
• 25:38 Navigating AI in Music Production
• 29:29 The Magic of Nightlife Venues
• 39:28 The Role of DJs in Shaping Atmosphere

Transcript

0:41

All right, what's up guys? Welcome to the hundred and eighty third episode of the Girl My DJ Business Podcast. My name is Cream. Gary W. We're gonna dive right into it, man. Yeah, let's rock. I'm ready. guess we coming for our jobs? I feel like this question is asked across no matter what job you're in right now. I have certain people that are like, Cream, their AI is gonna do everything. It's gonna take over the world. No one's gonna have any jobs. We're gonna lose all this stuff. And then I have the other people that are like... on the opposite end of that spectrum that have no idea, don't use it, and don't care. every super high-end podcast, business podcast, marketing podcast that I listen to, they all said, well, I hope you know how to be a plumber. I hope you know how to be an electrician. They're all saying those are the safe jobs currently. Not that every single person needs to be a plumber, right? That's just stupid. But. just saying that like the trades are so important right now. The things that, you know, people were taught in high school back in the 50s, the 50s and the 60s and the 70s become relevant again, because it is taking over a vast majority of middle, look at middle management. getting cut out of a lot of major corporations, Amazon, Google, right? The, you having three people, I think of office space. You having three people to answer to office space is an old movie from the nineties for anybody that's listening to this. You having three people to answer to, well, those middle people are getting cut out because AI can do that minutia job, right? You need the people to do certain things and certain people are just getting cut out and it's, and it's becoming a little more lean for these bigger corporations to make a little more money. And there's a trickle down effect, right? And. smart people are going to use AI in smart ways. Right? A vast majority of people use AI as Google. Right? But high level thinking people and very, very smart people are using AI to create, create jobs and to eliminate jobs and to let's lean up our, our business. Um, and I think in the DJ world, We have to be very careful. This is something that we have thought about for many, many years. And I never thought about this in an AI perspective 15 years ago, but I did always think that at some point maybe I could DJ from my bedroom in three different venues. Like that was a dream that I've always had. Like can I just stay home and make a bunch of money and put myself on a screen and DJ in three different venues? talked about that during COVID times, right? right. And like get paid, you know, two 50 a place, you know, and at that time, like, you know, whatever, if 15 years ago, if I was making seven 50, I was speaking, be ecstatic, be ecstatic now. Right. I never thought about it in the, in the aspect of like, there would be no person at all DJ. Um, but that's becoming a reality. And if you think about the way that we consume music on a day to day basis, or at least I do, I'll put on grateful dead radio and then. you just let like the algorithm and AI take over. And it's almost like you don't miss with music that, you know, it's, there's not a lot of skips happening. It's exactly what I want to listen to. And. really good in that way where it really knows you're listening history and it feeds you the music that you're gonna like. It's very good at that. Right. So, you know, why can't a bar, I'm not saying a nightclub where there's a stage and a DJ, but like, why can't a bar just put on a playlist, a high energy playlist? And maybe you switch it up every hour or every 45 minutes. Maybe you switch the genre and it's like, okay, well, I mean, I don't want to give people like the sauce to this, but like, it's like, you know, here's five, here's five artists that we should play for these 45. It's here's five artists. should play for this 45 minutes. Sure. might take a little bit for somebody to have a responsibility to do, but if you're looking to cut costs, it's not outside of the realm of possibility. I think I'm gonna be a defendant of the DJ on this one. I think you took a very proactive AI stance for bars. I think no matter what, in most cases, a DJ is needed, right? You had already said for the clubs, for the stages, I think that's important. A big part of what people who are going out to listen to music and to dance and to... consume what we do, like the stage and the visuals and the artists are a big part of that right now in this day and age, right? In a day where the DJ was tucked in the corner and all that stuff didn't matter, I might agree with you a little a little more. ah I still think there is who are the people that are in front of me? What are they into? What are those those cues that I'm taking as the DJ to adjust the music I'm playing? When is the right time to go from more chill music to more high energy music. I think all of that can't be done by AI. ah And I think that's an important part of what we do as DJs in a live DJ setting that AI can't replicate. AI can't look at the crowd and take those cues and realize when to change the genre or to speed up or slow down. I think this whole podcast is talking about DJs reading a room and playing to the crowd and making the venue the most money. In that respect, I think I will disagree as far as is AI coming for our jobs and is it taking DJ sets away? Let's approach this with the question then of what venues does this make sense in? Right. And I would argue, we already said big stages, DJs, the focal point of the room. They'll always have a DJ there a hundred percent of the time, or you'll have some kind of AI bot at some point DJing, but that's way, that's way, that could be further out like this, like August Cantina in Disney world and in Disneyland. Yeah. DJ Rex. uh You could have that. Like that could happen at some point. I'm not saying we're close to that now, but we could be closer than we know. But people are paying money to go see producers and artists go perform, right? And that's, it's a concert and that's, that's a whole different thing. I think mid level spots, your, your lounges where you have five or 600 people coming out to dance, you need a DJ in that room a hundred percent of the time. Absolutely. But You know, what's the percentage of venues that are high level booking? So you have a stage DJs, the focal point. And what's the percentage of venues that are this mid level where it's four or 500 people, there's those are dwindling. These places are dwindling rapidly. So I would argue that a good percentage of places that hire DJs are local bars, probably 75%. If you were looking on a national level. bright and you could and you could probably and maybe more is right. I was being very uh probably very uh lenient there. I would argue that in a lot of those local just bars, you could get away with AI just playing for the night and have it do just as good a job. If not better, because a lot of the times the bartender who knows the music better on a Friday and Saturday night than the bartender. Right. Well, yeah, agreed. But those venues maybe shouldn't even have a DJ. Like, that's what we're talking about. I think that's the venues that we probably shouldn't be placing DJs in are the venues that would maybe consider the AI or the Spotify or whatever. like, those are going to be the lowest paying that are the least popular with the DJs. And it's like, we probably shouldn't even put DJs there anyway, kind of thing. So it's like, maybe they're better off using the AI DJ because like, what's the point of even putting a DJ there anyway in the first place? I totally understand that, but it is the vast majority of DJ bookings. Is it, think, think that mid-level where it's a bar where people go to dance and hang out and watch a DJ, it's still, that aspect of watching a DJ is still at the forefront of the mid-level places even. Think about the venues that we book, right? Like, I won't name names, but like some of those mid-level bars still get packed out and a lot of people go and they want to hear music and dance and see a DJ. Those places, 100 % those places need, need, need, need a DJ. In my brain, it's like the low-level places that we are saying, we even want to work with these places anymore? Anyway, those are the places. Right, right. Those are the places. But I'm saying across America, those are probably a vast majority of how people get booked. I'd say maybe like a quarter. Think about our own business. What percentage of those venues do we book right now? Maybe a quarter, a handful. we are in a major metropolitan area. And I think that's a huge, and you, you know, you have a spattering of those across the country and that's where you have the influx of those mid-level places. You know, you're, you're Phillies, you're Detroit's, you're Houston's, you're Miami. Well, Miami's more high level. Um, I mean, Tampa would be like a good, like that's all mid-level. And then you get to like Orlando. which is building currently, but you have, it's a, it's a vast majority of just like bar bookings, you know? And I feel like that's kind of what a lot of the country is. can kind of getting off track here, but like, it coming for our jobs? Like you, like your job or my job? No, no. But are those, you know, coming up quote unquote, like when you're on the come up, those like gigs, I think those could fade at some point. That's unfortunate because that is really important to the growth of a DJ, in my opinion. But somebody just got some influence, DJ just got booked, they've only DJed for a week and they're gonna get a whole lot of money next week and so is it really important? No, not really, I guess. Man, shooters gotta shoot out here. I just saw that yesterday. And then whoever this influencer was like, I gotta learn how to DJ in a week and it's like, this is fucking ridiculous. But that's a topic maybe for another podcast. just talked about that a little bit on the last podcast, but. I know, but that came across my feet. was like, Jesus. Anyway. we brought this even up, right? Obviously, AIs is such a big topic amongst everything. It's all the podcasts, our families, our moms are like, I don't even understand AI, right? It's a big conversation point right now. And that's one of the reasons why we wanted to address it. But we had a situation where a DJ was late to a gig and we didn't know, they didn't let us know, right? We didn't know that the DJ was late. The manager never texts us like, hey, Gary Creme, where's the DJ? And this is like an over an hour into the set, Like 11, 1130 at night and the DJ's still not there. And the manager finally texts us like, hey guys, the DJ never showed up. He's like, I didn't even realize Spotify was doing a really good job. And I was like, my God. And this is not at a low level place. This is a high level place, 1130 on a Saturday night. Place has about, probably at that point, 400 people in there. 450 people in there, lying around the block, kind of thing, and they don't notice that the DJ's not there? What the fuck? That Spotify playlist must have been killing it. Well, in the defense of the manager and whoever else is there, and the Spotify playlist, this particular venue doesn't have like a really prominent stage. unless you're really looking for the DJ, like you're not just gonna see an empty stage and an LED with no DJ kind of thing. But. I mean, listen, it wasn't late late in the night where people were like trying to party. They were just kind of warming up. So nobody's going to complain about the music at that point of the night between 10 30, 11 30. You're probably not getting getting your complaints because when do people complain? Well, when they're looking to party, they're a little drunk and then they also have the balls because they've had a couple of drinks to go complain about the music, right? You're not at that portion of the night yet. I mean, this could be an argument of that. Maybe you guys could just put an opener on or maybe we could start later. You know, that's. scary part, right? Like maybe the hours go down and then they want to pay less money or you know, that's where my brain goes when I start thinking about this. Yeah, and that's why it's important to, you with all of this technology coming so fast, it is so important to be on top of your shit constantly. You better be early. You better perform right from the get go and you need to, you know, just be present. Like, and if you're going to be late, like you ain't, you can't work anymore. You know what I mean? Because there's just way too many factors that are against the DJ at this point in time where You know, if you're not having the same crowds, we talk about this over and over and over again, you're having the same crowds and the money's going down and yada, yada, yada. You're looking to be replaced. So especially you got to think about this. Well, AI now is also coming for your for your job in a way. How many owners that have no idea what AI is are going to their managers and saying, is there any way we can cut the DJ and just use AI to play our music? Like, you know that those conversations are being had somewhere. They're coming. They're coming with the people, like I said, the people that are a little um more advanced than thinking and thinking more like further down the road. Those people are thinking about this and having those conversations. Yeah, and I think if you're a DJ and a manager and owner are talking to you about this, know, position yourself as showing your value, right? There is still a lot of value in having a live performer and someone who's good at what they do. So if someone is interested in using AI, and they're talking to you about it, I would I would try to position something as a way to create playlists for when there isn't entertainment for when a DJ doesn't need to read a crowd to keep your bar making money, you know, like Maybe if you create this playlist during dinner or on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, when there's no DJ, like that's the way to position it and show you could bring value in helping your venue use AI without taking your job away kind of thing. I'm laughing because I'm wondering if that was one of my playlists. yeah, you made playlists for that place, right? I made playlists for that place and I have like a pre-party playlist. That'd be interesting to know. I gotta ask him. That's funny. It probably was. I didn't think of it till just now, but. Alright, so let's talk a little bit about how DJs can use AI right now. And we just came up with this quick list because we all should be using this in our businesses, whether from a business standpoint, checking out our books, looking at our expenses, getting prepared for tax season. There's a ton of ways to use it in that way. There's a ton of ways to use it in a creative way for your social media. But let's talk a little bit about like the music side of it. There's a few things that I came up with. I think you take the first one because you would use this for production more than I like for production, there's a million ways. If you're just making mashups and edits, it's like finding vocals that are in key of a track. AI, give me the top 100 pop song, pop vocals of the last five years that are in this key. right? Instead of having to go search for that, it's just an instantaneous way to get that information. um Right, that would take a lot longer than just typing it into whatever AI chatbot you're using. I mean, creating vocals, coming up with ideas for vocals to then pitch a vocalist, using various AI uh websites to create a vocal that you created in someone else's voice or pitching it up or down. Like there are so many, so many ways from a music production standpoint. And maybe we'll have Perrarion to talk more in depth, but that's just like something on the very basic level. simply writing, writing a song, right? Pitching, pitching an idea and then writing a song and then bringing that to a vocalist, right? Like it's, it's a great use of it. for sure. And then from a DJ perspective, just preparing your music for events, right? Preparing music for gigs. Like, you know, maybe you put in, I haven't done this yet, but maybe you put in like, I don't know, like top 25, like you know that, okay, it's an old school hip hop set that you're gonna do. And you haven't prepped for that kind of a set in a while. Give me your top 50 old school hip hop party songs. Boom. There go. And you can kind of go through it see if there's any holes that you're maybe missing in your crates or, you know, ideas. We all have songs that we've forgotten about, right? So like, it's a great way to go and you can do that in all the genres across the board and then create really great, tight crates out of that. As a DJ, I think this is the most valuable use of AI right now. I'll give you some examples. We were doing like a Lana Del Rey brunch, which is random, but I'm like, what other artists are similar to Lana Del Rey? And they gave me a list of artists that I could then go download or send to the DJ to be prepared for the set. Hey, I'm AI, I'm going to DJ in a new city. What are the top 20 most popular songs in Tampa right now as a way to prepare? Hey Siri, hey Siri, hey AI, I'm creating a pop tech house folder. What are the most popular pop tech house songs from the last five years? Hey, I'm opening for this artist. What are some songs that I could play that are not from this artist but would fit in a set? Like there's a thousand ways to use this. We had a 2000 party that a DJ like wasn't really comfortable playing it. I was like, yo, just go to AI and type in what are the... one of the most popular songs from the 2000s that I can play in a DJ set and like it does all the homework for you and then you just have to go and prepare those crates and download them until all the songs and I'm sure we're going to get out to a point where you won't even have to go do that. You'll just be they'll be able to create the crate for you. We're going to get to that point, which is going to be sick. does crate hackers do that currently? I haven't used their, their service. ah So I'm wondering if they already have integrated AI into it to create the crates for you, ah which would be super. And then you can go through the crate and like delete what you don't like, you know? Beatport, you could create, I'm sure you could create, create using AI from those two places if you're paying for the streaming option. Or if you're not, that's something you're gonna be able to do pretty quickly. Because guys, every one of these companies that we're talking about, every company that's in business and looking to continue to grow, and we talk about adapt or die, right? You have to figure out how to use AI to your advantage or people are gonna move past you as a DJ. If you're not using it to prepare or to create your sets or however the path may lead us in the next two years, if you're not doing it, a thousand other DJs are doing it, are gonna pass you by. This is gonna be a tool in the toolkit that you have to use. So if you're not, spend a day. Spend a day getting to know your AI bot, which one's the best for you and how you can use it. Use AI to tell you how to use AI in your business. seriously, I'm a DJ, this is what I do, these are the type of places that I play. How can I use AI to better my business, to better my DJ business? we all, not we all, a lot of people will put things, new things like this off because it's not a part of their weekly kind of, like their weekly to-do list, right? Like just let's get used to it first, and we all know how that is, rip the band-aid off, get used to it and make it a part of your weekly ritual while preparing for gigs, and you'll just become a better DJ for it at the end of the day and faster. Like I know it might, sound overwhelming, but AI is pretty easy and intuitive and it's just very user friendly. So just rip the Band-Aid off and do it because there's no downside to it. Right. Even for private events or weddings, if that's the side of the business that you're on, if a bride and groom give you a must playlist, take that must playlist, plug it into AI and ask what are other popular wedding songs that fit with all of these songs. And then you have an entire playlist that's created. You don't have to go through a single crate other than putting the music in Serato and putting it in the wedding crate of however you're going to organize it. One other one other thing that I was thinking about, uh you know, in preparing for this podcast, used AI to figure out what other topics can we talk about? How can we use AI? How can we talk about this to our audience? You could use it to analyze and create more accurate metadata, which is pretty sweet to get all that year and genre and all of that stuff that would take so long to go through and create to have AI do it for you. Like that's a huge hack. I'm gonna go do that immediately. I'm gonna do it too because I'm OCD and I like having all that information. Yeah, you have a big when you put out music you have a huge metadata you yeah how you put out videos on how to put out the metadata when we put it out on send me music and there's no information. like, I don't even know who sent this to me, let alone what genre it is, what key it is, what BPM it is. Uh-oh, did the metadata for our last pack, was that gone through properly? uh Marco, sorry, I was throwing you under the bus there on the podcast. uh But like so easy to use, right? There it is. There it is. If people don't input it correctly, there, you could just use it in a way to organize things so quickly. In something that I said before in production, like, you know, use AI to write the song for you. mean, we're seeing this happen in real time where they're creating AI music. They're full bands of AI music, you know? And what is the, the, the group that just, the group that just came, was it Sunset or Sundown? monthly listeners, and people then found out that this was an AI band. Velvet Sundown, that's what it is. Yeah, Velvet Sundown. It's crazy. It went viral and people started talking about it because it was so popular and people were downloading and listening. And then once it went viral, obviously, you know, like the numbers went crazy, but they ended up changing sort of the description on their Spotify. It now says, synthetic music project guided by human creative direction and an artistic provocation designed to challenge the boundaries of authorship, identity, and the future of music itself in the age of AI. So they just said like, we're gonna do this and make great music and people are gonna listen to it and then we're gonna tell everybody that's AI and it's gonna create this debate and this talking point of like, what is too far? How do we, it creates a very gray area. Let's just say that. Do you, I know this is different because a machine is making the music. There's no human behind it. There's only like human direction. ah But do you think like when electronic music kind of first was introduced, there was like this gray area of, you're not really an artist. Do you do this electronically or you do this on the computer? You know. like the sample driven hip hop beats, people are saying, well, you're just making music from other people's music. Whenever music uh changes and adapts and moves to something new, the last generation is gonna talk shit. It just is what it is, right? No matter what. I still think there's a really cool way that music can get created. Good music can get created. And as long as there's a AI stamp on that, I'm okay with it. Good music is good music is good music. I think we're like, it's like, we took Drake's voice and made this song, that I don't agree with. That has to be like AI, Drake has to get a piece of that, you know, like that and sign off on the track. I don't agree with that. But if new projects are starting that are specifically made by AI with human... with human creative direction, like I'm totally cool with that. Right. I'm trying to think of what happens when you sample the AI. Are they signed to something? I guess that's something that that's a bridge that they'll cross down the road. I think all that muck and the copyright and the where is it signed and who gets royalties and all that is like, it's gonna be terrible. And I would prefer to not even talk about it. Yeah, we'll leave that to the lawyers. Right. Like leave that, we'll leave that to the, to the backend. Um, but let's go back to velvet sundown real quick because I listened to a couple of the songs and as you listened to it, you were like, well, I don't even listen to this music, but this is music that I actually listen to daily. the genre of their most popular song is definitely liens classic rock. Right? I think you said that like, if my dad had this on in the car, like I wouldn't know. classic rock station and that came on, I wouldn't blink twice. I'd be like, oh, I probably wouldn't know it, but I'd be like, this fits in with everything I just listened to. It has this very zeppelin feel at the beginning and then like the vocals kind of feel very Americana, which is, you know, it would be broadly consumed by a big group of people. So it would be accepted in my eyes and it seems like it has. And then as I went down the tracks, like ah there's like an indie rock band called Krung Bin and Krung Bin like it's very much that style. And I'm like, wow, I would, I'd mess with this. It's very what kind of the indie movement has gone down over the last three to five years. ah So it was really interesting to, I'm wondering what kind of direction that the people behind this gave the AI in order to create this music. And I have to imagine that it was just trying to paint a broad brush of what's easily consumed by a mass amount of people. Yeah, like the prompts would be interesting to see. I would also say that there's probably a lot more human interaction with it than people think. It's not like it just, like you went to some platform and it just spit out this song, but maybe, I don't know. I'm sure like certain elements of the song, they put in like, I want this percussive element to sound like this and like it spit out and they probably put it into a DAW and it worked, you know? Yeah. But I'm sure there was also other elements that they really had to finesse to get to where they wanted it to be, I would imagine. But maybe not. Maybe he just spit out a full song and they used it. I don't know. It's interesting that Timbaland's kind of gotten behind this as far as the, you know, the idea of it. And, and he's, you know, he's always been forward thinking, right? He's always had futuristic sounds in his production. Um, he's always been forward thinking in his production and it's just interesting to hear a major producer come out and say, you know, I'm on board with this. Yeah, I mean, he's always been really tech. It's tech forward people that are into this, right? The people who are the early adopters of technology are going to early adopt AI and see the value in it, you know? And Timbaland's always been an early adopter. He was an early adopter in crypto and in NFTs and, you know, creating music and releasing music in that way. And this is, it doesn't surprise me that he is early on AI, you know? All right. Cool. We knew that topic was gonna go for a while, but it's important. It's really top of mind right now for anyone that's running a business or wants to be really successful. You have to use AI in your everyday right now in 2025 and moving forward. It's gonna just be part of your everyday life. So get used to it. Great. So next topic, something that I was thinking about because it's sort of rare these days that there are venues that are just like magic where everything is clicking on all cylinders. There's a packed room every weekend. There's lines around the block. People are buying bottles. We're, as DJs, super excited to get in there because it's busy and the crowd is excited and the sound is good and there's great lighting. And there's a great staff from the bar backs all the way up to the GM. And there's just this synergy. People are happy to be there. Everyone's making money. The music's great. And you're just this machine and that machine only lasts for so long, right? It's, like, maybe it's one year, maybe it's five years. If you're, if you're really lucky, occasionally there's certain places that last longer than that, but You don't realize how good something is until it's gone. So I ask you, what were some spots that were magic? And really, more so, why were they magic? It's a good question. The one offhand that we always talk about on this podcast because you and I both work there is West five. West five was an incredible space. Number one, it had two different rooms. They were able to keep the back room closed until a certain time, um, and kind of build a crowd up in their front bar. And then it was, go ahead. in Hoboken, New Jersey. uh It was one of probably like six nightclubs we had at the time. Right now, there's one nightclub in Hoboken. So just to give you guys a little context on like sort of what we're talking about. This was 10 years ago. This was 10 years ago. Yeah, a little more than that even right. ah So and actually, they were a successful bar club prior to that called Lounge 11. And then as things as things have changed had changed in the industry, they remodeled and renamed, which we can get into that also in this conversation, how important that is and why that's important. ah So I think that was a special place. Yeah, they had great great staff, had a great bottle service, their bartenders were amazing, uh fun to work with, fun to get drinks from. uh We would all go and hang out there even if we weren't DJing. I think that's a huge portion of this. You had bartenders go in there and hang out even if they weren't bartending. That's how you know a place is hitting on all cylinders. we all hung out outside of there as well, which is another signal. Like how many places that you work listening right now, do you actually hang out with staff from one of the venues that you work at? Probably very few. Right. And we all hung out. Like it was... hung out. In fact, we took the West Five bus late night to do output one night and we all got in trouble for that one, but. It was was it was Pasha the one night we went it was Pasha. left, we left, we all finished. Bartenders counted their money super fast. We jumped in the West five van that they used to pick up customers from the train station or from, you know, apartments in the city. And we took that into the city to go to Pasha and party until the sun came up. quote unquote, stole the van to go party. I just told this story. Many people got fired that next day because people posted it on social media, but. think that's the owner literally saw somebody post a picture from inside the van was like, is that my van? What are you guys doing in it? But that's a great indicator of like when the place has the sauce, right? Like that was an amazing time. That's probably the number one because I could think like every aspect of what that business was doing. The remodel, it was the peak of EDM music popularity. ah more prominent DJ booth where everyone could see the DJ, which that venue had never had prior to that. Right, like in the corner. Right, right, and it just, had all of the elements, it had all the elements. So that's one that stands out to me. Yeah, that one definitely stands out. mean, Downtown Social in New York was another one that stood out. Our buddy, Chris Kinzel sort of took that place over and made it his own and like made it made it fun, you know, and in that particular case, there was like one person who sort of drove the ship and everyone saw how passionate and into it and and dedicated he was to making it a fun place to be sort of like took his lead and went with it. And again, it became a place where I hung out with people from outside of there and they now work with us. that was another one that I could think of where just really changed the whole dynamic of the venue and brought an aspect of like, we're gonna make this place fun. We're gonna make it good. Customers gonna have a great time and have the best experience possible. And that was like a little different than West 5, but we got the same result. Right. Because that person that, like you said, drives the ship, that energy, that dedication, that passion is contagious and people want to work for those people. And I think that's become more important now than ever because of so many negative factors that you have going against you in the nightlife industry. So if you can have somebody be that positive force, it just becomes nothing but positivity across the staff. And you need that leader more than ever right now. Yeah. Well, we talked about something like, if, what if, besides a GM, because we've talked about a million times, GMs, have so many things on their plate. And one of our, our business's value prop is, hey, GM, we'll take care of the schedule and communicating with the DJs, we'll take that off your plate. So maybe the GM isn't the right person to sort of be this host or creator of fun, so to speak. I just was thinking about one or two other places, and I'm gonna bring it right back to that, but a couple other places that were really hitting on all cylinders, their ownership was at the forefront of leading the way for obvious reasons, but they can only be there for a certain amount of years until they get burnt out because they have so much on their plates. Right, and they get older and they have families and just don't want to be there. And that's what happens. And that's why places kind of fade out. And then you got to put it on the GM. That's the next person in line. But as we just said, the GM has a lot of responsibilities as well. So where, where do you go from there? And it is something that we've never thought of, I don't think, but is, is having a host, having somebody that is like the, like party creator, the, the divide creator, like the person that is making sure that everybody's having a good time checked in on. your bottles low, even though that's your waitress's job, but like you can always have, there's never too much customer service that you need to think about it that way. Right. And you know, that person that they're there to have fun, that person needs to just be there to show up to have fun and just check on people and rip a shot here and there with people, buy people drinks, do things, things like that to an extent. glow sticks, confetti poppers, like all that stuff. Like I think of like Slav and Justin at DJs sort of as that. Or like when Slav's doing stuff at Wicked Wolf on Sundays, like that's sort of his role there, right? Like we gotta make sure everyone's having a good time. Make sure people are getting drunk, right? Because the more you drink, the more you're gonna spend probably. So let's lube you up with some free shots or you know. a free beer or a round or whatever it is and like, let's make sure everybody's having a good time. Something else I thought about just before you, before we get off this was the places with GMs that are small part owners of those venues always seem to do a better job because that GM is more invested, right? Those owners are smart. Let's give our GM an incentive. to act as an owner in this business, not just as the GM who comes here to work, but they now own a piece of this place and the success dictates how much more money they make. I think that's such a really smart thing. And we always talk about how the GM is so important. And this is like, I think the best way to have a leader in your building that's gonna drive the rest of the staff as an owner. I love this business model because there is there the margins in this industry are so small that it to really hire a quality manager, you know, you're between probably 80 and 100 grand and like, can you absorb that when you're when your margins are so small? So if maybe it's okay, I'm to pay you 60. I'm just throwing numbers out there. Oh, I'll pay you 60. But here's 2 % of the business. And now you can make a little extra money. Of course, that manager is more invested, right? They're financially driven. So the one and only way you are driving people, right? Dangling, dangling carrot, right? You've got to make people work hard to earn their money and they'll show up for you every single day. But if you've ever owned anything in life, something as small as, you know, don't know, sneakers that you've always wanted. you know, that you don't want to get dirty or you you're lucky enough to own your car or lucky enough to own your house. You have pride in that, right? You take a lot of pride in it and you make sure that it's taken care of. And same thing if you just give a little percentage, put that person in charge, they're going to give you 110 % back. Just it's a great way to do it. And not, we don't see it. We don't see those managing partners enough, I feel in Jersey. I mean, in some places, in some places, you see a lot of full ownership in Jersey, in New York City, because the rents are so high that you see a lot of managing partners because there are a lot of smaller percentage owners. But maybe it's a great thought for even the single owner places. May I give up 2 %? Not gonna kill you. You know, so. We're building our business model as we uh have more and more podcasts here. As we do. All right, last topic I want to talk about. I was out of state in a venue, not going to name it, but it was like maybe the third time I've been there, fourth time, whatever it is. And we've had a specific format, right? It's like very dance music heaven. It's the way I play lately, very dance music heavy. You dip down into hip hop for a couple of quick sets and that's it, right? You get in, you get out. And in this particular venue, you're sort of opening for yourself a bit. um And the owner came up to me and was like, Yo, Cream, we're gonna change it up. uh It's been a little slower in here on Fridays. We wanna start with the music a little bit lower, and I want you to play like the Afro House vibes. you know, I dug down into that question and asked him a few times, like, well, what do you really mean about Afro House? in him answering those questions and in me just being a good DJ and doing this for a long time and understanding like what he was really looking for, it's not that he wanted just Afro house. He just wanted like more chill music that people knew that gave a good vibe that people could come in, have a cocktail, still be able to talk to each other and hold off till like 1130 for like the louder music and the lights go down and the nightlife experience to start happening. But the music I played was just, it was Afro house. It was just more chill tech house. My BPMs were 122, not 126 or 128. And the volume was lower. And I just laughed because, you know, for a time it was, I want tropical house vibes. Then it was, I want rooftop vibes. And now it's, want Afro house vibes. And you have to interpret what an owner really means because they don't really know how to explain the music. They don't want you to just play Afro house for two hours as an opening set. They want you to give just a more chill vibe and experience, like I said, so that their customers can talk to each other. It's not a dance floor. It's more of a vibe. And it's a warm up to the actual nightlife part of the set. you have to remember that the manager usually isn't well-versed in music, period, right? In most cases. And they're just going to say, I want the insert most popular genre vibes, To loom vibes was a thing for a little bit. But I think even when we were younger, was like, whatever, whatever the vibe was. But you have to take that information and then bend it to and expand it, not bend it. You have to expand it, right? And then be able to play a couple different genres that are close to that popular genre. This way it doesn't sound repetitive. And this way you're probably hitting on all cylinders of what that manager wants. And if worse comes to worse, and you're stuck and you don't know, well, just put that in AI and ask them, like, where can I go with that? With this genre of music, what are good genres to go off of? But you're a professional and you should really know. your music catalog well and be able to expand on this. or a rooftop folder or some folder that you play. It's just good vibe house music. Or maybe if you're in an open format room or a hip hop room, it's more chill R &B type stuff or like reggae or whatever. But you have that folder that's your warm up folder or your chill folder for sure. to get even outside of that chill warm up, Tulum, tropical, Afro house vibe. like, I remember when EDM first came out, it was like, want EDM. it's like, well, at that point, we were well versed in techno and electro house was huge at the time. gosh, what else? Just regular house, progressive house. Like we all knew those genres at that point, but the owners were all saying, I want EDM. And it was like, well, I'm not going to just bang you at David ghetto over the head all night long. Like, to be a good DJ, you're going to have to maneuver around and touch a bunch of different genres. But you just have to know that the manager that you're speaking to just isn't as well versed as you are. It's your fucking job. like, you know what, take the information and just expound upon. Right, for everyone listening, even we do the same thing, right? All of our venues, we give our DJs like, hey, this is the vibe of the place. But just because we tell you that doesn't mean that that's what you have to stick to. Be a DJ, read the room, play the stuff that you think is gonna work best, right? Maybe there's a group that wants to hear a certain thing that is gonna help make the bar more money and keep people there and make it more fun for everybody. And you have to go off of what the suggested music is. It's being a DJ. it so literal when you're DJing. Trust your gut, trust your instinct, read the room and play the vibe that fits the moment. This brings you right back to the first conversation we had. is why having it, this is where your job becomes important as a human. You need to read the room and actually understand what is needed at that very moment. And that's why AI will never take our jobs. On the flip side though, if an owner or GM says, absolutely do not play this, then you listen literally. I was listening to another podcast and they were talking about, uh it was either Vegas or LA. And was like, the owner came up to me and said, do not play hyphy, any hyphy music. And I guess the biggest song at the time was like an E40 track and the DJ played it and never played there again. So like, that's sort of the level of, if someone tells you not to do something, I wouldn't do it. But if someone tells you this is the vibe, you can then expound upon that vibe. Yeah, 100%. It's, it's just being a DJ, we've talked about this, we've had a whole podcast about this, but I think understanding what the owner is telling you and don't take everything so goddamn literally. People tell like, we tell I talked to DJs and they, they get nervous, like I get it being nervous talking to the owner when the owner wants something specific, but you have to understand you're the professional, don't take offense, and don't take everything so literal. Because it's just not not everything's that cut and dry. Nothing in life is cut and dry. of questions if an owner or someone's coming up to you you're not really sure. Ask questions to clarify. Like, yo, Kareem, play that uh EDM shit. Well, what do you mean? Do you mean like Fisher or do you mean like somebody else? give them somebody that, give some examples, excuse me, give some examples or ask more questions to dig down into getting more information of what they really want, you know? Right. So the guy that you dealt with is not one of our accounts. were traveling. And how did you handle it exactly? did that make you feel off put? Because a lot of guys feel like, I'm the professional. This guy shouldn't be telling me what to do. asked me to do something, I don't get put off in any way because my job is to do what's best for the venue. And maybe the owner knows that's what's best for the venue. So like you put your pride aside. This is a travel gig that I'm getting paid a good amount of money to go do. So you still deal with it on that level or on the three hundred dollar bar gig. Like it's the same shit. You to have the same outlook. How did I handle it? I asked more questions. Do you want? just Afro house or you want like a chill vibe that's just keeps people like hanging out and like you just dig deeper. Do you like this artist? What do you think about? Do you want R &B or you just want all house music? Like you just ask more questions and you get a better idea for where his head's at. Not so general and then you go be a pro and that's it. Perfect. It's a great, great advice to end this podcast. Yeah. Promo, Get Down Radio with the homie, Louis, just came out this week. Go check that out wherever you, SoundCloud and all the platforms. Get Down Edit Pack came out a couple weeks ago. That's been doing really good on Hyped It. I think we were like number two or number three, which is awesome. A lot of really great tracks on there and great artists from all over the place. So, shout to everybody that has checked that out. If you haven't, please go do that. What else, car? You know what one thing I don't see? Anybody that maybe that listens to this and you're playing any of the, if you're playing any of the tracks off of the Get Down Edit Pack or any of the Get Down DJs, and it's like throw it on a video and tag us. You know, we're always looking to promote other DJs and get other DJs names out there, especially if you're supporting the Get Down DJs. uh Throw it on your story, tag us, and we'll repost you. smart. there was a follow and like, because I never get to see I never see it. But I do know I do know that there are a lot of DJs and there are a lot of international DJs that play get down DJs music. And I get to see those reposted. That's always very nice. But you know, just even listeners, I would love to see it. Yeah, I mean, if anyone tags me playing one of my edits or songs, like automatic repost. So maybe that's a cheat code to get a little self promotion or get somebody more people more eyes on your videos. Absolutely. It's a great way. So just my two cents. Thanks for listening. Enjoy the rest of your summer. ah My travel schedule is insane and awesome and I couldn't be happier with all the stuff I got going on the next couple weeks or next month, couple months, whatever it is. um So that's it. Appreciate you guys. Thanks for listening. Talk to you soon. Peace out.