What's The Cost Of Free?

When I started out the best DJs I knew were respected because of the tunes they had. With the right contacts, or maybe even a direct link to the distro van, DJs were going to have records that others did not and that kudos often led to gigs.

Black Market Records, Soho

In my mid-teens, when I first started to DJ at parties, I was already fighting my way to the front at Black Market in Soho, and Zoom in Camden at weekends.  I didn’t have much money so had to be super-selective about what I spent it on, but getting records that I couldn’t find elsewhere made it worth the effort.  By the time I had raided the bins at Tape Exchange and picked up a few discarded advance copies I would have enough new records to ensure my mixes and live sets continued to evolve.

Pete Tong & Jeff Young

After a few years of gigs, I found myself on some promo lists.  There was a hierarchy in place that meant your ‘big name’ DJs got theirs early and the rest of us got them a month later, if at all, because pluggers needed to get their priorities on the radio or in the press and it needed the bigger acts to give their investments a push. It was a great deal too: just for faxing in a chart each week I received dozens of free records. It saved me a fortune, and I had access to some absolute gems weeks before any of my mates.  As well as going out as often as possible, we’d listen to Jeff Young, or Pete Tong, and talk about what we’d heard them play and I’d be the one going “yeah, they sent me that last week, you should hear the tribal dub on the flip”.

When the digital promo boom came along the hierarchy was retained but the pool of DJs receiving promos multiplied to a ridiculous degree. In my opinion (cos that’s what you’re reading here) the abundance of free music has been to the detriment of quality.  Back in the 90s an oft-repeated criticism of Strictly Rhythm was that for every classic tune they put out – and let’s be real: they put out more than most – they also put out a load of dross.  That’s been magnified to a ludicrous degree, it used to be 100-200 DJs on record pools, now I think it’s closer to 2,000.

Promo companies take a lot of money to send out music.  I’m certainly not saying this applies to them all as there are exceptions, but most, and it is most, are not too concerned about the quality of what they send out as long as they get paid to be the ones sending it out there.  In turn this means a lot of DJs are losing their identity, seemingly more concerned with keeping favour with the promo companies and playing what they’ve received instead of what they love, and as they load up their sticks with free music, they don’t seem too bothered about finding music others don’t have.  We’ve all heard the phrase ‘Balearic landfill’, right?  

In turn this leads us to the symbiotic relationship between record labels, DJs and promoters.  Promoters want events to turn a profit and one of their most significant costs, traditionally, has been the DJs, and rightfully so: it’s the names on the posters who sell the tickets.  At working-jock level one of the key arguments for DJs charging a reasonable fee has been the overheads: going back to my first point, records were never cheap.  Today, if you buy a dozen new vinyl records a month it’ll cost at least £200.  Obviously digital product is far cheaper but there’s still a charge attached, even if it’s about a tenth of the sum.  If promoters can squeeze DJ fees then the DJs won’t buy music and that has a knock-on effect for everyone; eventually the record labels who invest in artists and putting out product will stop; the music at events will become increasingly safe.  DJs who are reliant on free downloads seem happier to gig for free: they don’t support the musicians whose music they play, happy just to piggy-back on others’ work, without recognising that there are likely to be consequences.  

In an ideal world promoters would be hiring DJs who buy music.  DJs who buy music support record labels.  Record labels support musicians.  Parties rely on musicians to make music.  It’s that simple on paper.  If you don’t support the people who put the foundations in place, the house crumbles.

Artists I know are stepping away from the PR machine.  Recording and self-releasing a track without promo is a risk.  If no-one hears the music, then it won’t get picked up and played out.  But the costs of using a company often run into hundreds of pounds, and in the overwhelming majority of cases that money simply won’t be recouped through online sales.  We’ve more than reached a point where the DJs who are dependent on promo companies miss lots of great music and the biggest loss is for the superb talents in our community who aren’t getting the support they deserve. It’s been happening more and more in the ‘Balearic world’ post-pandemic.  Chart-after-chart and setlist-after-setlist of free PR’ed stuff.  It needs to stop.

For what it’s worth I’ve always loved digging.  I’ll travel anywhere, spreadsheet in hand and empty case at my side, to buy records (I also have a very patient wife) I’ve never stopped wanting to hear things for the first time whether that music has been made yesterday or half-a-century ago.  I’ll trawl Bandcamp, buy magazines from the mid-80s and early 90s to look through set lists, go down YouTube rabbit holes and go out and listen to DJs I admire to find something to add to my sets that DJs reliant on promos won’t have.

Those DJs I admire are those who have retained their confidence to play what they like.

Whose commitment to remaining on distribution lists doesn’t determine their choices.

Sadly, these DJs seem to be the ones furthest away from the gig circuit right now.

To be clear, I still play promos.

I'm not saying that people shouldn't!

But I have a rule of thumb: would I buy it? And if the answer is yes, I'll put it on the stick.

And if the promo comes out on vinyl then i'll buy it. I'm still old school like that!

There are loads of great DJs who keep it real: who dig for tunes, discover music, share it and aren’t all over the internet. We need to get back to appreciating those who put the hard yards in, those diggers who discover the nuggets, the DJs who take risks, the people who kept dancing when others simply didn’t get it.  We need to, because if they stop getting gigs, and stop buying music then why would people bother making it and sharing it?  

Our eco-system is fragile, it’s about time we realised it and about time we did something about it.