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New club idea (pg. 3)
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| Spirit5 |
| Haha thats probably where it was from, but I swear I heard about some place like this on the news as well. |
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| Dervish |
| quote: | | Originally posted by Spirit5 This stuff may sound like I'm smoking something or really weird, however this is what I've felt for years. |
Nah I know exactly what you mean. I think your on the right track. don't get me wrong I've not got experiance of doing these things either but I have thought about it alot. And spoken to anyone who'll tell me stuff.
But the main thing is your really into it I'd say. :D
Some of the other guys on here will have set up stuff properly and be able to tell you detail and things. But I think one of the mains will be to get into your local scene and get to know people (i.e. connections) as these are the people who know whats happening.
It may even be that to start you have to go slightly main stream then pull them into more diverse stuff once you get known.
Maybe a few one off club nights then scale it larger more regular (bi monthly, then monthly, then weekly). To get the capital you need for a venue. If that is what suits you it actually sounds as if making clubnight would be more your thing (managing a club is just that, managing). |
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| MR STROKE |
being only 20, have you been to alot of clubs yet??
...you have some creative ideas, i see the biggest problem being the fact that having a club in the middle of nowhere would never work!!
..there are major clubs in san francisco and LA that book huge dj's, and they still cannot fill the club up(on some nights)...
...location is the key...a MASSIVE club would need hundreds/thousands of people to fill it up on a weekly basis, being in the desert/rule area would make this very hard to do...
best of luck to you though...if it ever happend..book sasha/digweed and i will be the first in line : ) |
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| Spirit5 |
| quote: | Originally posted by MR STROKE
being only 20, have you been to alot of clubs yet??
...you have some creative ideas, i see the biggest problem being the fact that having a club in the middle of nowhere would never work!!
..there are major clubs in san francisco and LA that book huge dj's, and they still cannot fill the club up(on some nights)...
...location is the key...a MASSIVE club would need hundreds/thousands of people to fill it up on a weekly basis, being in the desert/rule area would make this very hard to do...
best of luck to you though...if it ever happend..book sasha/digweed and i will be the first in line : ) |
No I have not been to a lot of clubs. I wish I had the ability to go to alot of clubs. I don't do a lot of traveling, and I don't know a lot of people into this kind of music to go to clubs around here with. That would definitely help with understanding the club scene, and I still have plenty of time to explore it more in my life. The place would not be in the middle of nowhere. I made it a point to say that it would be NEAR but not IN an urban or suburban area, not somewhere out in the boonies. It would be somewhere far enough away from homes as to not be a disturbance, but in a large open area (that would of course the club would eventually be constructed to be huge, and be more than just a club). I don't expect thousands of people to come every week, hopefully in the hundreds and then thousands if I see the club is popular (it would start off small). Right now I am starting to think of it as more of a clubbing concept (a more "progressive" club scene) than a club, considering i'de have to see if people would be a part of it first.
P.S. I would definitely book Sasha & Digweed, they are brilliant and definitely push the boundaries....progressive. I mean Sasha's Involver is one of the best CDs I own, I don't even consider it to be just a mix CD, I consider it simply to be a work of art. |
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| Psy-T |
i have plenty of notes but i'm not sure what to address exactly as you put so much ideas out in every post, and i cba to do a long post like your's.
lets just focus on your last few sentences:
you cant even dream about booking sasha & digweed for a few hundred people, the investment would be huge (only for booking them!) and there won't be enough payback, not even enough to cover the charges of booking them.
one more thing, you can't open a club out of the blue and expect people to show up, even with good marketing.
you build a scene around people, not the other way around.
you first get your regular audience by doing very small scale parties, even joining with other established promoters.
parties with a few dozen clubbers, orginized perfectly to the last detail, have something to identify your productions with, and keep doing them weekly, a year later you can expect to have a few hundred clubbers already, and if you keep improving without increasing entry chargesm you'll get more clubbers.
only when you have a strong follower base you can start thinking of building a club on your own (not neglecting the small scale parties while you're at it!)
you should really join this yahoo group to get the book 'class of 88'
lots of useful information for you there, even though lots of it is up to being at the right place at the right time:
link |
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| Psy-T |
also get 'last night a dj saved my life' for a lot of history and knowledge in general.
one thing i cant stress enough:
do NOT rely on big name artists & djs to bring people for you, that is exactly what every other club is doind, and it's just plain WRONG!
a club is dependent on it's resident dj, and the resident dj should be the best dj you can find, one with eclectic tastes in music, a high sense of evengalism, a big music collection, nifty technical skills & great communication with crowds.
no changing djs every 2 hours!
the dj needs to have a relationship with your crowd.
think of ron hardy, larry levan, frankie knuckles, and most other guys that became legends in that time.
they MADE the parties
rival the mcdj scene. that is all. |
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| Nemesis44 |
Psy-T actually offers some solid advice as do some of the others.
First up, we are talking 15 to 20 years into the future so we may well have to brush aside making a trance, rock or hip hop club as feck knows what people will be into.
Yes, your resident DJ needs to have some special magic no doubt, very often this is overlooked and many clubs have really resident DJs. But you have to realise that this is the guy your people are going to be hearing every week.
Someone stated, location. The middle of the desert is not going to cut it. Not that volume.
The one thing that strikes me about all this is that so many seem to be in on the idea that big super clubs are better.
The way I see it is that very often they loose their personal touch as a DJ. There is definately not the same energy in a big club and it's just a little too impersonal for my liking.
A club between 500 to 700 people is a great number. Although there are drawbacks with that in the fact that you may not be able to book the big names because you wont make enough on the door. Keeping in mind that the majority of people on trance nights tend not to drink that much alcohol and effectively your bar takings would be very low, something that most other clubs rely on.
I believe the winning formula for a club is definately desirability. If you have so much room that you can't fill the place that interest will soon fade. There is something so not cool about dancing in an open space by yourself.
You have to constantly reinvent yourself and your image, which again relys on the success of your initial idea for you to be able to fund it.
My advice to you, is to start creating themed nights at existing clubs to see if you have what it takes to create this monster club.
If nothing else you will need this to meet likeminded people who can help you and teach you, not to mention the connections and competition you will need to be aware of.
The screens thing I think would be a bit wanky but that's just my opinion.
I believe that if you have this as a desire or dream then persue it. No reason why you shouldn't. Great things are never achieved by those who say it can never be done. WHAT IF is always a far more interesting way of seeing things than CAN'T BE DONE.
Cheers
Nem |
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| Spirit5 |
| Well a response to your posts Psy-T and Nemesis44, I will start off small with this. To tell you the truth I like small clubs, as an old club that used to have great DJs no longer has them. I think its more intimate. I think this place would be big because it would be more than just a nightclub (the nightclub would be relatively small at first, if enough people go it would get larger). I wont start off with big name DJs...maybe once in a while but maybe not every week (though it would be cool). The large expanse of land would allow for more outdoor events, as well as future building area. It wouldn't be in the middle of nowhere, it doesn't even need to be in the desert, but like i've said NOT in urban or suburban areas where its more congested, and would be considered a disturbance. I wouldn't start this off with a club either. I started thinking about it yesterday and I would start this off as a new kind of club scene (unless it exists already). I would see if people would come to these events first before jumping into any club. |
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| jdat |
One thing that could really help would be doing this into a hybrid concert/club hall location. Like that the place would never be without a night. Kind of like the Guv complex in Toronto.
But if you're too scared to go out to clubs alone to discover other places sorry I feel like you'll mesirably fail for lack of sense of independence.
It's important that you see as many places as possible alone or not to see how the places operate.
That's going to require travel and trust me few people want to travel for clubbing.
But you will and you must!
Or else you will never know how things are elsewhere.
When you go to other clubs go EARLY see how things are installed what way the staff operates etc. And think of ways to improve.
When you're mentionning Sasha / Digweed I guess you are clueless as to how they even get booked? They go through a booking agency that requires for you to have a standing reputation with them ( TCA ) by booking several other djs on their roster to begin with. A LOT of other agencies are like that also.
If it was so easy to book them they'd be playing in a lot of places and a lot more people would be loosing money by investing in these shows or right off not paying them (djs).
Either way you'll have to build a reputation and that does NOT happen overnight.
In regards to the resident as the others stated it's a very important thing. So many clubs pass up on that which in return confuses the customers because one week it's good another it's bad.
HAVE A STEADY SCHEDULE!
If you have constant headliners and you happen to go through a period where you can't book as many headliners ( lack of funds , schedule conflicts/non availability of djs etc ) your clientele will leave and very difficultly come back.
A club should focus on residents!
Then headliners .... twice a month tops ( two saturdays a months or something like that ).
And during peak season ( summer ) bring it up a notch if you wish.
At your age it'd be best for you to start promoting for shows as street team type of deal and work up from there.
Also don't go somewhere where there's nothing else already cause you'll honestly have no idea what could happen ( either go bankrupt or gangbusters ) |
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| Boomer187 |
Well one thing to think of to increase profits to actually support this is to use the space not only for a night club. It should be able to double as say a motorcross arena, or some other thing that draws in drinkers. Alcohol sales suport sooo many things, you need to tap into that...(yea, pun intended)
and another thing, what are you wanting to do with a psych degree, from what you've stated I don't think you've thought that out enough. You said you wanted to maybe teach, theres no money in that for at least 10 - 15 years after grad school, and your time is mainly filled with research andt the like in order to get tenure. If your a clinician you might make a bit o change, but your time is vastly occupied with clients. However if you go into industry you can make some change, hwoever you don't have as much job security as a professor at a university.
and what school do you go to? |
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| Boomer187 |
| quote: | Originally posted by jdat
When you're mentionning Sasha / Digweed I guess you are clueless as to how they even get booked? They go through a booking agency that requires for you to have a standing reputation with them ( TCA ) by booking several other djs on their roster to begin with. A LOT of other agencies are like that also.
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I think if they don't know you or yoru reputation they ask for 100% of the money up front. ;) |
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| Vyper0987 |
personally, i think that a club needs to be in a highly frequented area so that people go to it. it's important to remember that owning a club is a business and that in order to succeed, you do need revenues from covers and alcohol.
it seems to me that, given your age, you have seen several videos of events like sensation and dance valley online from like kazaa and that you basically want to transport that over to the states.
it's hard to fill clubs in some of the nation's bigger cities when they only have one big headliner a month, let alone a week. if you have djs like armin, ferry, sasha and digweed, back to back to back every weekend, then your cover fee has to be $25-$35 a show, and frankly, people can't afford that every weekend.
i'd agree with everyone else and start small. promote your heart out and let the club scene come to you. if you give them experiences of a life time, they will continue to come back. develop a solid business plan. this will help you get the money that you need to start. without a high-quality business plan, banks will be skeptical of its success and be reluctant to loan you money.
about having several people like your friends helping you develop and run your club, i would highly suggest not doing this. maybe form a partnership with one or two people at most. otherwise, leave yourself open to constant disagreement and bickering.
bottom line, just remember that opening a club is a business, and in order for the business to succeed, it needs to have a product to sell that people WANT. do your research. i will almost guarantee that if you have a friday night edm nite, that you will have to have a saturday nite hip hop/top 40 nite in order to attract more people and make more revenues. be diverse as possible in your music nights. doing this will market your club to more genres of people and help your club succeed in the long-run. take some business management/accounting/financing classes too...they can only help your business savvy. |
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