Livestreaming is the new wave of DJ performance at home. Tomorrowland was hosted virtual this year because of COVID. Which was a turndown for people that paid hundreds, note that tickets can range from $110 – $550 per day. In the end, the event made $10 million via Livestream. To stay active during this quarantine the best way to get noticeable, to be ahead, and stay successful is to start Livestream.
The benefits of live streaming are that its free promotion on social media platforms, like for instead Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, And Mixcloud. These platforms are free and the only thing you need is followers and an Account. It is definitely something worth doing in your free time.
There is a lot of behind the scenes when you’re going to start a weekly Livestream series. You have to remember to make your stream worth watching, for example, picture yourself that you doing an event you must be telling yourself how can this be an event there no people dancing. Correct but the people watching you could in fact become future clients and the benefit of that is they will automatically know your type of mixing style also will get a better perspective of your background. Of course, this will increase your fanbase.
How To Do It
1. Plan your Livestream strategy
The first step to have a successful Livestream series is to give your series a name. For example, if you trying to stream every day at lunch you could call your series Lunchtime Jamz. Make a flyer every week to make your viewers feel like they are attending a show. Be creative and make it worth watching instead of something that half put together. Something that is low production is bad video quality like lagging or freezing which leads to a bad WIFI connection. The most important thing is making sure everything is consistent, what I mean is stick to the plan and create a music policy during the stream.
Another type of being consistent and taken seriously is when you show up every time and at the right time to your stream and not canceling last minute. People will remember you as the person that flake at the last minute before the stream starts. Also, remember that you doing this to grow/build your personal brand.
Commit time and effort is the key to having a successful Livestream. Launching the Livestream is the easy part but the hard part is the setup and time put into it. Before doing more toward your stream be honest with yourself about the time you’ve got and what you really want to do early on than to give up down the line.
2. Promote your live streams properly
Every week it will be your reportability to promote your channel/profile page to tell your followers that you will be going live. For instead the method “one week, one day, one hour” this will tell you to follow the 3 times intervals time before the date.
Contact everyone on your DJ email list, Tell people on your social media platforms, write this information on your website and tell your friends and family that you will be going live on this day and time. Inform people, so they know and to tune in to watch you mixing it up via Livestream.
The best platform to stream without issues of copyright would have to be on Mixcloud Live and Twitch, these two are DJ friendly. YouTube is okay but could possibly kick you off the stream due to copyright. After 20 minutes of streaming on Facebook and Instagram, your stream will be turned down and possibly give you a ban of no live streams for 3-5 day
3. Put in a professional performance
Treat this as an online showcase for your skills. Here are some guidelines:
*plan your whole set – Create a playlist or Serato crates so then you don’t have to figure out what to play next. Try some new technicalities of live streaming and engage with your audience in the chats, so they feel like they’re at the party! Create something that fits your style.
* Make your streams look awesome – Style your stream to look like a nightclub so add some visuals. Visuals could be like a graph background/ music video. Static live streams are a no-no and will not work out.
* Make it entertaining and engaging – The reason why you’re live is to make people feel like they are with you in person/real-time. This is entertainment, you’ve been given the full attention of your audience. So make it fun and worth their time being there.
* Ask for likes, shares, and follow – Livestreaming is a free and putting hours of time to make it good as much as you can, so ask for stuff in return. Ask them to share this live to get more followers, which equals to more followers and likes. If you have a fan basic/ doing a killer set in your stream, you can get donations
Always watch back and find ways to improve – After each stream look back and study your mix. It the best way to catch mistakes you have done and to make sure to not do it next time. Also vital you make yourself a successful DJ Streamer.
4. Leverage your stream recording
After every stream upload, an audio version of your Livestream to Mixcloud, embed them onto your websites also share the link on your socials. This gives the chance to people that weren’t able to join the live. Also, this is a great way to share your skills with clients that want t to hear what type of mixes you.
Here are 4 steps to do after your Livestream done:
- Upload an audio version of your stream to any music streaming platforms, Mixcloud and SoundCloud recommend
- Make playlists on Spotify. It’s easy to do also great publicity for the Livestream itself plus you’ll be able to listen back to your mixes.
- Make sure you push people to a YouTube video version of it and make a nice thumbnail so the YouTube version looks good.
- Write about the tracks you’ve used, and share wherever you publish stuff (socials, Mixcloud Articles, YouTube Community, Medium).
Doing things such as I’ve suggested above is added value for your viewers and done right, it can get you shares from the artists, as well as even free music from them.
Remember…
There are things you need to do if you’re going to take live streaming seriously, and take your time with it. This doesn’t all happen overnight, it takes time. Have fun with it and be creative!
Ethan Mercado