Interested in being a DJ!!

I'm quite interested in learning about how to DJ. I have had experiance in SL for about 2 years in a old avatar and have worked as both a dancer and a hostess but never a DJ. I love music and have quite a selection of tunes and would love to give this a try but i don't know anything about DJing or how to get a stream. I'm low on funds so if i didn't have to purchase my own stream straight away that would be great.

If anyone can offer any advice on where i can learn about being a DJ or give me some tips on here i'd be very grateful.

Thanks very much

Belinda xx

P.S please feel free to send me a IM inworld or even a PM on here if you have any advice

Lias Leandros teaches a class on DJing. Might want to contact her.

Renting a stream is pretty much a necessity unless you get really lucky and find a club that has its own server. If you find a club that does let you hop onto their server, you can probably expect to get paid less (if at all) up front for your services. The first club I worked at had its own server, but I didn't get any pay, only tips. It gave me a good start, and I learned a lot about DJing, so I'm not saying I wouldn't do it again. If you have your own stream, though, you can work at more than one club, you'll be able to work at clubs that don't have their own streams, and you won't be at the mercy of anybody else's server going down. There's nothing worse than finding out you don't have a stream at 10 minutes before your shift, and having to go rent one and set it up real fast. You can search Shoutcast and get a zillion rental options. I've had really good luck with Muse.

I can give you more advice, but it'll cost ya.

Hi Belinda - I will send you the notecards to install the DJ program. Once your installed and you have at least ten songs imported into the program you can contact me and I will take you through the 90 minute class.

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Thanks to a very nice lady i met through the XStreet Forums she let me have her stream she is not using anymore.
It is only has 25 listeners but that should be fine to begin with.

Also Lias from Club School has kindly offered to show me how to use the SAM system so thank you for that.
Now i just have to practice and find a small gig to play at.

Does club school teach you how to operate chat bots as part of dj-ing or is that part still done by the host?

Nice attitude Anya. I refer you to the to thread on the end of bots

/327/00/317719/1.html

Bot class is not something we ever offered at CLUB SCHOOL. I suppose your referring offhand to bots on the grid in clubs in general.

But most DJs do not get involved in that aspect of club work. I met with Belinda tonight and we went thru importing a DJ intro, importing the mucis into SAM Broadcaster and creating a Queue playlist. All she needs now is info on how ot take requests, saving a playlist and making a emcoder. Belinda is a quick study

.

Hi Anya, i don't believe she teaches anything to do with bots and it was never once mentioned when we starting talking about what you need to be a DJ. Yes alot of clubs have them but to be completely honest bots are pretty easy to use. I have had a practice with them before out of pure boredom one day and it was real easy to understand. You don't need a class to tach bots lol.

Awww thank you Lias, i had fun trying to learn the SAM Broadcaster last night, lets hope it's running better next time lol.

I am a DJ and the clubs where I work don't use bots to greet anyone. The greetings are all done by me and by my host, and sometimes the dancers.

SAM is pretty simple to use, but a pain in the butt to operate when it decides to skip the songs in your queue. Be careful where you download your requests. It's always best to get your songs from a legitimate source, rather than limewire or bittorrent. I've run into some problems with both.

Most of the time I get my stuff off a site that sells songs for about 10 cents each.

I'm also lucky enough to have a few gift codes for iTunes, though it can be a pain in the ass to convert m4a files to a format that SAM will play.

Being a dj is more than playing the songs and taking requests. You are also a host. The more you engage people, the bigger your tips. People love it when a dj knows the music. They also love hearing their requests played, and the quicker the better, so having a huge collection of music is a plus.

Find a club that plays the kind of music you like, and go from there would be my advice. Most clubs will give a new DJ a fair chance. All you have to do is look. It's great to attend a class on how to do it, but experience is the best teacher.

I got thrown into it with virtually no clue how to do it, and once past the initial nerves of the first time out, did really well.

Good luck. If you have any questions or just want to talk, IM me inworld. If I'm not working, I'll respond pretty quickly. If I AM working, it may take me a while to respond, as I respond to requests for music and people at the club before I talk to people IMing me from the outside

While it's no good for on-the-fly conversions to fulfil a request, one of the easiest ways to convert from m4a to, say, mp3 is to burn a batch of m4a files to CD using iTunes and then re-rip to your hard drive in your preferred format. Wasteful in terms of CDs, I know, but they're pretty cheap nowadays.

I just email them to myself. That usually does the trick, and I don't have to waste CDs.

I wouldn't get anything off iTunes if I didn't have the gift codes. The songs there cost too much money for the amount of music I tend to collect.

The site I normally buy MP3s from is very quick, and I don't have to convert them so SAM will play the songs. Putting $40 into the song account on that site typically lasts me quite a long time, especially since most full albums cost under a dollar.

May I ask what site you use? I'm currently suffering from living in a town with no music shops (!) and am looking for options.

I'd be curious to know too, actually.

Carefully consider the potential consequences of discussing music download sites operated by the Russian mob in a Linden-owned forum. It may be safer to do that elsewhere.

Absolutely.
http://boxmp3.net/?ref_uid=283954

Essentially, you just sign up for the account, and put a minimum balance of about $20 on the site. The bigger your balance, the more of a discount you get. The last time I put money in, I ended up with songs that cost 13 cents each. Not a bad haul.

While this site doesn't have everything, it does have more than iTunes, is cheaper, and you can usually get some pretty good remixes of various songs there. It's all grouped by album.

Actually, this is a legitimate site. Oddly enough, it isn't owned by the Russian mob.

Thanks.

No problem. Have fun with it.

I would be interested to know how this site can legally undersell places like Rhapsody, iTunes, and Napster so severely. Part of it I can guess is that labor is cheaper in Russia where the site seems to be located. Part of it might be that they don't have a huge advertising budget. Does that explain 9 cents per song (by adding $100 to the account) vs. 99 cents per song (iPod price).

But the website claims that it has the appropriate licenses to sell the works, and it's not like the site is hidden like a warez site or something. I don't know what else I should research before purchasing songs from the site. Sometimes, if it seems to be too good to be true, it is. But sometimes something that seems too good to be true is just a pleasant surprise.

To be honest, I was wary for a long time about that site, too. But it's actually a decent place to get music. I don't even remember what prompted me to go ahead and use the site, but I don't get spammed from it, and the files all seem to be okay.

They can't. They don't pay the artists a dime. It's trivially easy to find pages like this, explaining just how these sites operate...

http://www.propheticdesire.us/microsound/html/2007/2007-01/msg00095.html

This ^

The site is technically legal in Russia and probably legal for us to use, but the artists don't receive a dime from these people. And if I'm going to NOT pay the artist, I'm certainly not going to pay someone in Russia.....might as well just use Limewire then.

Of course, it's preferable to actually pay for music somewhere that pays the musicians royalties for their music.