We have been playing songs no longer than three minutes in my club, unless it gets packed in the private dance room in which case they get cut shorter and shorter, up to 2 1/2, or even less when the other DJ is working. This gets the guys up into the Champagne room quite effectively.
But now the other DJ has supposedly been playing shorter songs even on slower nights, leading to a new wave of bitching at me from the dancers for playing longer songs, when I'm sticking to the three minute rule.
I have the greatest respect and admiration for the other DJ (who has got to be the hardest working male I have ever met or heard of in this business), but I'm not sure I want to follow suite, for a couple of reasons.
One being the time it takes to think of and set up the perfect song for the next dancer--I have always been very dedicated to doing this, and three minutes is an amazingly short period of time, especially with all the other things going on simultaneously in a club like mine. There is little or no room for creativity under these circumstances, especially with the language barrier making communication about music difficult already.
The other reason being that I feel the customers, most of whom are going to figure out that the songs are being cut (especially if you are playing a lot of top 40 stuff), are going to feel like they aren't getting their money's worth.
The dancers at my club swear up and down that they always make more money when songs are cut, with no downward limit to the process, but I think there might be a diminishing return, especially if it's slower that night. Obviously if there's a line waiting to get into the private dance room, the songs need to be cut.
But I have heard them say a zillion times that if the song is longer, the guy will only get one dance. This is like Holy Law to them. I'm inclined to believe this is just not true. IMO, if the guy is enjoying himself, and feels like he is getting his money's worth, he's going to get more dances. I haven't bothered to bring this up because it wouldn't go over well, partly because the language barrier is a big problem here, and partly because I just don't want to argue with them about it.
But I have overheard customers bitching about it while on the floor a couple times.
I know the biggest and most successful club in Daytona, which is even more of a factory than my club, and the DJs do little else besides rattle off lists of names, cuts their songs at around 2 minutes when it is busy.
How short does your club cut the songs? How do you feel about this? Obviously if you are dealing with an asshole, you want it to be over as quickly as possible, lol--but I am not referring to this type of situation.



Reply With Quote





Bookmarks