Tales From The Dancefloor

Sam Gribben was one of the first four people to work at Serato... and when he left the company 10 years later, he'd been CEO for over half a decade, and the workforce was 75! Not bad for someone at their first serious job... Since then, Sam has combined his skills in technology, his love for music, and a life-long attraction to teaching, in his new company, Melodics. Melodics is an innovative take on online music tuition, teaching keyboards, drums and how to use controller pads. In this episode of Tales From the Dancefloor, Sam talks about the pirate TV station he helped start while still at college, his failed attempt to get involved with an early innovator of DVS technology at 4am at a party in Amsterdam... and how RZA of Wu Tang Klan gave the Serato team the shock of their lives in the early days! More about melodics: https://melodics.com "That" RZA interview: https://youtu.be/TXsYXMqw4Zc

Rik Parkinson, like so many, basically got into the music industry from being a fan and a DJ. Little could he have guessed at the start of his career as a junior at Pioneer DJ that he’d end up researching features DJs want and helping Pioneer DJ’s design team to bring them to market, through his current role in product development. A textbook behind-the-scenes mover and shaker (and actually, that rarest of things nowadays – a “company man”: Rik’s been at Pioneer for his whole career so far), you may nevertheless have seen Rik on the Digital DJ Tips YouTube channel over the years, talking about new gear from Pioneer DJ in show report videos. But in this episode of Tales From The Dancefloor, he shares his whole story, and reveals what it’s like helping to design the gear many of us rely on in our DJing lives.

Burma-born, UK-raised, DJ Angelo is one of the world’s most respected and versatile DJs, with a style that blends a scratch DJ's technical skill with a club DJ's ability to rock a dancefloor all night long. The past few years have seen Angelo perform across every continent of the world, as well as finding new audiences through his work as a content creator and product consultant for DJ equipment brand Reloop, among others. In this episode of Tales From The Dancefloor, Angelo discusses his upbringing, where he gets his drive and determination from, what it's like playing some of the more unusual gigs he's played... and how his career had more than a few twists and turns before DJing became his "thing". Angelo's website: https://djangelo.co.uk/

When her brother dramatically fell ill hours before a wedding he was booked to DJ at, Rachel Lynch decided that the show had to go on: Despite zero DJing experience, she stepped in and performed the gig. Now, 15 years on, she's one of the best-known and most-loved event DJs in the USA. In this fun episode of Tales From The Dancefloor, Rachel talks to us about how it felt stepping up at that first gig, how she got established, how she prepared for DJing a warm-up set for George Clinton, her love of cars and car shows... and how getting a gig at the local gym was one of the best career moves she ever made. She also shares the ups and downs of being a female in the DJ world, and explains how she got into online educating - something that has helped her to gain acceptance and gratitude across the event DJ community from that traumatic start all those years ago! Rachel's Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/djrachel.lynch

Robb McDaniels always knew he wasn't going to spend the rest of his life working in merchant banking, where he started his career. He knew the pull of the dance music scene that he loved so much was going to get him in the end. Yet when he started his first company, to bring the UK dance music he loved to the USA digitally (this was pre iTunes...), he couldn't even name all the major record labels... Roll forward a few years, and that company - INgrooves - was handling digital distribution for over four million tracks in the States, and counted one of those labels, the Universal Music Group, as a client. Robb was in demand as a music industry investor, while his entrepreneurial streak led him to start a management services company, which ended up working with names like Thievery Corporation and Paul Oakenfold. Nowadays he heads up electronic download store Beatport, and is spearheading that company's drive into streaming with Beatport LINK, as well as expanding its reach to the more mainstream pop, Latin and

DJ TLM will be best known to fans of Tales From The Dancefloor as the man behind scores of supremely helpful YouTube DJing tutorials, and his #sharetheknowledge podcast series. But from his earliest days promoting events in his own house, DJ TLM has been a performer - and in this awesome episode, he reveals his life as a club, tour, mix and radio DJ, including how a chance encounter with a rising Dutch hip-hip star has led to over 3,500 DJ gigs in a decades-long collaboration. He also talks frankly about work/life balance, DJing and having kids, and dealing with racism in his early clubbing days. Meet one of the names who has made it easier for YOU to learn DJing online. More: DJ TLM's website

Tapping into an unusual reserve of “get up and go”, a young Simon Walsh did just that. His jet-setting start to his music career involved things like, y’know, hearing Larry Levan play and visiting Studio 54 in New York… Quickly fascinated by the science of promoting new releases, Simon went on to found what is now the biggest independent music promotion company in the UK, Music House, working on both the biggest commercial releases and more underground sounds. He’s still doing it today, decades on. In this episode of Tales From The Dancefloor, Simon shares many stories, including tales of being a radio plugger, and driving a very young Take That around the UK from gig to gig…

Scotty Hoogerbrug always loved dance music and owned decks - but it wasn't until he was offered the top marketing job at Serato as its CMO that his love for building businesses, coding and technology, and the DJ world all came together. And while nowadays he travels the world, gets backstage at the best gigs, even gets invited every year to Jazzy Jeff's exclusive DJ retreat, Scott is essentially still a fan - and a fan who sometimes has to pinch himself to remember that this is all happening for real! In this cool episode of "Tales From The Dancefloor", Scotty shares his story, revealing what it's like being in Serato's top team, and the journey that led him there.

Talk to any DJ who's been around long enough about Laidback Luke and you hear a similar story: He's incredibly passionate about the art of DJing, and he makes time for everyone. We'd like to add that he's also a survivor, having had a whole techno career before he reinvented himself as a more mainstream DJ/producer. But there's so much more to him than even that: He's mastered social media and vlogging; he has nurtured talent right from the very beginning, running an influential production forum that saw the likes of Steve Angello and Avicii using it to help them cut their teeth as producers; and of course, famously, he practises kung fu (and even trains people via his own online kung fu school). In this honest and revealing podcast, Luke shares tales of his early life before and in music, the struggles he's had balancing being a husband and a dad with a global DJ career- and some hilarious stories of his early days as he rose to worldwide fame.

From his first love of UK "hardcore" (the "old school rave" scene, not the guitar "hardcore"), Jay Cunning has been involved neck-deep in all things breakbeat in the UK. the breakbeat scene was a phenomenon in itself, and to those who didn't witness it first-hand, Jay's stories will in themselves be fascinating. But this podcast is more than that: Jay talks about how scenes rise and fall, and why; he shares stories of life in radio, both legal and decidedly illegal; and talks about DJing when you've got a full-time job. We cover making DJing work with a partner and family, clubs vs radio, running a DJ school, and many other things Jay's done and learned in his long career. It's all in another absorbing episode of Tales from the Dancefloor. Jay's links: Website - http://wearehardcore.uk/ Podcast: http://smarturl.it/JCpodcast     Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/JayCunningDJ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jaycunningdj/

Olga Heijns drifted into the music industry just by virtue of going out and getting to know people, at a time when there was no real career path in dance music. Yet even before her current role (which includes managing Laidback Luke), she held positions at Sony Music, SoSoDef and Mushroom Records, forging a unique path for herself. For the past 17 year, she's been super-successful as the founder and CEO of Mixmash Records, Syndicate The Agency, and Unmanageable Artists. Her career has taken her halfway around the word (she did a stint in Australia), and through many highs and lows, including a public business falling out with Roger Sanchez. She talks frankly about all of this in this revealing and valuable episode of Tales from the Dancefloor.

Paul Dakeyne has been in this business for a third of a century. Cutting his teeth as a DJ and remixer way before Acid House and the Summer Of Love took the UK by storm at the end of the 80s, he went on to score one of the biggest dance hits of the 90s, Tinman's "18 Strings", that just so happened to have been based around Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" guitar riff. In this episode of Tales From The Dancefloor, Paul talks about his early days having left home to move to London as a remixer, how "that" tune changed his life, and his life since as a podcaster, photographer, DJ tech ambassador, educator... and now full circle back to producing. Link to the Tinman track on YouTube: https://youtu.be/fPl9xjlYtMk Link to Paul's Yu2opia project on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-270249528

Judge Jules is often mentioned in the same breath as Carl Cox, Paul Oakenfold, Pete Tong and many other "first wave" UK DJs. But as well as having had a decades-long career as a DJ and producer, Jules has also always had his eye on a second career - as a music industry lawyer. In this episode of Tales From The Dancefloor, Jules talks about his early days as an illegal rave promoter and pirate radio DJ, some of the many OTHER roles he's had in the industry (yes, there have been more...), and how he manages to square doing basically two full-time jobs with family life. He also tells us how his current "Judge Jules Live" project is going - touring with a ten-piece band and playing club music live in venues up and down the country.

Dan Bewick was one half of prolific dance production outfit Dirty Rotten Scoundrels - but before that, he was an illegal rave promoter and DJ in London. Since them, he's gone on to have a successful career scoring films and TV adverts, based out of LA. Dan's journey has seen him touring the world playing some of the biggest gigs imaginable - but also holding residencies where he honed the DJ craft, enduring the hardships of trying to move permanently from London to LA - and coming into work one Monday morning to face seven lawsuits for a bootleg he'd put out that was blowing up BIG across the dance world. In this wide-ranging and at times hilarious episode of Tales From The Dancefloor, Dan shares how he's coped with all the ups and downs, how he completely lost the plot in a field in the 90s (which shaped what was to come)... and what it felt like to arrive at work to face all those lawsuits!

Jason Jani is one of America's top wedding and event DJs. He's DJed at celebrity parties galore, including the Superbowl afterparty. When Wedding Wire (the international wedding services directory that has 8,500 DJs on its books) wants a DJ for its own events, Jason is who they book. Through a mixture of club-standard music and mixing, high quality production, social media savvy, and sheer force of personality, Jason has almost singlehandedly dragged the "mobile DJ" stateside into the 21st century. But for Jason, it wasn't always like this. His journey has taken him through many highs but also several notable lows. In this episode of "Tales From The Dancefloor", he speaks frankly about getting himself through college, the heartbreak of an injury that cut short a promising sporting career... and risking it all on setting up his event DJ company, the SCE Event Group. It's a must-hear for ambitious wedding and event DJs - not least because he explains his approach to social media, and especia

Ferry Corsten is a trance superstar. In the late 90s and early 2000s he produced worldwide hits as System F, Moonman, Pulp Victim and Gouryella, working with Armin van Buuren, Tïesto and many other big names from the Dutch DJ scene. For many people his "Trance Nation" mix albums for Ministry of Sound were a huge touchpoint, but nowadays he plays a broader electronic music style - everything from progressive house to uplifting trance. As well as hosting his own weekly radio show, Corsten's Countdown, he regularly plays at events and festivals all over the world including Electric Daisy Carnival, Tomorrowland and many others, and has been consistently ranked in DJ Mag's Top 100 DJs poll. Meanwhile Unity project, in which he's collaborated with Paul Oakenfold among others, is a campaign to try to unite the disparate thread of the trance scene. In this episode, Ferry talks frankly about his decades as a trance DJ and producer, the state of music today, and where he sees it going. He also talks about ju

When DJ Dan started promoting indie club nights at university, he was doing everything himself (including the DJing), and working as hard as he could to fill one 200-person venue. Now, 17 years later, he sees 25,000 people through the doors of his club nights every weekend in the UK... and he still loves to DJ at his own events. Nowadays, Dan's organisation, Propaganda, runs events in 17 cities, and has thrown parties all over the world. His work has led him to DJing for Oasis, and he has a Glastonbury residency to boot. And all from someone who took a long time to really feel he was a "proper" DJ at all! Learn what it's like to be a DJ/promoter who focuses on guitar music rather than dance, how it feels to DJ at an event where members of many of the bands whose records you usually spin are actually on the dancefloor themselves, and what it's like to be in charge of large-scale club nights running simultaneously in cities all over the UK... while still DJing at one of them yourself! Check out Dan's

When he left university, Lohan Presencer didn't want to join the world of work. He didn't really want to grow up and leave the student life at all. So he applied for a job in the very university he'd been studying at, as their entertainment booker. So started an incredible and unlikely journey that took Lohan through promoting raves on the south coast of England, to plugging (often decidedly average) music in his first job in the record industry... to his current position heading up Ministry of Sound, one of the most famous club brand in the world. In this wide-ranging conversation, Lohan shares some of his biggest successes, talks about the difference between good DJs and bad ones... and explains why he's now so excited to share with the next generation of music entrepreneurs some of the lessons he learned on his own way to the top.

Just how do you go from teaching yourself to make mixtapes with a cassette player, to being a two-times DMC UK Supremacy Champion, five-times IDA UK Champion, and Red Bull 3style UK finalist... as well as becoming a world-touring DJ, scratch tutor and competition judge? Well, in DJ Rasp's case, he did it via a long-term stint as the DJ in a band, and working with a world-famous orchestra! Still DJing several times a week to this day, nowadays Rasp also teaches, not least for us here at Digital DJ Tips, where he produces Skill Session videos and helps out inside our scratch training courses. This conversation gives some deep insight into the scratch world, Rasp shares what it was like to tour China recently... and he reminisces about when mixtapes actually were, you know, tapes... You can find Rasp online at: https://www.facebook.com/deejayrasp/ https://www.instagram.com/djrasp/

Ever wondered what it's like being a world-renowned mashup artist? US-based DJ Adam Dutch knows, having had huge success with a succession of mashups, that tend to be (but aren't always!) in his beloved style, basically where rock and hip hop meet. I was intrigued as to how he got into it, and what his motivations are - and it turned out that he's much more than just a "mashup guy". A Berklee Music Business MBA graduate, he's established himself as a producer, as a radio DJ, as a podcaster and wedding DJ - and over and above all that, as a working DJing, playing 150+ shows a year to crowds up to 30,000. It's a fascinating and motivating conversation, with a lot about entrepreneurship in it. You can find Adam online at: http://adamdutch.com https://facebook.com/djadamdutch https://instagram.com/djadamdutch https://mixcloud.com/djadamdutch