Welt Discos @ Arroz Estúdios (15/04/23)
As a very occasional party thrower I’m always fascinated by how other more dedicated promoters pull it off time and time again. So much work, so much stress, so many things that can go wrong. So I want to share some of the thought processes and practical aspects that went into last Saturday’s (first ever!) Welt Discos party, which was, through a mixture of sense and good luck, ultimately a success. In the past I’ve been in groups of people throwing events, but this was the first one where I’d taken on sole responsibility for pretty much everything, from bookings to promotion to production and hosting on the night. As a result, I kept things reasonably simple and low-risk, though my growing excitement in the week running up to the party did lead to some not-strictly-necessary spending (more on that below). For the seasoned promoters among you, most of what I describe here will seem like total child’s play. But I’ve come out of the whole experience feeling pretty proud of myself and the results.
Motivations
The main motivations for doing this party were:
I wanted to invite Nick Kagame to play again in Lisbon. Aside from him being a good friend and one of the best DJs I know, I’ve played at his party Dust Off in Manchester five times now so it only seemed fair to return the favour.
The lineup of Nick and Chima Isaaro had been stuck in my head for a while. For starters they are both top of the Midweek Mixes leaderboard (i.e. I am a fan) and I hear a lot of synergies in their selections. It was only after confirming the bookings that we realised I had inadvertently contributed to an ongoing renaissance in Rwandan DJ representation in Lisbon in 2023.
Gwenan aka G-Unit aka Speedy G had been booked by the Magic Carpet crew to play at Lux Frágil on the Friday night, so I reckoned that even if my event was a letdown we would at least all have a fun weekend together.
All of this seemed reason enough to throw a party and, once I’d got the venue Arroz Estúdios on board, the stage was set.
Things that went really well
I commissioned a proper poster. Sam Tomson, member of Bakk Heia and designer of such bangers as the sleeve for System Olympia’s recent New Erotica Collection, took my rather nebulous brief and knocked it out of the park with this sexily visceral and witty image in the vein of 80s disco sleeves by Studio Graffiti. The poster was actually so popular that I know of at least two different people who printed off their own copies of it to put up at home. Thank you Sam!
I did some old-school promotion. I printed off postcards and distributed them around town, primarily in record shops. I don’t know if this had any impact on tickets but it felt kind of wholesome to do it, especially since I barely go to record shops any more, and the conversations I had with the various record sellers gave me further ideas and encouragement.
I wrote a Portuguese event blurb and press-release. Mainly I’m happy about this because it shows I can write more or less capably in Portuguese. But I also wanted to follow the example of clubs and promoters I admire in other countries who provide information in local language. You might say that in Portugal this is rather a moot point given how good everyone’s English is, but for me it felt like a way of showing that the event wasn’t only for foreigners. The press release actually made it onto the music news website A Cabine, which I think is very cool.
I did some production. Originally my plan was to just show up and use the venue as-is. Arroz Estúdios is a perfectly functional space and the decorations or lights (or bad NFT art) that they sometimes install there usually detract from rather than improve the vibe. As the night drew closer, though, I started to wonder if maybe I should make a little effort decorations-wise. On a visit to Bones Records the week before the party I spotted their disco ball and asked where they’d got it…and then got one myself. The majority of the production costs in the below budget are thus disco ball-related — ball, motor, chains (ultimately unused), fixings (which I DIYed myself #masc) — and then there were things like plants and plant pots for using as a protective barrier in front of the DJ equipment. Was the disco ball worth it? YOU BET. Guest DJs aside it was the star of the party, immediately warming up the space and creating movement to encourage dancing from the very start.
I invited enough people in person. From my limited previous experience of promoting, one thing that always seems to make a difference is getting the word out to people personally. It’s all well and good posting the event on Instagram or writing about it on your world-dominating newsletter, but if you don’t tell people one-to-one — online or, better, in person — they will happily see it and forget about it with a swipe. Luckily I was in Lisbon for a few weeks leading up to the night so I had ample opportunity to bump into people from the local scene, tell them all about it and give them a postcard. Sure many of those people didn’t make it on the night, but I’m pretty sure several of them bought a ticket and would have told their friends, which contributed to the event gaining momentum.
I made the party affordable. This is perhaps the part I’m most proud of regarding this party. My budget included fair DJ fees (more on this below) but also fair ticket prices: 5€ early birds, 7€ advance and 10€ on the door. It’s true that this didn’t leave much room for manoeuvre in the budget and if the party went badly I would lose money. But I had faith that the low ticket prices would encourage people to buy them in advance and generate some good momentum, and this proved to be the case. Maybe my opinion now would be different if the party had been a financial failure, but I feel it’s more important to make an event accessible rather than to overprice either through fear that you’ll lose money (which could become a self-fulfilling prophecy) or some misguided notion of making a load of money (though I also fully recognise that running parties isn’t my job, and maybe I would think very differently if it was). I’d like to thank the friends who provided things that helped me achieve this particular balance more easily (XDJs, Tascam recorder, spare rooms etc).
The vibe was great! I’ll talk a bit more about this when I release the recording of my set but safe to say most people who came enjoyed themselves — and danced — a lot.
Things that went less well
There were several casualties from Friday night. My plan to have the whole gang in one place worked in some respects, but didn’t in others. There were several groups of people who went out to see G play at Lux on Friday night and then didn’t make it on Saturday. This was not very surprising and my disappointment isn’t with the people looking after their heads and bodies after a big night out; it’s more that I had an ideal in my head of bringing people from disparate sections of the Lisbon scene together in one place: my party! It’s something I managed the first time I booked Gwenan here, but this time it didn’t quite come together. Lisbon can feel like quite a divided scene so it’d be nice if future events see people from those different cliques enjoying themselves on the same dancefloor.
The Lisbon club scene I settled for the house mixer. I was aware that the house mixer was an old beaten up Pioneer because I’d used it before, but in my head it would still do the job. In practice it is really beaten up, with some faders missing and dodgy knobs, and once you’ve become used to four EQs suddenly being given only three starts to look really mean. Next time I promise to hire one in.
The recording only half-worked. Despite careful instructions from the owner of the borrowed Tascam recorder, I still somehow managed to register only the first half of the party. So the recording of my warm-up will be up soon, and I apologise to Nick and Chima for somehow messing it up for the rest of the night.
I forgot to tell the DJs what time the pre-party dinner was. Probably the most egregious lapse of the whole process. I also had to peremptorily leave the (much delayed) DJ dinner early to go and set up, something I remember other promoters doing when I’ve been there as an artist, so I didn’t feel too bad but still…it would have eased my stress level during that afternoon and dinner had I known that the DJ setup and, more importantly, disco ball were all already in position.
Nothing else. Remarkably, everything else went pretty much to plan. Big thanks to the whole team at Arroz Estúdios for being an essential part of that!
With that all over…let’s talk budget.
Budget
As I mentioned above, my original budget was predicated on reasonable DJ fees and ticket prices, based on my understanding and experience as a DJ who has played regularly in Lisbon and abroad. It’s fair to say that standard DJ fees for local DJs here have traditionally been very bad. Yes Portugal is a poorer country than, say, Belgium, but that’s no justification for big clubs like Lux or festivals like Sonar paying local DJs peanuts to play on a big stage. Like many, I’ve occasionally accepted these low fees just for the opportunity to play on a big sound system and get that exposure. But it’s not a healthy dynamic and doesn’t do any favours to the rest of the DJing ecosystem in the city. So I was determined to offer reasonable fees to both Nick and Chima. To keep the party affordable for dancers, I put out super cheap Early Birds and reasonably priced Advance tickets, and then made it a round 10€ on the door — similar to or lower than many other events at the same venue.
Here’s my original budget:
And here’s the final budget:
Some observations:
I made money! This was by no means a given, and based on my own original predictions for ticket and door sales I thought I would probably lose around 200€ on the party — essentially disco ball money plus a bit extra. If I broke even it would be a happy bonus. This pessimistic picture changed somewhat in the week or two leading up to the party as the advance tickets began to sell, but…
People don’t buy tickets until the last minute. With a week to go before the party I think we had sold about 40 advance tickets. Some people told me this was a good sign, but in my head the fact that only 14 people had taken advantage of the 5€ tickets suggested the party wasn’t appealing enough to commit, and then the drip-drop of further sales — often connected to me posting about it on Instagram — while promising, didn’t exactly fill me with confidence. But then in the final week two things happened: first, I suddenly realised that the number of tickets sold was in fact higher than the ‘people attending’ number on RA (a rookie error); and second, in the final 24 hours, about 60 extra people bought tickets. Was this thanks to me pointing out that an advance ticket would save them the membership fee on the door? Maybe. Or perhaps people just waited until the last moment before deciding where to go out, leaving me in a bit of a stew. I envy those promoters who either sell their parties out immediately or don’t even have to do advance tickets and just know they’ll get enough people on the door. Speaking of which…
Loads of people paid on the door. This was unexpected. Even on the night itself, when I looked at the crowd it didn’t look like more than my predicted 80 people had paid on the door, as the dancefloor never felt overly busy. I put this down to a few factors. First, the venue is deceptively big and has plenty of off-dancefloor space where people congregate. Second, I know for sure that quite a few ticket holders didn’t show. And finally, people come and go at a party like this — some came early and then headed on to other venues, and others would have come later after the bars in town shut.
I need a lesson in budget management. Imagine if my original ticket predictions had held true. I would have lost around 600€, though at least I’d own a disco ball and some plants. In truth it’s not quite that easy a counterfactual. Had the tickets not been (apparently) selling, I probably wouldn’t have splashed out on those extra things. Anyway, the main reason I was able to take this particular financial risk was that I had done a not-very-enjoyable but well-paid-for-Portugal side gig the week before, knowing this would subsidise any party over-spend. Shrewd business strategy or an attempt to justify folly? You decide.
What’s next?
I realise I’ve given very few details of what the party itself was like. Those will follow soon when I upload my set (which I’ve been listening to and enjoying on my trip to the USA).
As for the new Welt Discos EVENT SERIES, this is now genuinely a thing as I have confirmed nights in Berlin and London later this year:
Renate, Berlin — on 28 July with Gwenan and Stephen Howe
The Pickle Factory, London — on 13 October in a collab with Pumping Velvet
And I’ve got my eye on a Round 2 in Lisbon come September, so watch this space.
In the meantime, as I said at the top, I’m genuinely interested in how people promote parties (let alone festivals), the risks they take and the judgements they make. So if something here resonated with you, or made you snort with derision, let me know with a comment or an email. I’m all ears.