VIDEO: Open Mic Do's and Don'ts With DJ Smallz (@DJSMALLZ)

With over ten years of being in the music industry, DJ Smallz, gives you the ultimate guide to being successful at your next open mic event, giving you advice on performing, networking and contacting.

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Comments

[BNMC Cash]

First of all Dj Smallz I congratulate you on your success and hope that it continues to build. I'll start by saying as long as this comment is and as busy as you are I doubt you'll ever read this, but it'd be great if you did. My name is Cash. My brother and I came to Atlanta by way of Virginia. We jumped into the open mic circuit around the time Rock City, B.O.B., Willie Joe and a few others were open mic artist. Back when DJ Holiday was part of the campaign. A time where the biggest open mic in the city was winning Best of the Best at the Royal Peacock. During that time we went by Marv & Cash and we literally won every open mic in the city on a consistent bases. Not sounding cocky or anything, but we had to win. It was how we survived. We had to win at least 3 open mics per week. We also had to sell 3 cd's and hour 5 days a week $5 a pop 8 hours a day which came out to a 40 hour work week paying $15 and hour. It was our only means of survival for 4 months.

I said all that to let you know that I came from the open mic circuit. And although I respect all you do I don't encourage artist to be part of the open mic scene. It wasn't till open mic events banned my brother and I from competing that I came to this conclusion. We begin to win to much and the promoters stated that other opponents would turn away because they thought the competition was rigged. That thought pattern and mindset of others was possibly the best thing that could had happen for our careers in the music industry. After exploring the marketing aspect of this profession we begin to realize why it didn't make sense for us to continue doing open mics. One reason is that we begin to gain an audience. Giving the promoter and club the profit of that audience (door sales, tickets sales, bar sales, and etc. ) and getting nothing in return it other than prize money, was not beneficial to our growth as artist or businessmen. Outside of the small audience we begin to build, open mics never served as a place to network for us. In most cases its more a crowd of your competitors than it is your peers. They aren't there to see you win but to see you lose. Which means the word of your product spreading will most likely not happen by grass root promotions. And doing 2 songs or 3 even is not really a performance. It doesn't give you the chance to build anticipation or drive merch sales.

After being banned from open mics my brother and I contributed to forming a full band and we go by BNMC. We have completed two successful national tours and currently booking for our third this winter. We have begin to expand our market from VA to FL. We haven't done a show we haven't gotten paid for in years. We have released our first national iTunes release titled "Radio" and we're currently working on two others that will be marketed towards the college and EDM demographic. We also have a successful merch table of hats, cd's, t-shirts, and free giveaways that normally goes empty after every show. And last we have placed several records through BMI and Viacom that have appeared on many shows with MTV and VH1.

With all that said, are we balling? HELL NO!!! But we are using our talents to create a small business. Like yourself. We've created a fan base which in turn has created a profit margin. We are the true meaning of independent artist. And that's what I personally encourage other artist to do. I don't encourage open mics. Instead I encourage becoming a small business, have independent thinking, to not wait on a lucky shot but create it. We respect people like you and Atlanta for all its taught us. And there is some credit in open mics. Those open mics taught us the true hunger of being starving artist. However, even though open mics may have showed us the hunger, it was being removed from them that taught us how to eat.

-Cash

BNMCmusic.com