I agree, its alot to do with what people will pay, and not enough to do with love of music. like you said, if you have the money you are more inclined to pay big bucks for a "top" dj, than if you barely scrape by putting your night on.

but at the same time, i would say that one off works of art compared to DJ sets, have intriniscally more value.

That's true. Your point of view (as working in the industry I suppose) is different than the one people have (the crowd).

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2010/08/dance-promoter-hits-city-with-seven-figure-suit-over-cancelled-tiesto-concert.html

$ 250.000 for tiesto

Well Sven doesn't has it so bad either:
trndmusik.de/2011/01/sven-vath-ich-habe-eine-halbe-million-versenkt/

50.000 Euro

$250.000 for that clown??? Are these guys kidding...... I would'nt pay £2.50 for that cheese monger!!

For a promoter this is a pretty ignorant view and completely wrong. You don't just wake up one day... stroll out of bed think 'i want to be a dj' and voila start being paid thousands for a set. It takes fucking ages! You spend ages paying shit loads to travel around build up your record collection, meet people. Literally thousands a year will get spent on buying music, equipment, going to parties in order to met people.

THEN you get to start playing but when you start you get paid NOTHING and have to pay to get to gigs etc. then maybe you start getting paid for travelling then as you contribute more and more by being recognised for the time you have put in before.... you get paid MORE. During all that time you are being paid a lot you have to travel a lot don't get to see your loved ones or family for months at a time maybe. THINK about it. Don;t just make assumptions, there is a reason for why they get paid a lot figure it out, don't just dismiss it. If it wasn't justified it wouldn't happen....

I think when you had 40,000 people knocking at your door waving £20 notes in your face, £2.50 wouldn't seem like such a bad investment.

it all depends on underlying factors and who the DJ is what they have done musically or some of them have no production chops at all but are good putting on a "show" . Some are just good goodlooking guys who are all image and no skills......yes they do exist!

Paul Oakenfold sold his house to Tony Blare for several million pounds. I guess he made his chunk of cash from spinning tunes in the 90's

ahahaha

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If it's to be believed, Tiesto got 100,000e a night for his residencey @ Privilege if he got 10,000 people through the door. Pete tong was also said to of been payed 40-50 grand a night for his wonderland.

Steve Lawler, right?

for what its worth in this interview deadmau5 reportedly gets $100k per US show
digi10ve.com/2011/03/30/interview-home-with-deadmau5/

Breaking News - David Guetta wants 125,000 per show! Wow, so much money for such a small DJ. I guess we're not paying by the pound for the world favourite frenchman.

Well done Dave!

that's quite a shit estimation.I'm from South A, and a lot of clubs get packed and more people want to get up and go out to clubs/bars.BTW with Bass Kleph coming up here at TRUTH,It is gonna be full.

South Africa is has a great scene!

Any one know how much afro jack laid back luke and fedde le grand get?

Insigthfull remarks on behalf of those of you who promote, very helpfull indeed.

On a different side note now a days electronic music should be viewed less as the pop industry and more as an arena of free flowing ideas. Now a days nobody much buys music. So an artist getting payed through perfomances seems reasonable. Same way Van-ghoh would have wanted to make a living of his works and not end his days broke. It's all a bit of a compesatory leap I suppose.

Call their bookings agent?

A not so well-known dj who has produced maybe 15-20 songss for great labels, but who doesn't fill stadiums and still is the opening act for the djs who get paid 15.000 euros maybe.....earns about 1.500 euros for european gigs. I heard that from first hand, it's not probably the same for all though

tsss..at only one electronic music summer festival (on german speaking part of swiss) they have him,magda and luciano... + couple of local idiots... so,i guess for those 3 they need around 200 000 swiss francs less or more..

Heard that Klock and Dettman claimed €2400 each for 5hr b2b set. Not sure how truthful it is, though

But if you're really so interested, why won't you write to the agents/djs themselves pretending you want to book them and enquiry the costs?

Hi I've had a quote for Alex Kenji for my new night Karma but can't disclose it. Look up Karma on Facebook. Also, if you are an up and coming DJ who gets to London and wants to play alongside some of the biggest names in Clubland info@karma-promotions.co.uk and put DJ in the subject line.

Also agents work on offers based on the size of the crowd and ticket price!

To my understanding:

Deadmau5 - $150,000
Swedish House Mafia - $75,000
Boys Noize - $15,000
Feed Me - $7500

Or thereabouts, so I've heard eighth hand.

hahahahah

Dubfire got paid around 40,000 euro's in Dubai for last NYE. The club was EMPTY. Major crisis's on the road made it impossible to get out until past 1am... Classic Dubai.

i severely doubt big djs don't ever play for free, i dont reckon sven vath is guna pay hawtin to play at his afterparty

guetta gets 150 000 € but 15000 people pay 30 € , spend money in drinks and sponsors are ready to pay a lot of money to be aprt of the event

Tiesto earned more than anyone else last year due to the ridiculous amount of touring he did. When you can sell out stadiums off the back of having just your name on the posters then you earn big. They get quite a bit less each for festivals such as creamfields. But remember, these guys have managers who get 10%, lawyers, tax people etc the poor old dj's probably end up with less than 40% of their fees. Those private jets dont come cheap you know. It's a hard life.

DAMN !! RESPECT!!

I work for lmmuk and i get paind around £150 a gig. Average 4 hour set.

Sven Vath got paid 30k to play a set @ the first "Les Ardentes" festival in Belgium. And that wasn't a big event at all. (4 or 5 years ago)

thats a shame !

There is no set amount on which a dj demands or gets paided, it quite simple really how its done.

You want to book avicci or who ever.

You want them to play new years eve for instance.

If they have no enquirys for that night then you will get it as its free and you make an offer of say 6k or what ever.

BUT This is wheere they make some serious money.

10 clubs what them to play new years ever well its simple it goes to the highest bigger

I.e club one offer 6k were club 9 offer 16K

Its all done as bidding, THE HIGHEST BIDDER WINS

and as far as im aware iv been djing and running my own night for 4 years.

One of the Most expensive Dj's at the moment is David Guetta.

God knows why cos he is Cheese On toast

the booking fee for b-list dj's (with a respected vinyl output) is often left blank, you state capacity of the venue and the amount of money you want to pay, if it fits their schedule why wouldn't they do it ? as soon as you price yourself out the market, your career is over

worth every cent , u only need 320 ppl paying each 15 euro entree fee .
And i don't think it would be hard to attract 300 with a back2back like that .
damn i would be there .

FOR 18 YEARS OF RIMINI COCORICO HAVE PAID € 70 000 Danny Tenaglia
http://www.riminibeach.it/notizie/danny-tenaglia

Finally an intelligent answer.

dont forget about the booking agents/agencies - they get their 5-10% percents from each 'sold' dj-deal. dont forget about the marketing, promotion, copywriters, security, bagholders, and other people standing behind the big dj-names... their service is included in the price.

here in Russia, dj's aint earn that more. and we have no big names really. our TV/Radio/pop stars singing on corporate holidays, for example, can earn $50 to 400K just for the behaving on the scene without actual singing... shite

Totally

why would they?

I remember djing with ATFC and Arron Ross for defected and i asked them about wages and they both said the same thing to me.

WE GET PAIDED TO TRAVEL and We Play for Free

jesus - who gives a shit?

I work for a small to medium sized label, so perhaps I can provide a different angle on this. Obviously the booking agent always gets paid in relation to the DJ 's fee, so when a big DJ gets booked, the agent's fee is going to be in proportion. I do agree that it might seem ridiculous to pay someone 10-15% of what you're already spending on a DJ, especially if that DJ just cost you 5000€, but essentially those big earning DJs wouldn't even have time to deal with all the booking requests they're getting. The agent is providing a service to the DJ, rather than the promoter, so at times, it can seem unjustified.

The case for smaller DJs is completely different though. In my case, our label has an in-house booking agency, simply to make ends meet. Since the music itself has actually stopped generating profits – you're lucky if you manage to break even – it is fairly hard for a small label to finance itself, let alone pay its staff. While the DJs keep their own fees – which is more than reasonable since they already make no money on their music thanks to illegal downloads – the label itself is financed through the small amount of merch we sell, as well as private money that is being put back in by the label owner (who is also a DJ). With no extra money beyond the amount needed to survive being made, where does that leave the label's staff? This is where the booking agency comes in, since the cash made from that is used as a salary for the employees.

At the end of the day, I do agree that DJ fees can be ridiculous and that it's very annoying to have to pay another fee on top of that, but the next time you complain about the issue just think for a minute: sometimes those fees actually get used to pay the people who put a lot of time and effort into running labels and not just some greedy douche who lights his cigars with dollar bills. Finally, if we would all actually be prepared to pay for the music we acquire, rather than just downloading it for free, the labels whose music we love might actually be able to finance themselves more sufficiently, which could result in smaller booking fand perhaps even DJ fees.