Whoever you are, wherever you are, Beatsy brings the DJs out to play


    Ever wanted to book your own rave but haven’t known any DJs to call on? Tried to organise a party and that friend of a friend who swore he could DJ for you has just cancelled and you don’t know what to do? Head on over to Beatsy, a brave new startup that’s looking to connect fans and artists directly, making booking a new or popular DJ easy for the fans and making earning money from gigging straightforward and safe for the artist.

    This isn’t the first we’ve heard of Beatsy, you might remember that earlier this month we covered an interesting store that popped up out of nowhere. The ‘I Love Tekes’ webstore, created by Anssi Uimonen, was built to help raise funds to launch Beatsy, and it looks like it’s helped!

    So what is Beatsy and why is it interesting? Well as Anssi told us in his own words, “The disruptive thing about Beatsy is that we allow fans to book up & coming DJs – something that hasn’t been possible previously.” Checking out the website it’s easy to see how simple the process has been made, with a straightforward search engine to find artists in your area, links to their music on SoundCloud and YouTube, as well the all important information on prices and rider requirements (a rider is a set of requests or demands that a performer sets as criteria for performance, in this instance what technical equipment the DJ needs to be able to perform.)

    It really sounds like this is a work of passion for Anssi and teammate William Coates. Their dream is to dominate the scene for booking live DJs in the fast growing Electronic Music scene, and they should know about its growth and popularity as both have been involved for years. Anssi co-founded an electronic music web magazine in 2009 and William founded Digital-Tunes, an “iTunes for Electronic Music” underground electronic music webstore, back in 2006.

    These guys love their music and for the last few weeks they’ve been living on free pizza and breakfast at Startup Sauna as they work overtime to bring Beatsy to life. Anssi confessed to me that he’s had to learn to code both back and front end in the process and the effort has shown, even in the space of two weeks since I first looked at the website new features have been added.

    They say that the hardest part of bringing the service to life has been, “changing the mindset of bigger artists – a typical scenario where you present something new and disruptive to a craftsman who has followed the same process for the last 15 years, the first reaction is “That is not gonna work”.” However they have also had great feedback from artists who have signed up, Anssi told us that, “9 out of 10 think that we rock and support us even to the extent that some have agreed to produce marketing materials and content – pro bono – to help us out.”

    That’s a really encouraging sign and you can understand why DJs would be keen to see Beatsy become a success. The escrow payment model that Beatsy use means that the organiser pays up front, so the artist knows they will get paid, and the organiser knows that if the DJ doesn’t show up they get the fee back as the payment is held in escrow by Beatsy until after a successful show. Both sides can trust in a clear, transparent payment system, something that isn’t always the case in the field of live music. The payment model is also very straightforward too, the artist gets 100% of his or her fee and a 15% service charge is levied on bookers which is clearly displayed on each artists profile page.

    The guys are based here in Finland and there are DJs available to book in cities across the country but they’ve got a great presence in New York as well as, as can be seen by the list of DJs available to book in the city. This is a service that is already growing and spreading wide. So go check out the website, see who’s available in your area and why not try organising your own mini-rave. Just make sure you invite us along!

    Top Image Courtesy of Shutterstock // DJ