“Ibiza was a place where people came to feel free.” says Ibiza dj Anna Tur, in an interview in the podcast Shake Room of Madrid djs Shake Coconut, a meeting in which Tur talks about the changes that the leisure and music industry on the island has undergone in recent years. The dj recalls how before “you went to the beach and ended up dancing to a dj that maybe you didn’t even know who he was and it was Luciano or Sven Väth”.
“You lived incredible experiences”, anna Tur continues, recalling some anecdotes that, to this day, might not seem real: “You were in the DC and, suddenly, next to you was dancing Madonna. Or Naomi Campbell. And that was the most normal thing in the world.” “There wasn’t that damned red cordon that separates the VIP from the flesh-and-blood public,” he says about one of the aspects that most mark the island’s nightclubs at the moment. And the fact is that everyone wants to be a VIP and access to the reserved areas, where real fortunes are paid, has become the dream of many.
Industry, cachés and competition
Tur tells how the industry “has become professionalized” and mentions the increase in caches: “Those of twenty years ago, unless one or two figures, were not those of now”. This, explains the popular dj, implies that the prices of the tickets to the discotheques “obviously go up”. “The clubs did not have to maintain such powerful structures that they have to maintain now”, he indicates.
Anna Tur also talks about the competition between clubs, which this year, with the opening of a new discotheque, seems to have intensifiedthere was no such competition, there was a healthy competition”. He recalls that the entrepreneurs who were dedicated to this on the island “were four” and that “although they fought to see who was the best, in the end they were all friends and went to dinner, lunch, by boat…”.
Right now, explains the Ibizan dj, in the island’s entertainment industry there are “marketing departments, exploitation, with many people working, involved”, which turns this world into “another movie”. “It’s a very powerful business. It used to be, too, it was more of an attraction and now it’s more of a business.”
“You have to find your own bowling pins.”
In the interview Tur also offers advice to djs starting out in this world to have “patience” because the discjockey is a “long career” in which, unless they are a “ready-made” marketing product, it is necessary to have not only talent, but also “a background”.
In addition, it highlights that signing with a big agency does not guarantee you to have gigs. “You have to find your own gigs,” he says before explaining that some colleagues, when they are already in these agencies, protest because they have no work: “You have to work, you have to make music, recordings, streamings, a podcast…. It’s not enough for you to be at home smoking pot all day and waiting for the call to come.
For the full article, please visit Diario de Ibiza website here.