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MARYLAND
MOBILE FORMALIZES SCHOOL-DANCE SUCCESS Annapolis, Md. -- With focus and confidence, Jason Canaan is hitting his stride for success. After a decade operating Quality Entertainment, Canaan has the business strategy down, he knows his personal strengths and isn't afraid to dive into new technology or potential new markets. "When I see something, I go after it," he says. "I don't procrastinate by any means. To me, that's the only way you can succeed." Like many DJs, Canaan first started spinning tunes at a friend's Sweet 16 party. That 1997 gig lasted four hours and earned Canaan $100 in a tip cup. The bug bit him, so Canaan saved money from a part-time job and bought his first DJ system shortly after. A decade later he's a full-time DJ, booking 175 gigs a year himself--- he's a school dance specialist --- and running a company that totals nearly 400 events annually. "When I started at 17, a lot of the veterans in the area who had these schools for years and years were threatened by me because I came in with a lot of energy," says Canaan. "It sounds cocky, but I just like to call it confidence." He gained experience and clientele at bars and clubs around that time as well. And while Canaan says his company doesn't currently book club gigs, there's one exception-- a club whose Friday night resident quit. "We really don't touch the club thing because it doesn't pay well," Canaan says. "But clubs and bars are a great training platform for any DJ because it's a huge variety of people." When he hit his early 20s, Canaan started booking weddings, private parties, and events. "As I've become older, become more of an adult, it had to become a career," he says. "I had to be more serious about it." Canaan continues to book school dances while looking to other events for the future. "If you're 50-years old and wearing a glittery vest because you are trying to cater to a 15-year-old, you look like an idiot," he says. "There'll come a day when I won't be doing school dances anymore. I think it's just the vicious cycle." But at 27, Canaan is young enough to appeal to teenagers, and has enough experience to run a smooth operation. "There's a certain formula that I use when I do a school dance," Canaan says. "And I tell all the DJs I work with, if you follow this it will work every time." His agenda for a three-hour dance from 8 to 11 p.m. goes something like this: Take care of the rock crowd early on, playing 20 minutes of the genre's less-dance-able tracks while kids are arriving; then for the next 25 minutes play some hits from a couple years back to build interest; then sprinkle in the first slow dance. At 9:00, drop the hottest song out there, to let the crowd know you're serious. Keep the crowd there by continuing with hot tracks for 45 minutes; drop the next slow song; go hard again for the next 45 minutes. "There's enough current music out there to go an hour and a half," he says. Then, as kids inevitably leave in the last half hour, play good songs that might not have made it to the A-List of current, popular music. Canaan isn't insanely rigid with his flow, but he sticks pretty strictly to his no-line-dance motto. "I don't do line dances-- I hate them," he says. "I can't stand the 'Cha Cha Slide,' I hate the 'Booty Call.' I think they're overplayed." Through the years he's also learned to not be offended by the occasional student who requests songs. And he's stayed in touch with his own experiences as a youngster, including anecdotes in his sales pitch about his frustration at his own school dances when the DJ played too many or too few slow songs. "Any time you're selling any event---weddings, private parties--- you've got to relate with your customer at some point," he says. "You have to earn their respect, and make them confident, give them peace of mind. And you're going to deliver that in your sales pitch. That's what makes this a career and not a hobby." From his own experience to hearing out new clients' past DJ problems, Canaan emphasizes personal interaction in booking gigs. "When you're selling, the listener's going to win," he says. "Clients will tell you what they want. And if they don't know what they want, they don't to be sold on it." Canaan focuses on maintaining the underlying honesty and personal approach. "People know when they're getting a sales pitch," he says. "Every time you call a company you're going to get an automated system--- how frustrating is that? Now you can't even press '0' to get an operator.... If you treat people like people, then they're going to respect you for that." So Canaan's cell phone number appears on his business card, his web-site, his office voicemail. His employees--- five additional DJs round out the company--- are hand-picked by the finicky Canaan. The first new DJ he hired in three years had to endure eight weeks of training "roadie style" with Canaan before he was sent out on his own. When his second gig for Quality Entertainment earned him a $100 tip, Canaan was as proud as the new DJ. "It can take years to build an account, and it can be destroyed in one night," Canaan says. "You have to make sure the people who are going out for you are good people." Rather than expand at a rate he's not comfortable with, Canaan concentrates on Quality Entertainment's current client roster. Canaan notes that he's turned down at least 20 potential customers this year. "I don't want to be a big agency that books 30 parties on a Friday night," he says, "because you lose the quality of service, which is the reason I named by company Quality Entertainment." Of a generation that vaguely remembers life before digital music, Canaan started DJing with CDs and jumped on to MP3 a couple years ago. But his initial experience with laptop DJing wasn't encouraging. A computer crash smashed his confidence in the medium. "I had to restart my computer and just eat it for eight minutes," he says. "I had to give a refund, and after that, I was like, never again." The experience left him scarred. "You can't be at $2,000 events and have your laptop crash," he says. "You look horrible." Canaan has since bounced back and dipped his toe back into the MP3 pool with Rane's Serato Scratch Live. "It's perfect," he says. "But switching to that platform I had to relearn how to use that software. It was a weird sound." Since starting in 1998 with Pioneer CDJ-700 decks, Canaan wasn't used to the vinyl sound of Serato at first, and sticks to using the familiar Pioneer 800 decks with the interface. "That's what I like about Serato," he says. "For me, it's like the best of every world because, if your laptop crashes, then you have a CD player in front of you and you can pop a CD in real quick." He's also learned to keep the dancefloor going by reading the crowd within the first 10 minutes, and when in doubt "play for the women." How to get those ladies, he notes, depends on what type of gig. But his generic advice begins with a couple higher tempo songs, followed by a diva anthem like Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" or Aretha Franklin's "Respect." Ten years in, Canaan seems to be settling into the ebb and flow of the industry. "I get burned out every January, ready to sell my company and quit," he says. "But I know that I wouldn't have as much fun at another job, and I wouldn't get paid as well. I love the business." This article is on display in our office located in Pasadena, Maryland. |