A required playlist
In any format. A spreadsheet is fine.
Gobo Studios · a DBA of Monterey Skates LLC · Monterey, CA · (831) 264-8797 · gobostudios.com
DJ and MC
The room tells you what to play next.
Gobo Studios is Max Troyer on the music and on the mic. School dances, corporate parties, birthdays, anniversaries, graduation parties, and karaoke parties, anywhere on the Monterey Peninsula and down the Central Coast.
A gym with four hundred teenagers in it is the hardest room in this business. That is the room this whole setup is built for.
How it actually works
Nobody dances because the playlist said so.
A prepared setlist is a guess made a week early by somebody who was not in the room. It gets you through the first fifteen minutes and then it starts costing you.
What actually fills a floor is watching. Who came in together. Which table stood up on the second chorus and which one checked a phone. Whether the room wants to sing along or wants to jump. That read changes the next track, and the next one after it, all night.
The floor is empty for the first twenty minutes of almost every school dance. That is normal and it is not a reason to panic and burn the biggest song of the night at 7:40. It gets held back for the moment it works.
What that looks like on the night
- One person on the music and on the mic all night. No handoff to a substitute, no laptop on autoplay while somebody steps outside.
- Your must-play list and your do-not-play list, taken in advance and honoured.
- Requests taken at the booth during the night, filtered against the do-not-play list and the clean policy before anything gets loaded.
- Set built live off the floor, not read off a printout.
- Transitions on beat. Two decks, beat-matched, not a media player fading one track into the next.
Your lists
Hand us any of these and we will work to it.
Send them in whatever form they already exist in. Nothing here needs retyping into our format.
A do-not-play list
Songs, artists, or whole genres.
A dance standard
From the district or the venue, in whatever words the district uses.
A hard stop time
We will not run past it.
Content policy
Clean edits by default, and we check the edit.
For a school booking every track is a clean or radio edit. That is the default, not an upgrade, and it does not need to be asked for.
The part that matters: a file labelled “clean” is not always clean. Distributors mislabel tracks constantly, and plenty of official radio edits leave content that a middle school principal will not want on the PA. So the check is listening, not reading a tag. Anything that fails gets pulled from the show library for that booking. If a song only exists in one version and that version does not pass, it does not play, and we will tell you that before the night rather than during it.
You get the same policy for corporate work if you want it. Plenty of company parties want a clean room too.
The music
Every track was bought.
The music library is purchased outright or pulled from a professional record pool subscription. No YouTube rips, no torrents, no 96kbps files recovered off a burned CD from 2009. That matters for sound before it matters for anything else. A ripped file sounds thin on a big PA in a hard room, and a gym is the hardest room there is.
Karaoke tracks come from licensed commercial catalogues. Same standard.
About performance licences
One thing we will not tell you, because it is not true and other people will: a mobile DJ does not carry your public performance licence. Under US copyright law the ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, and GMR licences are held by the venue or the event organiser, not by the person playing the music. If a vendor tells you their licence covers your event, that should worry you rather than reassure you. Most schools, hotels, and event venues already hold what they need. If you are not sure, ask your venue, and we are happy to put in writing exactly what we do and do not carry.
MC work
The announcements are part of the job.
Somebody has to get four hundred people to look at the stage at the right minute. That is the MC half, and it is the half most mobile DJs treat as an afterthought.
We run your timeline. You give us the order of events and the names, spelled the way they are said, and we hit them. Short and clear, at a volume the back of the room can hear, and then back to the music. No radio-voice bit, no comedy set, no talking over the hook.
The announcements we run most
- Court presentations and crowning. Names read as written, in the order the advisor set.
- Raffle draws and door prizes.
- Handing the mic to a principal, a director, or a parent, and taking the music down for it.
- Last-call and last-dance warnings so the room clears on schedule.
- Lost phone, lost keys, the car with its lights on in the north lot.
- Toasts, the cake, and the send-off at a private party.
| Item | What it is |
|---|---|
| DJ and MC | One operator, live, for the booked hours. Not a playlist on a timer. |
| Playback | VirtualDJ on a dedicated show Mac. Two decks, beat-matched. |
| Backup | A second playback path and a redundant copy of the show library, on site. |
| Sound | PA sized to the room. See the audio page for coverage and power. |
| Microphone | One handheld wireless for announcements, plus a wired backup. |
| Set-up and tear-down | Not counted against your event hours. |
| Planning | A call before the event to lock the timeline, the names, and the lists. |
The timeline
Doors at seven. Here is the rest of it.
A school dance is the tightest version of this, so it is the one worth spelling out. Corporate and private timelines are looser but the shape holds.
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Load-in, three hours out.
Cases in, PA on poles, lighting up, everything cabled and tested before a single student is in the building.
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Sound check, one hour out.
Speech through the mic in the empty room, then music at show level. Levels set now, so nobody is fixing feedback in front of a crowd.
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Doors.
Low-energy music, lights up and calm. People are still finding their friends.
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First forty minutes.
The floor fills in waves. Build, do not force it.
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Peak.
Where the biggest songs go, and where the lighting rig earns its money.
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Announcements.
Court, raffle, whatever the timeline says. Music down, then straight back up so the floor does not empty.
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Last three songs.
Called from the mic so the room knows. Sing-along, then the closer.
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Lights up, load-out.
Music off on your hard stop, not five minutes after it.
Before you book
The procurement answers.
Written for the activities director and the business manager, because they are the ones who have to make it work on paper.
- What kinds of events do you take?
- School dances and rallies, corporate parties and awards nights, and private parties — birthdays, anniversaries, graduation parties, and karaoke parties. If yours does not obviously fit one of those, describe it in the first email and you will get a straight answer on whether we are the right booking for it.
- Can you meet our district’s background-check requirement?
- Live Scan clearance under California Education Code 45125.1 is in progress and is not complete yet. If your district requires clearance on file before a contractor is on campus, tell us early. It takes about two weeks to process, and we would rather start it now than find out in week one of a two-week lead.
- What do you need from us in writing?
- A signed agreement, a contact who will be on site and reachable that night, your hard stop time, and the do-not-play list. If your district uses its own vendor packet, send it and we will fill it out.
- What happens if you are sick?
- You get told immediately, not on the day.
- How far do you travel?
- Monterey Peninsula and the Central Coast. Anything past that, ask, and we will tell you whether the drive works for your call time.
- Do you take requests during the event?
- Yes, at the booth, filtered against your do-not-play list and the clean policy. If you want requests turned off entirely, say so and they are off.
Related
Next step
Tell us the date and the room.
Send the date, the venue, the head count, and the hours. You get a written quote back with the packages that fit, and a straight answer on whether the date is open.
Or call. (831) 264-8797.