Policies
Booking policy for residents
Who residents are.
SLIST books a small number of DJs on repeat. They are on most of our lineups, most of the year. That is the strategy, not favoritism — an artist is built by frequency.
We are not an agency. We take no cut of a resident's outside work and hold no claim on their calendar beyond our own event dates. What we put in is slots, promotion, production, and priority. This page is what we ask back.
Booking them.
The answer is usually yes. We trade bookings, share lineups, and send our DJs to other organizers' rooms on purpose.
Three conditions.
Condition one — not the same day as a SLIST event.
We hold the date itself. Nothing around it. No radius, no cooling-off window, no exclusivity period. The night before is fine. The night after is fine. Same week, same venue, same city, same genre — all fine.
Two dark lineups in one city on one night split the same people. Off that date, the calendar is open.
Our dates aren't always public far ahead. Ask, and we'll tell you whether yours is clear.
Condition two — set times and set order, disclosed at booking time.
Send the running order with the offer: who plays, in what sequence, at what times. At booking time — not once the flyer is designed.
You do not have to publish it. We don't publish ours. We do have to see it.
If the order or the times move after we have agreed, tell us before they move. Position is a term of the booking, not a detail to be adjusted in show week.
Condition three — direct support or better.
A resident carries our name onto your flyer, so we hold a billing floor.
Direct support means the slot immediately before the headliner. A SLIST resident takes that slot or higher. It is a floor, not a ceiling — headline, co-headline and closing all clear it.
If the organizer is playing their own event and is themselves direct support to the headliner, a resident may sit directly below the organizer.
Where nothing is published — no set times, alphabetical flyer, our own format — the floor applies to the running order you disclosed and to how the bill is presented. Not publishing an order is fine. Not having one is not.
We sponsor our artists with priority bookings, and a sponsorship that survives being undercut is not a sponsorship. Our DJs can play any slot in a night. Where they are billed is a separate matter, and it is the one we hold.
Why the floor exists.
When we give a resident the peak slot at our own events, we are making a public claim about where that artist stands. If the same artist opens doors for a stranger three weeks later, we have unmade the claim ourselves. The audience reads billing order as a value ranking, whether or not anyone intends it that way. So we protect the ranking we paid for.
There is a second reason, and it is the one that helps you. A floor forces selection. An organizer who has to put a SLIST resident near the top has to actually want that artist near the top — and that is a better night than one built by filling slots. It also keeps two brands from colliding on the same flyer with no agreed hierarchy, which is how billing arguments start.
On versatility.
Our DJs can play anything and they can play anywhere in a night. Warm-up, peak, close, an ambient room at 6am. That is a matter of pride and it is not the point being negotiated here.
The floor is not a claim that our residents are too good to open. It is a claim about what the order signals once it is published. We do not publish set times at our own events precisely because we do not want a room chasing a slot. At your event, the billing order may be the only signal your audience gets — which is exactly why it carries weight.
Versatility is the artist's. Presentation is the brand's. Both get respected.
Exceptions.
- Festivals and multi-stage bills, where direct support has no clean meaning. Stage-closing, stage-hosting, or a curated block clear the floor.
- B2Bs, takeovers, and label showcases, where the ladder does not apply.
- Someone a resident wants to open for. Artist's call.
Not on the list — ask anyway. The floor is a default, not a doctrine.
What you get back.
This runs both directions or it does not run.
- Reciprocal booking — send us yours, we will look at them for our lineups with the same seriousness we are asking of you.
- Cross-promotion of the date across SLIST channels.
- An artist who arrives with an audience already built, which is what the residency is for.
How to ask.
This runs both directions or it does not run.
Send the offer to the resident, or to [email protected], with the date, venue, the lineup as it stands, the running order and set times, and the intended billing position. Either route reaches us — residents clear outside dates with us before they accept. If it clears the three conditions you will have an answer within a few hours.
Residents: outside offers come to us before you accept, with the running order attached. This is a clearance, not a notification — wait for the answer before you commit to anything. We turn them around fast and we clear most of them, but the yes has to exist first.