How to Find DJ Promo Emails (and Get Your Track Played)

Why DJ promo still works

In dance music, DJs are the first audience that matters. A record that gets played in the right sets gets heard by crowds, filmed, clipped and asked about, and DJ support becomes a credential you can put in every pitch after it. DJ promo is also mostly free: it costs time, a clean list and a DJ-ready file. The artists who get support consistently treat it as a system they run every release, not a one-off blast.

Step-by-step process

1. 01Pull festival and club lineups that match your genre (past and upcoming) and put every DJ into a sheet. Add the DJs who already play artists you sound like.
2. 02Search for contacts in this order: SoundCloud bio, Instagram bio, Facebook page, then ask an LLM for the publicly listed promo email if you still need it.
3. 03Look for a promo address specifically (promo@, demos@ or a promo form). Booking agents' addresses are for booking requests, not tracks.
4. 04Verify in bulk with Hunter's Verifier and send to anything it rates 70% confidence or higher.
5. 05Add verified emails to Sheets or Airtable, tagged by genre, region, tier (headliner, mid-level, local) and priority.
6. 06Set up Mixmax (or any sequencing tool) on your own domain, not @gmail. The minimum subscription is fine.
7. 07Send with the template below, then follow up once.

What to send

• Tagged, high-quality MP3s with the artist, title and BPM in the file name, and WAVs on request. DJs download promos to play them, so make the file ready to drop into a set.
• A private SoundCloud or Dropbox link, never an attachment.
• The extended or club mix first. A radio edit with no intro is hard to mix.
• Two or three tracks at most per email, with the one you care about most at the top.
• BPM and key in the email body. It saves the DJ a step, and DJs remember the artists who save them steps.

Outreach Template

Hey {{First Name}}, I hope all is well! Huge fan of your sets and wanted to send over some heaters for consideration in your sets. Tagged MP3s here: (Dropbox link). Thanks for the time and consideration!

Timing and follow-up

• Send 2 to 4 weeks before release so DJs can test the record in sets before it is out.
• Send midweek, in the morning of the DJ's region. Weekend inboxes are buried by show logistics.
• Follow up once, 5 to 7 days later, with one line and the same link. Never a third time.
• When a DJ plays it, thank them and ask for a clip of the moment if they have one.
• Log every open, download and reply in your outreach CRM, so the next release starts with a warm list.

Build the relationship, not just the list

Track who opens, who downloads and who replies. The DJs who support one record usually support the next one if the music fits, so tier your list: the DJs who played you get the next promo first, personally, before the wider send. Repost their sets when they include your track, tag them in clips of the moment, and when you send the next record, mention the last one they played. A list of 40 DJs who know your name beats a list of 400 who don't.

Turn DJ support into content

A DJ playing your record is footage. Ask for crowd clips, repost them, and use them as the flex post in your rollout (the 10 post types covers how). At scale, set footage is exactly what clipping campaigns cut into short clips for Reels, TikTok and Shorts: across 135 clipping campaigns in our platform, a typical campaign produced about 700 clips and 6 million views.

Get the SoundCloud side ready

DJs dig on SoundCloud. Before the send, make sure the track page is ready: strong artwork, accurate genre tags, and a download or buy link. Our free SoundCloud repost groups and a SoundCloud repost campaign put the track in front of the same scene the DJs follow, so your promo email lands on a record they have already seen in their feed. If you'd rather not run DJ promo by hand, ID.ID is our DJ promo product.