How techno media works: Resident Advisor, Boiler Room and mixes

The mix as a calling card

In pop you get to know an artist through songs. In techno, through mixes. A one- or two-hour set shows a DJ's taste, skill and character better than any single track. That is why promoters listen to recordings before booking someone. A mix in the right place can launch a career overnight.

Essential Mix: two hours on the radio

On 30 October 1993 BBC Radio 1 broadcast the first Essential Mix, overseen by Pete Tong. The format is simple: each week a different artist plays an uninterrupted two-hour set. The show is still running, and an invitation is still seen as a badge of honour. In the 1990s fans taped episodes on cassettes and swapped them.

Resident Advisor: from party listings to an institution

Resident Advisor, RA for short, was founded in Sydney in 2001 by Paul Clement and Nick Sabine to cover the local scene. Over time it moved its headquarters to London and became the club scene's most important medium: news, reviews, interviews, worldwide event listings and ticketing. RA's weekly mix podcast is one of the most coveted slots for a DJ. RA is also one of the sources of our news.

Boiler Room: a camera in the booth

In 2010 in London, Blaise Bellville and Thristian Richards set up a webcam in front of a DJ in a small room and streamed it live. That was the birth of Boiler Room. Instead of a distant figure, viewers saw the DJ up close, with people dancing behind them. Today Boiler Room runs parties and streams worldwide, and in January 2025 it was bought by Superstruct, which owns many festivals. Boiler Room videos can draw millions of views, like Sara Landry's 2023 set (the artist herself featured in the hard techno lesson).

The dark side

When a set is filmed, some DJs play to the camera rather than the dancefloor. The crowd dances with phones in hand. That is why clubs like Berghain ban photos. In the late 2010s Belgian DJs Amelie Lens and Charlotte de Witte built huge audiences through filmed sets and social media, which shows how much the road to the top has changed.