Photo via Arghtee
Arghtee runs CLUBJERSEY, an outlet for, yep, Jersey Club music. Yesterday afternoon, he uploaded a graph to Facebook along with the following caption:"I've never really given stats away, but one of the reasons Jersey Club parties are usually popping is because most of the listeners are female. Fuck all these Grime/Techno/House parties full of mandem, if you want some girls in your party you need to play some Jersey Club.Saying that, if anybody from Jersey want to see stats from CLUBJERSEY or wants some advice on how to push their music. Hmu."Here's the graph:
Intrigued, I dropped Arghtee an email to see exactly what that graph showed and why he was confident that Jersey Club seemed to be one of the few genres around that appealed to women more than men.THUMP: Can you tell our readers who might not know —for whatever reason— exactly what Jersey Club is and how you first got into it?
Arghtee: So I'm Arghtee. I run CLUBJERSEY which is a Jersey Club YouTube Channel and a label amongst other things. Jersey Club is an electronic culture that originated from Jersey, and borrows from Baltimore Club. Recently many people have started to classify it as a remix culture, and even though recently the scene has been predominantly remix based, most of the best tracks are originals. Some dope original stuff to check out includes all this: Mata Hari, Nxwxrk, Back Up On It, and Vibrate.Related to that, how did you set about starting a night that specialized in that kind of music?
So the CLUBJERSEY nights have been all natural. We've done shows in London, Paris, New York, Montreal amongst other places. Every party we do is different, sometimes we work with local promoters, sometimes we throw the party ourselves, the idea is to be as flexible as possible so that we can do the party and achieve our goal which is to push the sound and the culture.What I'm really intrigued about is how you gathered the stats you posted on FB just now…what're the sources? What exactly are they showing?
Okay well the stats that I shared were from the CLUBJERSEY YouTube Channel. The channel has been going for around two years now, and has had some issues due to copyright complications. We actually recently lost a secondary account with 90k subscribers, so we have had to revert back to our original account. The stats show that for our channel, 66% of our listeners are female, and it has been that way from the beginning. Furthermore 13-24 year olds make up 56% of our listener base which makes it a very youth orientated channel, although I'm sure most music channels have a similar statistic in regards to youth (as a large percentage of users on YouTube are young).Why do you think you've found the gender equation you have? What is it about the parties that appeal to a largely female crowd?
To be honest I think the high female listener count has to do with there being a lot of remixes of pop tracks. The majority of people that recognize the brand in real life are usually female and the usual feedback they give us is that they love the twist on tracks they already know, and are able to dance to them. This obviously translates into who comes to the parties that we do.Do you have any advice for people putting nights on/releasing and distributing music who want to avoid their crowd and audience from being male dominated?
I think there's no two ways about it, if you want girls to come to your parties, you have to play music that girls like. If you are playing testosterone fueled music all night, it's a no brainer that less girls are going to come to your party. I think you have to find that balance. I remember a Butterz night at Cable, where they had The Heatwave play an hour set of Bashment. For us as well, we don't just play six hours of Jersey Club, we often also play Afrobeats, Bashment, Hip-Hop and other genres. Doing things like that gives the night a good balance and in turn makes for a good party. It's also a great way to introduce people to new sounds.What, if anything, can be done by the club world at large to ensure not everything is the total dudefest that we know some scenes can be?
First off you would need to talk to female promoters as they would know better than me; Girls Do It Better from Paris and Discwoman from New York come to mind. Secondly, I think it's just about respect. There's a lot of respect that comes from Jersey and letting girls do their own thing when they dance, and it's something we've tried to carry over to our own parties.Some of these places want to get more girls into their club for the wrong reasons. Girls aren't a commodity, just have respect from the get-go and try make it about the vibe, and at the end you should end up with a good party.Follow CLUBJERSEY on Facebook // TwitterFollow Arghtee on SoundCloud // Twitter
Advertisement
Arghtee: So I'm Arghtee. I run CLUBJERSEY which is a Jersey Club YouTube Channel and a label amongst other things. Jersey Club is an electronic culture that originated from Jersey, and borrows from Baltimore Club. Recently many people have started to classify it as a remix culture, and even though recently the scene has been predominantly remix based, most of the best tracks are originals. Some dope original stuff to check out includes all this: Mata Hari, Nxwxrk, Back Up On It, and Vibrate.Related to that, how did you set about starting a night that specialized in that kind of music?
So the CLUBJERSEY nights have been all natural. We've done shows in London, Paris, New York, Montreal amongst other places. Every party we do is different, sometimes we work with local promoters, sometimes we throw the party ourselves, the idea is to be as flexible as possible so that we can do the party and achieve our goal which is to push the sound and the culture.
Advertisement
Okay well the stats that I shared were from the CLUBJERSEY YouTube Channel. The channel has been going for around two years now, and has had some issues due to copyright complications. We actually recently lost a secondary account with 90k subscribers, so we have had to revert back to our original account. The stats show that for our channel, 66% of our listeners are female, and it has been that way from the beginning. Furthermore 13-24 year olds make up 56% of our listener base which makes it a very youth orientated channel, although I'm sure most music channels have a similar statistic in regards to youth (as a large percentage of users on YouTube are young).Why do you think you've found the gender equation you have? What is it about the parties that appeal to a largely female crowd?
To be honest I think the high female listener count has to do with there being a lot of remixes of pop tracks. The majority of people that recognize the brand in real life are usually female and the usual feedback they give us is that they love the twist on tracks they already know, and are able to dance to them. This obviously translates into who comes to the parties that we do.Do you have any advice for people putting nights on/releasing and distributing music who want to avoid their crowd and audience from being male dominated?
I think there's no two ways about it, if you want girls to come to your parties, you have to play music that girls like. If you are playing testosterone fueled music all night, it's a no brainer that less girls are going to come to your party. I think you have to find that balance. I remember a Butterz night at Cable, where they had The Heatwave play an hour set of Bashment. For us as well, we don't just play six hours of Jersey Club, we often also play Afrobeats, Bashment, Hip-Hop and other genres. Doing things like that gives the night a good balance and in turn makes for a good party. It's also a great way to introduce people to new sounds.What, if anything, can be done by the club world at large to ensure not everything is the total dudefest that we know some scenes can be?
First off you would need to talk to female promoters as they would know better than me; Girls Do It Better from Paris and Discwoman from New York come to mind. Secondly, I think it's just about respect. There's a lot of respect that comes from Jersey and letting girls do their own thing when they dance, and it's something we've tried to carry over to our own parties.Some of these places want to get more girls into their club for the wrong reasons. Girls aren't a commodity, just have respect from the get-go and try make it about the vibe, and at the end you should end up with a good party.Follow CLUBJERSEY on Facebook // TwitterFollow Arghtee on SoundCloud // Twitter