World Class is an annual global search for the world’s best bartenders. In this year’s competition around 10.000 contestants from 50 countries competed to earn the title “World Class bartender of the year”. Tim Philips of Hemmesphere bar in Sydney, Australia left his competitors far behind and won this year’s title at the grand finale in Rio, Brazil in July 2012.
To bring a touch of World Class to you – Diageo is launching this competition for you to win your own ‘World Class Moment’ – the perfect drink, the perfect location and the perfect companion.
As some of you might know we’ve teamed up with Waves Vienna Festival to host an international DJ Contest a few weeks ago.
162 mixes from 26 countries later we finally found our lovely winner Am$strad Billionaire from Glasgow who flew out to Vienna and played a fabulous warm up set at Club Pratersauna before Rustie (Warp/UK).
Here’s a little Q&A we did with him:
Tell us a little bit about yourself so people can get to know you.
Well, keeping it simple, I’m from Glasgow, I like parties, like a drink or few, and enjoy a well made burger on occasion…I’m also known as am$trad bill. DJ’s and a production collective, with releases next year on Darkroom Dubs.
How did you find out about the Waves Festival DJ Contest on Play.fm?
I think I received an email about it somehow… and because I had previously put a party on with Rustie way back before he was on Warp, I thought it would be a good laugh to play a warm up for him.
Tell us a little bit about your winning DJ Mix
The mix was actually something I had put together when I was on holiday with friends who were sitting by the pool during the day, we had rented a villa, so you can imagine, drinks, pool and this quick fast paced mix was the right concoction. I never thought I would win though, so I was happy to hear you guys at Play really enjoyed it.
Did you enjoy your stay in Vienna and your first Wiener Schnitzel?
Yeah, the Schnitzel was good, I’d say it has to be accompanied by a well chilled oversized beer though, at all times!!
How was your Gig at Pratersauna? Did you have fun?
Sweatbox. That pretty much sums everything up.
The gig was brilliant, the crowd was spot on and the people running the club looked after us well. Really enjoyed it an hope to be back there sometime soon.
How did you like Rustie’s Set?
Being from Glasgow, I’ve been lucky enough to catch a few parties that Rustie has played, including showcasing him at one of my own!
His set was spot on, big sound and heavy on low end. A joint selection as last tune from us both on the night – “Cam’ron – Hey Boy” – what more can I say… Epic night.
Name your current favourite artists?
It’s a mixed bag to be honest. All doing great things at the moment.
A mixture of boogie, house and that aqua crunk wobble sound we’ve all become so familiar with.
Best club you’ve ever been to?
Patersauna would have made the cut if there hadn’t been the noise reduction issue, due to complaints… a little annoying!
Without being biased, I would have to say the best club prize my eyes goes to my hometown club – ‘Sub Club‘
This place is without a doubt one of the best clubs I’ve played at and put so many parties on at in the past. It has one of the best sound systems, the best vibe and the most up for it crowd. There’s not many clubs that have a body sonic dancefloor that make you feel like you’ve just landed on Marty McFly’s hover-board.
If you’ve not been, I’d say sort yourself out and get down there, it’s worth a visit.
Waves Vienna is the city’s first club- and showcase festival. After last year’s success the Festival takes a second go-around this autumn (October 4 – 7th) with a great line-up hosted in Vienna’s most significant clubs (Pratersauna, Flex, Fluc Wanne) as well as unique off-locations.
They are still missing one DJ who takes the slot before Rustie’s headliner set at the Opening Party on October 4th at Vienna’s infamous Pratersauna (2nd place “Best Club 2011” De:Bug readers poll).
The good news is: this DJ could be YOU.
HOW TO ENTER
Upload a Studio Mix of no more than 30-60 minutes on Play.fm until Sunday, September 23rd, 2012, 23:59 CET
Name your Mix „Waves DJ Contest 2012“
Your mix must be tagged under „Waves DJ Contest“ using the “Tags/Styles” field.
Failing to do so will result in your mix being left out of the contest.
Fill in your Play.fm Artist Page (eg. Photo, Links, Genres)
VOTING / JURY PHASE
All correctly uploaded mixes received before the deadline will be eligible to compete to be among the Top 20 mixes with the most listeners/listening time and most social media activity (eg. Facebook Likes/Tweets/+1’s)
Remember to submit your mix as early as possible to give yourself enough time to promote it.
The Top 20 shortlisted mixes (due date Monday, September 24th, 9am CET) will be judged by a jury consisting of Play.fm and Waves Festival.
The Top 20 shortlisted mixes will be judged by a jury consisting of Play.fm and Waves Festival.
Judgement will include several quality factors such as originality, track selection and technical expertise (skills).
Contest Winner will be announced by Friday, September 28th
WIN / PRIZES
1st Prize
1 DJ Set at Pratersauna Vienna, playing a Warm Up set for Rustie (Warp/UK), at the Waves Festival 2012 Opening Party on Thursday, October 4th.
Travelling costs to Vienna/Austria
Hotel Accommodation during your stay
A Play.fm frontpage feature & set of the day showcasing your mix
2nd & 3rd Prize
A special Play.fm Goodie Bag (including a Play.fm shirt, mug & sticker pack)
Our mission here at Play.fm is to help people discover new music from all around the globe and connect them with the DJs and radio presenters they love.
With the launch of our brand new dashboard and user profiles we’ve made it easier than ever to keep track of new mixes and radioshows of your favorite artists, labels and clubs. Additionally, you can now follow your friends to see what they have uploaded or been listening to.
We have re-designed some existing features and implemented a bunch of new ones. Here’s an overview of the most important changes:
Dashboard: New Navigation
We completely revamped the existing navigation to give you quicker access to the most important Play.fm features, such as the Upload section which gives you an instant overview of the sets you uploaded. In the Pages menu you can now find all the artists, labels, clubs, festivals and radioshows you follow and discover new ones.
News Feed & Notifications: Stay on top of things
Did your favorite DJ upload a new set?
Are the recordings from last weekend’s festival online yet?
What are your friends listening to?
The news feed will never let you miss a piece of news again. In order to keep a clear picture you can easily filter your news messages.
If you’re too busy to check your newsfeed regularly, just set up your email notifications: We’ll let you know when something interesting happened.
User Profiles: Connect with your friends
We gave your user profile a fresh coat of paint: A large and crispy clear profile picture, short bio and a concise overview of your favorites, listens and uploads. There’s even more: In addition to artists, labels and similar pages you can now also follow your friends. Use the new friend finder in your dashboard to see who already uses Play.fm and get connected.
Note the difference between “Pages” and “User profiles”: While “Pages” are for artists, clubs and other brands to promote themselves, “user profiles” are private users´profiles.
Connections: Share what you’re doing
We know you love sharing, so we’ve made it even easier to let your friends know what you are listening to and what you’ve uploaded. You can now link Play.fm with your Facebook and Twitter account and automatically share what you have uploaded or what you are listening to. Your Play.fm activity will be smoothly integrated into your Facebook Timeline in form of a nice little box featuring exactly the kind of information you want to share. (We are currently waiting for a final approval from Facebook, the Timeline Integration should be up and running on Friday at the latest.)
Favorites: Create playlists easier than ever
Managing your favorite sets and radioshows is now even easier than before. We’ve created a neat little popup that lets you collect, sort and re-arrange the mixes you like the most with just a simple click on the Favorites-Button.
Sounds good for you? Log in or sign up, give it a try and tell us how you like it!
Would you agree that the current Play.fm could be faster, simpler and a bit more cutting edge in general? Do you have a vision and the skills to build the next Play.fm?
Cool, because this makes you a potential candidate for the Play.fm team building the new platform. We are looking for talented people who want to join us for a few months or a longer period.
We started Play.fm in 2004 because we wanted to make the music we listened to in clubs available for everyone online. At that time everything on the site had to be managed manually by our editors and the user management was based on a Bulletin Board (yeah!). We did a major leap with the relaunch of the site in 2009 enabling DJs to upload their own shows and manage their profiles – but also providing a lot of features users don´t really need. 3 years later, after learning a lot of lessons, we think it´s time for the next Play.fm.
As music and technology enthusiasts we love to listen to music online, like working in geeky teams, and are dedicated to make life easier for radio listeners and radio presenters alike. If you want to joint the team, visit the job section for current openings.
