How do DJs break out in 2025? Femme House, Beatport & The Lot Radio have ideasI often joke that everyone in New York City either works in finance or is a DJ. Obviously, this is not true, but there are more DJs than you can reasonably count here. Nowadays, it’s a Herculean task to create buzz as a fledgling selector anywhere. In Britain, over 400 nightclubs—more than one-third—have shuttered in the last five years, meaning less spaces for newer DJs to make a name for themselves.

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Enter “The Block,” a shipping-container-turned-DJ-booth outfitted with a Funktion-One sound system. Beatport Live created this mobile space to highlight emerging DJs at major festivals and beyond—a 500-capacity stage for newer artists to shine and more established ones to play an intimate set.
“We’ve been keeping a close eye on the impact of venue closures,” Ed Hill, the Bristol-based SVP of Beatport Live, explains. “A lot of Beatport customers are grassroots and up-and-coming DJs. There aren’t enough places for people to play anymore, so we wanted to create a space where people could get exposure playing on a good sound system in front of crowds at festivals, and be able hone their skills.”
The Block debuted in late July at Junction 2 Fest in London, adding an extra stage with a 60 per cent female lineup, featuring surprise sets from Sofia Kourtesis, O’Flynn and PARAMIDA, plus Beatport Next 2025 artists Azzecca and Ma Sha, alongside a roster of 12 emerging DJs. Beatport’s Live and Curation teams listened to nearly 1,000 mixes submitted for consideration and chose Bob Cojones, ESHE, Montif Clare, sooyeon, Cleopatra, LDH Records, debbiesthuglife, Sands Spheric, Cheers!, Rabbit Hole, Francesca Rose and imad:re. One of the artists reported fielding multiple booking requests afterwards.
The crowd at The Block. Image: Press
After our conversation, The Block brought 14 more upstart DJs to Creamfields, which hosts around 80,000 ravers and over 300 artists. Beatport received 400 mix submissions in just 48 hours from DJs eager to get a slot. Due to the enthusiasm, Beatport is aiming to tour The Block across the UK and Europe in the coming months.
Throughout this winter, The Block will be posted at Bristol venue The Prospect Building to host more DJ sets, along with workshops, tutorials and beyond. There, it is intended as a hub for people to connect, including those who can’t afford music festivals.
As for spotlighting emerging sounds and scenes, Beatport has unique insight into what’s next, thanks to seeing what music is being downloaded (and uploaded) where.
“Our Curation team can see and predict patterns before they emerge, because they’ve got so much music [coming in], and we see buying patterns from each city and country. When we’re doing something like Beatport Next, the biggest components are diversity and looking at new sounds and new territories that are popping off or just about to pop off. We concentrate on trying to push those sounds and be a leader in what’s happening,” Hill notes.
Azzecca. Image: Press
There’s a Gaggle of Great DJs on the Lot Radio
Across the pond in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighbourhood, another converted shipping container has been hosting emerging and big-deal DJs since February 2016, when Belgian expat François Vaxelaire opened The Lot Radio. 24 hours a day, the small-but-mighty non-profit livestreams DJ sets highlighting the eclectic sounds of NYC’s music scene.
The DJ-booth-slash-mini-café sits on a once long-abandoned lot, transforming the space into a popular hangout and destination for dance music fans, DJs and neighbours alike; an inviting third place. It boasts a fully equipped DJ booth (with digital and vinyl decks) for DJs to experiment, meet and collaborate.
The Lot’s lineup is home to 200 local regulars like Love Injection, Toribio, Mickey Perez, Justin Strauss, DJ Swisha and many more, who deliver weekly or monthly sets alongside drop-ins from artists in town for shows. Tame Impala, Floating Points, Ben UFO, Fred again.., Nia Archives and Four Tet have all paid visits, with the latter an unofficial regular.
“I arrived in New York in 2010, when there was a big revival of electronic music and techno… I was really impressed by the quality and the fierce energy of the young people here, the talent here,” Vaxelaire reflects. “That’s what got me excited to start the radio, which came along at a good time… It became a house to welcome all the people who were already part of that scene.”
Tune into The Lot, and you’ll hear much more than club music: ambient, experimental, soul, salsa, deep cuts from around the globe and across the years, and even some live vocals. While it’s an important part of the local electronic scene, Vaxelaire is always looking to expand into other genres and bring young people in to keep things fresh. Thus, curating the schedule and creating a diverse line-up that continues to represent the Big Apple is a never-ending math equation.
“We’re trying to have a beautiful equilibrium. It’s really hard, it’s kind of a dance you have to work on every day, all day. We want to be an open and welcoming platform for the young talents of New York in any kind of music, as long as those people are as madly in love with music as we are. Also, we welcome bigger profile artists that we admire… It’s an equilibrium between major artists, more up-and-coming ones, and local legends,” The Lot Radio founder explains.
“We get a huge amount of requests from really big acts in the electronic scene that we say no to because they’re way too popular. They have such [a big] platform, they don’t really need us. We feel that it’s sometimes that they’re trying to reach a bit more street credibility by being here.”
Bob Cojones. Image: Press
Femme House is Doing the Most for the Girls
Another non-profit music org going above and beyond for the electronic community is Femme House, helmed by DJs LP Giobbi and hermixalot. In 2019, when LP Giobbi was a rising DJ herself, she wanted to do more to address the wide gender inequality behind the decks and in the studio. Femme House’s impressive efforts to create and platform a more diverse DJ and producer pool continues to grow with online and in-person classes, stage takeovers and tours, Insomniac Records compilations, their new Femmy Awards at Miami Music Week, and much more. Hermixalot, a Black queer woman, leads their DEI initiatives, which include BIPOC and LGBTIA fellowship programs and efforts to bring on more women of colour to teach and attend their programs.
While the gender and racial disparities in music are still wide, LP has noticed change happening slowly as more people put their hat in the ring, and gatekeepers become more intentional about who they book and promote.
“It’s a very slow change because it’s hard to be what you can’t see. When you’re at a festival and you see yourself represented by somebody on stage, you think, consciously or subconsciously, Maybe I can do this. When you believe there’s a shot, it’s easier to do the work, to learn how to DJ and make music. That’s a long, slow process,” she posits.
For every Femme House stage, from EDC to ADE, they offer the opening slot for someone who’s never played a fest before. LP books women openers whenever she can and plays women producers in her sets to share their music with her fans and help them climb the Beatport charts—something she doesn’t always see other women DJs doing.
LP Giobbi. Image: Carolina Isabel Salazar
After many requests from festivals, bookers and music behemoths to share DJs with them, Femme House created a spreadsheet of female and gender-expansive acts, meaning tons of rising DJs get exposure to opportunities. When it comes to curation and diversity at Femme House, LP Giobbi is focused on making space for women and gender-expansive people of colour while ensuring their music is a good fit for the audience.
“I’m mostly making sure the communities that are underrepresented are represented; non-white, non-binary, female. Those are the first things that are requirements for the people that we’re going to support. And when we’re looking for an opener, we’re making sure the sound is going to be the right fit for the person they’re playing after,” the producer says. “Once we’re past the diversity piece, it’s really just about making sure that we’re putting them on stages where they can gain fans, in places where their music will connect with the people who are there to see the headliner.”
Femme House, Lot Radio and Beatport offer DJs at all career stages essential spaces to play and gain new fans. For regulars at the Lot, it’s a place to grow, one where they can experiment with their sound, play music they wouldn’t at the club, and connect with fellow DJs. Femme House and The Block carve out space for DJs to break through with major festival sets, a vital foot in the door to get more bookings. Femme House is also bringing more women into DJing and production with femme-centred classes and educational resources.
These are not the only people and orgs attempting to diversify the DJ pool, but if more people in the industry thought about community over individual success and intentionally sought out and made space for fresh talent and sounds, things would look, sound and feel a whole lot better.
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