WE'VE WATCHED
GREAT DJs LOSE GIGS
THEY DIDN'T HAVE TO.
Almost four decades inside electronic music, from local booths to international festival management, have taught us one thing above all: the gig doesn't care about your preparation until the moment it tests it. And the test is almost always the same. A USB stick. A player that won't read it. A clock that won't stop.
We've stood next to DJs at the biggest moments of their careers while their drive threw E-8302 at them. The ones who survived weren't luckier, they knew the sequence. Reseat. Second slot. Second player. Format math. Survival mode. Calm, in order, no wasted seconds. The ones who didn't know it lost sets they had prepared for months.
Save My Gig is that sequence, written down. All of it. The critical path for when you play in an hour, the proper repair for when you have three, the deep rebuild for the morning after, plus the prevention system that makes all of it unnecessary.
It's free. It needs no account. And inside Emergency Mode, nothing is ever sold to you. That's not generosity, it's design: a DJ in panic deserves a clear path, not a sales pitch.
DJ Booth Intelligence
Most DJs discover Save My Gig because something went wrong. They stay because they realise preparation is part of the performance. Around the emergency flow grew the pre-gig checklist, the gear that earns its place, a dictionary of the terms the booth uses, per-model compatibility, firmware histories nobody else brings together in one place, and the working habits that make disasters a non-event. One system, one philosophy: better decisions before, during and after every performance.
We call that philosophy DJ Booth Intelligence: preparation, organization, technical knowledge and real-world experience in one place, giving every DJ the kind of knowledge normally earned only after years behind the booth. Not an app watching over your shoulder: it's what the most prepared DJ in the room knows, written down, verified, and kept current. Save My Gig is its home.
Who it is for
Save My Gig is written for anyone the booth can fail on. DJs, and also the technician who is not in the building yet, the touring team setting up in a room they have never seen, the stage manager, the producer, the promoter, and the club owner whose resident has just gone silent with a full floor.
A booth failure is never only the DJ's problem. Whoever is standing closest has to solve it, and that person does not always have a technical background. Every procedure here is written to be followed under pressure by someone who did not build the system.
Independent. And staying that way.
No manufacturer pays for placement here and no brand edits our advice. When Save My Gig recommends FAT32, duplicate USBs or a specific workflow, it's because real booths taught us those lessons, not because a marketing department did. Technical claims are checked against official documentation, and where we are giving judgement rather than quoting a manual, we say so. Where the official answer doesn't exist, we say exactly that instead of pretending there is one.
What started as knowledge shared between experienced DJs has grown into a collaborative effort: DJs, technicians and industry professionals, checking this against the equipment and the situations they work in.
How we verify, and what we add
Two things go into every page here, and they are not the same thing.
The facts come from the manufacturer. Specifications, procedures, warnings and firmware histories are read from the maker's own published documents, named and dated on the page they appear on, and quoted in their words. Where two of a maker's own documents disagree, both are printed and neither is chosen. Where a maker publishes nothing, the page says so instead of filling the gap. A figure is never carried across from a similar model.
The judgement comes from the booth. Which of a hundred documented faults will actually end a set. What to check first when there is no sound and eight minutes left. Which step is safe to try while an audience is watching, and which one destroys a drive. Which two of a maker's own sentences contradict each other in a way that matters. No manual answers any of that, because no manufacturer writes for the moment their equipment fails in front of people.
That second part is decades of work in real booths, and it is the reason this is a reference rather than a folder of PDFs.
Why free?
Because nobody should have to pay to get out of trouble in a booth. The emergency procedures, the checklists and the equipment references stay free, with no account, for everyone. If Save My Gig ever charges for anything, it will not be for any of that. That is the line and it does not move. There is a coffee button if this saved your gig, after you're safe, never before. Some links may earn us a commission on a product or a service, now or in the future. It will never influence a recommendation and never appear inside Emergency Mode.
Our mission
No DJ should ever lose a gig to something that could have been prevented. Least of all to a cheap piece of plastic.
In trouble right now?
Start Emergency ModeQuestions, corrections, war stories: info@savemygig.com