How to write a technical rider a venue can actually use
Robertino · DJ, producer and creator of StageLink · September 29, 2026 · 4 min
A technical rider is the document a venue reads to know what you need in the booth. It is not a wish list and it is not a negotiation — it is the sheet the technical crew works from on the day of the show, usually without ever speaking to you.
That is the part most artists miss. By the time your rider matters, you are not in the conversation. Whatever the document says is what gets set up.
What actually goes in one
For a DJ or an electronic live act, a venue needs five things:
- Playback — media players or turntables, exact models and how many.
- Mixer — the specific model, because the channel count and the effects differ.
- Monitoring — booth monitors, and whether you need them separate from the house.
- Connections — audio interface, cables, adapters, USB or laptop stand needs.
- Microphone — only if you actually use one. Asking for one you never touch makes the rest of the list look padded.
Anything beyond that is a hospitality rider, which is a separate document and a separate conversation.
Why writing it as free text costs you
Most riders arrive as a paragraph in an email or a PDF someone wrote once and never updated. The problem is not effort — it is that a sentence has to be interpreted.
Consider a line most riders contain:
- What you write: "2 CDJs and a mixer, Pioneer preferably."
- What arrives: Two CDJ-2000 nexus units from 2012 and a DJM-750. Technically correct. Not what you rehearsed on.
The venue did nothing wrong. "Preferably" is not a requirement, "CDJ" covers a decade of hardware, and a technician setting up four rooms in an afternoon reads quickly.
A venue that receives thirty riders a month in thirty different formats will make mistakes. That is a property of the format, not of the people.
Be specific, and say what is flexible
The fix is not a longer rider. It is a shorter one where every line is a model number, plus an explicit note about what you can work around.
- "2 × Pioneer CDJ-3000" is a requirement.
- "2 × Pioneer CDJ-3000 — CDJ-2000NXS2 acceptable" is a requirement with a fallback.
- "2 CDJs, Pioneer preferably" is neither, and will be read as the cheapest thing in the building.
Naming the fallback yourself is worth more than it looks. It means the venue never has to guess, and you never arrive to a substitution nobody warned you about.
Keep it current, and keep it one link
Riders rot. The gear you asked for two years ago may be discontinued, and the setup you actually play now may be nothing like the file you keep sending.
A rider that lives at a URL rather than in an attachment fixes both. You update it once and every venue that has the link sees the current version — including the venue that booked you four months ago.
In StageLink the rider is part of your press kit, built from a catalogue of real equipment rather than a text field, and it is included on every plan.
How long should a technical rider be?
One page. If it runs longer, it is either a hospitality rider in disguise or it contains preferences that should be marked as optional. A technician reads it standing up.
What if the venue cannot provide what I ask for?
They will tell you, if you gave them something specific enough to check against. That conversation happening a week before the show is the entire point — it cannot happen if your rider is vague enough to be technically satisfiable by anything.
Do I need a different rider for every show?
No, but you may need more than one setup. A club night and a festival slot often need different monitoring and different playback. Naming them separately in one document is clearer than sending different files.
Should I include my hospitality requests?
Keep them separate. The technical rider goes to the technical crew, and mixing in green-room requests makes it slower to read for the person who needs the gear list.
Included on every plan, free included.