Boiler Room is an online music broadcaster and club promoter based in London, United Kingdom. It hosts predominantly dance music events, focusing on underground genres, in locations internationally, and broadcasts the shows live over the internet.
It has regular operations in London, Amsterdam, New York City, Berlin, Lisbon, São Paulo, Mexico City, Tokyo, Sydney, Lima, and Los Angeles and produces about 30 to 35 new shows each month.[3][4] By 2016, Boiler Room had hosted shows in around 100 cities worldwide.[5][6] Its music programming originally focused on dance music such as garage, house, techno, dub but eventually expanded to include grime, hip hop, classical, and jazz.[7][8][9]
History
Conception & birth
In March 2010 Blaise Bellville asked Thristian "Thris Tian" Richards and Femi Adeyemi, the founder of NTS Radio, to record a mixtape for his online magazine platform. This led to the creation of Boiler Room.[10][11][12] The name 'Boiler Room' and initial idea came about from an overheard conversation in a bar in Hoxton Square. The first Boiler Room session was recorded using a webcam duct taped to the wall of a disused boiler room, and the session was broadcast live online on Ustream.[13][14]
During this period, Boiler Room developed their format of filming a DJ facing the camera, a projected visual backdrop of the Boiler Room logo overlaid on old rave video footage, with Time Out noting: "the artists are, after all, the sole attraction at Boiler Room: attendees are positioned behind the decks in a bedroom DJ style set-up so that the selector is always the main figure in view."[15]
2010–11: Expansion
Boiler Room's first session in March 2010 turned into a weekly show, becoming a Ustream "Supported Channel" and getting widespread press recognition, with coverage from the BBC, Fader,Time Out, Hypetrak, and Dummy Magazine, who noted that "from a small room in Dalston to a globe-spanning brand, in just over a year Boiler Room has emerged as one of the most important broadcasters in underground music."[16][17][18][19]
Boiler Room first began international shows in August 2011 with a run hosted in Germany by Michail Stangl, a Russian-born music curator and DJ.[27][28][29][30] Shortly thereafter, Boiler Room expanded in the United States, starting with broadcasts in Los Angeles headed up by Sofie Fatouretchi Royer,[31][32][33][34] an Austro-Iranian artist and musician.
Boiler Room's first full-length documentary, on Atlanta based collective Awful Records, launched in June 2016.[45] Boiler Room has since continued producing TV shows and documentaries aimed at telling stories tied to the people, artists and culture.[46] This includes shows like Gasworks, a 20-minute, grime-focused talk show starring Alhan Gençay & Poet.[46]
In 2018, Boiler Room launched '4:3', a platform for film, documentary and music videos, with Amar Ediriwira as its creative director. In 2019, the first 'Boiler Room Festival' was announced in Peckham, London. [47] The event showcased a different underground scene each day, across contemporary jazz, rap, and dance genres.[48]
Despite posting a net operating loss of £6,633,752 in 2018 and a loss of £1,299,656 in 2019,[49] Boiler Room received £791,652 from Arts Council England via the Culture Recovery Fund scheme in October, 2020.[50]
In 2021, ticketing platform DICE bought Boiler Room for an undisclosed sum, after raising $122 million.[51][52]
Awards
In 2018, Boiler Room received a number of award wins and nominations:
A number of notable musicians and cultural organisations have worked with Boiler Room to celebrate key releases and other one-off events.
Boiler Room broadcast Run the Jewels live in 360° format December 2015 before the technology was widely available.
DJ EZ's 24-hour DJ set on the 27 and 28 February 2016 which raised over £60,000 on behalf of Cancer Research UK was also broadcast live on Boiler Room.[63][64][65][66]
Skepta celebrated the release of album Konnichiwa with an album launch party arranged with and streamed by Boiler Room live from Tokyo in May 2016.[67][68][69][70]
Notting Hill Carnival's Rampage, Deviation, Aba Shanti-I, Channel One, Nasty Love, Saxon Sound, King Tubbys, Gladdy Wax and Disya Jeneration soundsystems were broadcast live by Boiler Room in August 2016, totalling 42 hours video coverage. Part of the live coverage was also broadcast by partners The Guardian,Time Out,Noisey,Thump,SB.TV, NTS Radio, and the Deviation and Rampage soundsystems.[71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80]
In January 2024, Boiler Room held their first event in the Pacific with a show in Rarotonga - organised in collaboration with DJ Lady Shaka and her Pacific music collective Pulotu Underworld. Boiler Room has stated that this event is the first in a series of events based in the Pacific.[81]
