Together with his schoolmate Ralph van Hilst, Marlon Flohr formed the successful deejay and producer duo Bassjackers. When corona eliminated shows, they tapped into a new source of income: Music NFTs. "The first drop was - boom! - sold out immediately and brought in about $300,000."
"In high school in Waalwijk, we were already friends. Then we went to college together. I've always been a clubber. I was fascinated by deejays, interested in house and dance, a fan of the music, of the scene. In the Now&Wow Club in Rotterdam, for example, I saw how 17-year-old deejay Benny Rodrigues controlled thousands of people on the dance floor by turning knobs. I thought that was so cool! In the Escape in Amsterdam, I stood on the balcony instead of on the dance floor: that way I had a nice overview of the deejay and how the audience reacted. I dreamed of being at the controls myself, but at the time it was not financially feasible for me to buy equipment. Until I saved some money with side jobs while studying International Business and was able to buy a deejay set. I played for hours and hours - just for fun. I made mix tapes that I showed to my friends. Ad nauseam: everyone had to check how it was mixed and if they could hear if there was a transition or not. Ralph was also into music at the same time, but more on the production side. I was a deejay, spinning and mixing other people's music; Ralph was making his own music from scratch on his computer at home. After a few months of practice, I wanted to start spinning for people instead of just in my bedroom. It was time for the world to hear it!"
"I started harassing club promoters - 'let me spin!' - and threw my own parties. My first party was in early 2006 in the basement of the hotel in Tilburg where I was night porter, one of my side jobs. Friends invited, a few other deejays. From the first edition it was full house. And the great thing was that you couldn't tell from outside that there was a party going on. When all the clubs closed at four o'clock, the hardcore partygoers came to the hotel to party on for a few more hours. That basement became the after-party spot of Tilburg. I wanted to play music there that no one else was playing. But then I would have to produce it myself. I couldn't, but Ralph could. 'Let's make music together,' I said to him. Within a month we had a track we thought was cool. Before we would send it to other deejays, though, we had to have a name. At the time, our sound was kind of inspired by a movement called 'jackin house,' there was a lot of bass in it ... Bassjackers!"
"We had sent it not only to deejays like Fedde Le Grand and Don Diablo, but also to Jorn Heringa, Head of A&R (Artist and Repertoire) of Spinnin' Records. He wanted to release it on that label. But we convinced Jorn that he was better off releasing the track under Sneakerz MUZIK, a sub-label of Spinnin' Records. That was a strong brand and a party concept at the same time. If we were associated with that as a new artist, we immediately had a platform and would get shows. And that's exactly how it went. All of a sudden we were Bassjackers from Sneakerz MUZIK, were at parties in clubs all over the country. It went tremendously fast. That was 2007, 2008. We became the residents of the concept Nope is Dope and from there the first festivals followed."
"In 2011, we had a record that was picked up by Tiësto. It was an innovative sound, a bit in between house and trance, using big chords. With that we were at the beginning of a new sound, Big Room, the big festival bangers. Mush Mush was really a precursor to that. That record marked our international breakthrough. It was played on the mainstage by six different deejays at one of the biggest festivals in America, EDC (Electric Daisy Carnival) in Las Vegas. Then it was loose."
"Our sound became less and less friendly to the Dutch clubs, but it did go somewhere we thought was really fat. And we also wanted more than just the Netherlands. That sound got us there."
"Very difficult. We didn't want it to be the same. In retrospect, we should have chosen just that. We should have picked up on that momentum and brought another stunner like that - same file with a few minor changes. But we wanted to keep innovating. So the next big record waited until 2013. That was Crackin, of which Martin Garrix released his own remix. Our socials exploded, we had as many as ten thousand new followers a day. Bizarre numbers. Collaborations arose with Afrojack, Snoop Dogg, Paris Hilton, Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike and R3HAB, among others. 2014 featured a huge uprise of the Big Room sound, but then its popularity slowly waned, especially in America. But then the party started in Asia. Especially in China, the sound became very big. And so the focus naturally shifted more to the East, although we never left the US, we wanted to continue to serve our fan base there."
"No matter how tired I am, when I go on the stage, I always get a huge boost of energy. You feel like you can take on the whole world. That's something I always want to feel! And of course I can empathize with the audience very well, because I have been one myself. If someone shows me his or her cell phone that says Mush Mush, I turn that. I know what that means. It's still weird to take a picture with someone, but when I start putting myself in the fan's shoes, how I was myself, I understand it very well."
"On a small scale, not comparable to a Martin Garrix. Whether it is a piece of bad branding or something we missed, we are not often recognized. People know the name, the music, but not the face. But honestly: I wouldn't want to be super famous either."
"It can be very debilitating and is also not for everyone. I'm very good at being alone - maybe because I'm an only child. Ralph, for example, would struggle with it. He knows that too and in that he has settled: I do this, you do that. He's the producer behind the scenes, I'm the front man. I like to travel, make new friends everywhere. And I don't use drugs, which of course happens in the scene. I'm not saying I was always sober. I partied and drank and did plenty in the past, but I never needed it: for me, the music was always enough. When I hit the dance floor, I still get sucked in by the music."
"In the Netherlands I follow a steady rhythm: during the week I get up on time and go to work early, only on weekends I have international gigs. Sometimes I already have an eight a.m. flight the next day and I don't sleep. Then it's a matter of sleeping through. But as soon as I'm back in Holland, I force myself to get back into the rhythm right away. I don't let jetlags get to me. Exercise, eat healthy, try to control sleep rhythms."
"We're not at the level of deejays being flown in for a ton, but I think if we continue to handle our money wisely, we wouldn't have to work anymore. When I see opportunities, I always present them to Ralph. Will you step in with me? Basically, we married as business partners. When we started we agreed to split everything fifty-fifty. No bullshit. I've seen a lot of partnerships go wrong over money, we wanted to avoid that from day one. We also advise each other. For example, before I went to invest in a house in Bali, Ralph asked, "Have you thought that through? He also has a view on that and I respect that - he got his Masters in Financial Management."
"During covid, there were no shows. And shows account for roughly 90 percent of our income. We wanted to keep paying our agents and manager, so we had to look for another source of income. I've always been an Internet child. With the rise of the Internet, I was on chat boxes, I was learning HTML, coding ... I found it all super interesting and spent a lot of time on it. Until music took over. When crypto came up, my interest was also immediately piqued. But because my focus was full on deejaying, I didn't dive into it until 2016. Especially in the underlying technology, I saw a lot of potential for the future. In 2020, I was surprised by the American artist 3LAU who linked his music to visuals and sold that in a small edition. A digital collectible linked to a non-fungible token registered on the blockchain, so you can see that the collector's item is authentic and you have proof of ownership. I thought that was really cool. And I wasn't the only one: it sold tremendously well and reportedly earned him $30,000. I started looking into it and that's when I found out that there are an awful lot of NFT collectors, people who collect digital art. On the online auction platform Nifty Gateway, I found even more artists who had made Music NFTs. We were at zero income at the time and I saw a lot of potential in this: we have cool music, we can have visuals made around it, tell a story around it. Moreover, it was a new way to express ourselves. Normally you make music for a crowd, now we were also going to make music for people who collect art. I contacted Nifty Gateway and together we planned a date for the first drop: March 14, 2021."
"Les Pay Bass is a play on words that stands for 'Land of Bass.' The bass sound is a key element in our music, making you not only hear it but also feel it. We wanted to visualize that. Think of tulip fields vibrating on the beat. Dance music from the Netherlands, that's what it had to stand for. We made several editions and came up with a whole idea. On March 14 we did the drop and - boom! - immediately sold out."
Curious about the rest of the interview? The winter issue of MASTERS was created in collaboration with Jordi van den Bussche. Many will know him as YouTuber Kwebbelkop, yet he has been working hard as an entrepreneur for some time, as he reveals in the Big Interview. What's new is that his company JVDB Studios is offering to do social media marketing and short-format content marketing for other companies. "They can also go and figure it out themselves, but we cracked the code." Jordi gives a stage to like-minded entrepreneurs such as Jay-Jay Boske, Demy de Zeeuw, Chahid Charrak and Marcella de Bie, and discusses developments around games, crypto and NFT: "Just as bitcoin turned the financial system upside down, the same will happen with gaming." This extra-thick winter issue also features Lengers' first own ship, an interview with Corendon chief Atilay Uslu, specials on the new BMW 7 Series and Samsung foldables, and - exclusively for MASTERS! - an interview with Max Verstappen.
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