Gold Summer

Gold Summer will be UC Berkeley's first ever festival thrown by the students featuring students. Support will help us develop our students into music industry professionals.

Total ~ $5575

Our last event, VOLTA, proved to be a huge success. Over 600 tickets were sold out to students. 7 student DJs were featured to a crowd of over 850 people. 12 members of the team gained valuable experience in marketing, promotion, networking, designing, event managing, and artist managing.

Electronic music is a genre of music that has won over our generation. According to the Huffington Post, electronic dance music, or EDM, has one of the largest followings on college campuses and one of the largest communities of music listeners. Thus, the presence of EDM cannot be ignored by any university which seeks to maintain or develop relevance to their student body.

Golden Records (GR) is a collective of DJ talents, managers, and other personnel related to the electronic music industry. Unlike other musical organizations, Golden Records not only builds up the individual skill-set of a performer, we also showcase the students' talents by hosting events simultaneously preparing them for professional gigs. This is a huge step for the student community, the school's fine arts programs, local small businesses, as well as the charitable organizations we work with. 

First, GR will be positively impacting students interested in the music industry. One of our goals is to set our aspiring DJs on a path to success. To do this, we have an operations, publications, design, and legal team working with our artists. The team will be composed of UCB students who are passionate about these fields in the music industry. These members will receive invaluable real-life experience as well as developing a resume of skills putting themselves in a position where they are far more prepared to further their aspirations in the music industry.

Also, the DJ community in our school will benefit greatly. The lineup, or the members performing at the concerts, is composed of only UCB students. A huge aspect of musical performance IS performance! By performing at concerts in a supportive environment of peers, our DJs will more effectively develop stage presence and crowd reading. Not only does GR give necessary experience, it also addresses the critically difficult issue of networking within the industry. We have members who have performed worldwide, those who have connections with major record labels and promoters, as well as those who have worked with iconic music figures such as Steve Aoki and Major Lazer. Our DJs will have a jumpstart with experience, a team focused on continuous improvement, and a well-established network.

The culmination of student photographers, designers, DJs, and artist managers who work to establish the branding of a Golden Records DJ.

GR also complements the UC Berkeley fine arts program. Our goals address fundamental needs that has not been currently met by previous courses or organizations even in other schools, allowing us to offer a valuable opportunity for aspiring performance artists unique to UCB. It can be seen as the musical equivalent of Brown's PLME program, which offers an expedited 8-year program for medical students while still giving them advanced competency by exposing students to real-life scenarios, having a specialized staff for members, and an expanded network of mentors. UCB's phenomenal orchestra is testament to the dominance of classical music during previous eras. The introduction of GR is the campus' embracement of modernized music.

Lastly, another one of GR's purposes is to continuously inspire and enable musical talent in our community. One way we do this is through charity work where we donate profits from concerts to local charities related to music. Thus, student fraternities, sororities, and organizations focused on service will also be given the opportunity to help us help others whether it is through the promotion of our events or helping as one of the members in the DJs team.