DJ Promo Statistics 2026: What 294,000 Sends Show

Every label sends promos. Almost nobody publishes what happens next. Search for DJ promo statistics and you get help pages that call a 20% open rate "solid", a few opinion columns about DJs who never reply, and not one number about downloads. So we counted ours. PromoLink has carried 957 promos from 95 labels and artists to DJs since November 2025: 294,039 times a DJ received a promo, more than 46,000 listens and nearly 20,000 downloads. This is what that data says about how DJs actually treat a promo, and what a label can do with it.

Across 294,039 sends, 5.6% ended in a download and 9.5% in a listen. In our team's experience that download rate is the norm for the industry, not a weak result. The more useful figure sits next to it: 945 of the 957 promos, 98.7%, were downloaded by at least one DJ. A promo that goes out to real DJs almost never comes back empty.

What the 5.6% does not tell you is who downloaded. A percentage over a whole list hides the part that matters: whether the five or six DJs out of a hundred are the ones who play your genre in rooms that count. That is why we read the rate as a starting line, not a grade. The rest of this piece is about moving it, and about the names behind it.

It also says something about the metric most promo tools still lead with. An open rate counts subject lines that were seen. The vendor benchmark of around 20% opens (Digital DJ Pool's help pages) and our 9.5% listens measure very different things: one is a glance at an inbox, the other is a DJ pressing play on your track. Downloads and listens are the signals worth reporting to an artist.

Of every DJ who pressed play on a promo, 48.3% downloaded it. Getting a DJ to listen is the hard step; once they hear the track, close to one in two takes it.

That shifts where a label should spend its effort. The send itself is not the bottleneck, and neither is the email copy once it has been opened. The bottleneck is the moment between opening and pressing play. Three things decide it:

• A preview that plays in one click. No login wall, no download to audition, no hunting through windows to find the file.
• The name in the support line. A recognised DJ in "supported by" pulls far more attention to an unknown artist than the artist's own name does.
• The genre fit. A DJ who plays your sound presses play. A DJ who does not, will not, however good the record is.

On PromoLink the label sees who listened and who downloaded, by name, on the release's own page (how it works). That list is worth more than any open rate, because it is the list you send to first next time.

Half of all first downloads happen within about three days of the promo reaching the DJ (the median is 74 hours). The full curve, measured from send to a DJ's first download of that promo:

• 4.9% within the first hour
• 28.9% within 24 hours
• 49.1% within 72 hours
• 70.8% within 7 days
• 97.1% within 30 days

Two practical lessons follow. First, do not judge a promo on its first day: more than 70% of the downloads that will come arrive after the first 24 hours. Second, the first week decides almost everything, and a month later the promo has done nearly all it will do on its own. Plan the second wave of a cascade inside that window.

Downloads also follow the working week. Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday each carry about 17% of downloads, Monday and Thursday about 14%, Saturday 11.9% and Sunday only 9.2%. By hour (UTC), downloads climb from 07:00 and peak between 14:00 and 17:00, the European afternoon. The digging happens on weekdays, which fits the rhythm of DJs who play at the weekend.

At IAMT we send the promo right after the release goes to distribution, and run the cascade from there: the top names first, then a second wave to the wider list that names the DJs who already supported it.

When DJs choose the format themselves, 48.6% of downloads are MP3, 28.3% WAV and 23.1% AIFF. Half of everything downloaded is lossless.

Quality matters to the people who play your record on a club system. AIFF is the interesting one: it gives WAV quality with the metadata of an MP3, so the artist, title and artwork stay attached in the DJ's library. It is the perfect combination for a DJ who cares about both sound and an organised collection, and almost a quarter of downloads choose it.

The lesson is not "send WAV" or "send MP3". It is to let the DJ choose. A label that ships only MP3 is serving half its audience a format they would not have picked; a label that ships only WAV makes the other half convert files and retag them by hand. On PromoLink the label uploads the masters once and each DJ takes MP3, WAV or AIFF.

574 DJs have downloaded at least one promo. The most active 10% of them account for 68.5% of all downloads, and the top 20% for 83.7%.

Every label has its own version of this curve. A core of DJs downloads and plays almost everything in their genre; a long tail downloads now and then. The core is the asset. It is who you seed first in a cascade, whose names make the "supported by" line that carries an unknown artist, and who you look after between releases.

Finding that core is the reason to measure downloads by name rather than in totals. After two or three releases the same names keep appearing at the top of your list. Send to them first, and let their support do the work on the second wave.

Sends to a label's own contacts end in a download 5.8% of the time; sends through the PromoLink DJ pool 4.0%. The pool converts lower per send, and the reason is how DJs use it.

The pool is passive promo. A pool DJ gets a steady flow of new music in the genres they chose (the 399 pool DJs in this data received about 105 promos each) and mostly downloads what sits in the Top 10 of the chart. So the two channels work as one engine. The more actively a label sends to its own list, the more downloads the track collects, the higher it climbs the chart, and the better its chances of being noticed by the pool.

That changes how to think about a pool. It does not replace your list; it multiplies what your list starts. A label with no contacts can still reach DJs through it (what a promo pool is), but the tracks that do best in the pool are the ones a label has already pushed hard to the DJs who know it.

Download rate per send, for every genre with at least 2,000 sends:

• Trance (Main Floor): 11.6%
• Mainstage: 7.2%
• Techno (Peak Time / Driving): 6.7%
• Techno (Raw / Deep / Hypnotic): 4.9%
• Afro House: 4.1%
• Melodic House & Techno: 3.3%
• Hard Techno: 2.5%
• Tech House: 2.5%

Read this as a picture of who receives promos on PromoLink today, not as a ranking of genres. The rate depends on how many DJs of each sound are in the pool and on the labels' lists right now, and it will move as the pool grows. Peak Time Techno carries by far the most volume, 183,700 sends, and still converts above the overall average.

Every figure here comes from the PromoLink database, counted on 15 October 2026, over all time since the first promo in November 2025.

• A promo is a release a label or an artist sent to at least one DJ. Drafts, catalogue entries with no audio and releases sent to nobody are left out: 957 promos from 95 labels and artists.
• A send is one DJ receiving one promo, by email from the label or through the DJ pool: 294,039 sends to 13,343 DJs.
• A listen is a DJ pressing play on the promo; a download is a DJ taking at least one of its tracks. In the rates, a DJ counts once per promo, however many times they played or downloaded it; the totals above count every listen and every track downloaded.
• Time to download runs from the moment the promo reached the DJ to that DJ's first download of it.
• Weekday and hour are in UTC.

If you quote these numbers, please cite "PromoLink DJ promo statistics, October 2026" and link this page.

What is a good download rate for a DJ promo? Across 294,039 sends on PromoLink, 5.6% ended in a download, which in our experience is the industry norm. Judge a promo less by the rate over the whole list and more by who downloaded: a handful of the right DJs is worth more than a higher percentage of the wrong ones.

How long after sending a promo do DJs download it? The median is about three days. 28.9% of first downloads happen within 24 hours, 70.8% within a week and 97.1% within 30 days.

Which file format do DJs download most? When they can choose, 48.6% take MP3, 28.3% WAV and 23.1% AIFF. Half of all downloads are lossless, so offer every format and let the DJ pick.

What is the best day to send a promo to DJs? Downloads peak on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday and are lowest on Sunday, in the European afternoon. Timing against the release matters more than the weekday: send early, top names first, then a second wave that names the DJs who supported it.

Do DJs listen to promos before downloading? Most do. 9.5% of sends end in a listen, and 48.3% of the DJs who listen go on to download. Getting the DJ to press play is the step that decides a promo.

Do DJs in a promo pool download more than a label's own contacts? Per send, no: 4.0% for pool sends against 5.8% for a label's own list. Pool DJs mostly download what is in the Top 10 of the chart, so a strong send to your own list is what lifts a track into their view.

Is the open rate a useful promo metric? Only as a sign that the email arrived. Listens and downloads tell you who actually heard and took the track, and those are the DJs to send to first next time.

Send your next release to DJs on PromoLink and see these numbers for your own promo: who listened, who downloaded, by name, and where the track stands on the chart. Your first 20 releases go to the DJ pool free, and the full data sheet behind this article is below as a PDF.