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It was the Friday of July 4th weekend and, as expected, the Montauk crowd was partying. At Gurney’s Beach Club, 20- and 30-somethings danced to “Where You Are” by John Summit and Hayla, screaming along to the lyrics. The espresso martinis were flowing as gaggles of club-goers approached the DJ booth, asking the woman behind the turntable for a selfie.
Soundtracking the party was Christina “Tinx” Najjar, a social media creator with 1.5 million TikTok followers. She’s written a bestselling book, “The Shift: Change Your Perspective, Not Yourself,” secured a Sirius XM radio show and podcast where she discusses friendship, love, and family conflict, and has become a baron of dating advice for young adults. But in the past year, Najjar picked up DJing, working clubs and events from Indio to Williamsburg with her friend Lucas Thomashow, founder of record label and management company, SANA.
Sometimes the crowd is unknown to her. Other times it’s made up of her followers. But in either case, she’s enjoying the new pursuit: “How lucky am I that I have this group of people who I connect with and I can party with and joke with and have fun with and they like the music that I’m playing?” That night at Gurney’s, Najjar and Thomashow played for three hours straight “because people were partying so hard,” Najjar says. “It was incredible.”
Najjar is part of a growing cohort of influencers leveraging their social media fame into burgeoning DJ careers. TikToker Charly Jordan, who has 7.8 million followers, YouTuber Cody Ko, with nearly 6 million subscribers, and Kim Lee, who grew her 1.1 million Instagram following through the reality show Bling Empire, all have DJ residencies at Wynn Las Vegas. Alexandra Pohl (who performs under the name XANDRA), a TikTok influencer with 1.2 million followers, has opened for Calvin Harris and The Chainsmokers and signed with Palm Tree Management, Kygo’s music management firm. James Kennedy also parlayed his following, amassed during countless seasons of Vanderpump Rules, into a full slate of shows around the U.S. and Canada.
As more and more creators rack up huge followings, they’re looking for ways to engage their most loyal fans, prioritizing a smaller, more dedicated group over a larger, detached one. And, with an increasingly crowded influencer landscape, it may be wise for some of these tastemakers to focus on other careers altogether. DJing is a way for influencers to interact with their devoted followers, monetize, and expand their reach beyond the often unstable world of social media. And, for some creators, that’s been the plan all along.
XANDRA POHL BEGAN TEACHING herself to DJ in high school, after seeing Alison Wonderland (“this boss ass bitch female DJ,” as Pohl describes her) at Lollapalooza in 2017. At the University of Miami, Pohl played fraternity tailgates and parties, along with some smaller clubs. But when she returned to Florida after the pandemic, her usual venues cut her rates. She remembered a club owner telling her, “It’s because so many people want to DJ right now and because you don’t have a following.”
So, during her senior year, Pohl began posting more aggressively on TikTok — not about music, but about her life as a UMiami student, her friends, and “all of the juicy gossip” about her ex boyfriend. She went viral for her relatability and as more and more users wanted to follow her college antics, similar to her UMiami peer, Alix Earle. She’s been racking up followers ever since. This audience has helped her book DJ gigs again — except far bigger ones. She’s performed at Liv in Miami, opened for Kygo at Ushaïa in Ibiza and, in a full circle moment, played Lollapalooza.
“These clubs, these music festivals, they’re businesses and the more reach you have, the more tickets you can sell, the more money they make, the more that they can pay you,” Pohl says.
And Pohl can draw a crowd. Madison Fiorino, a 23-year-old in Charlotte, N.C., saw Pohl DJ in March. She’s long been a fan of Pohl’s TikTok videos — “she seems really confident and fun,” she says —and notes that the Charlotte club, Trio, was packed with Pohl’s followers and fans, and when Pohl appeared on stage around midnight, the audience began screaming with excitement.
Najjar’s DJing career started a bit differently. She and Thomashow, who has DJed for a decade as a hobby, came up with the idea at Coachella last year. “We were a few Aperol spritzes in and we were watching Sofi Tukker perform,” she said. “We were like, ‘We could do this. We could totally be paid to party and go around the world and create fun experiences for people.’”
However, DJing can be harder than it looks. Over the past year, Thomashow has been teaching Najjar the ins and outs of DJing and other peers have given her some notes. “It’s really difficult — I can’t believe people make fun of DJs and say it’s an easy job because it’s complex,” she said. But, unlike most up and coming DJs, Najjar and Thomashow’s first gig was at The Snow Lodge, the Aspen counterpart of the see-and-be-seen Montauk club the Surf Lodge. Diplo, Duke Dumont, and Alesso have also performed at the après ski spot.
Though Najjar admits they were still working out the kinks —”I’m not gonna lie to you, It was definitely not the smoothest of sets” — the fact that they were able to to it at all was huge. “It was obviously a crazy honor that we got to DJ that for our first gig. That’s totally unheard of,” Najjar says. “We’re realists, we get it, we’re leveraging my platform to get our foot in the door.”
THIS PATH, IN SOME WAYS, is well trodden. The (mostly female) social media stars bringing their rapt audience to DJ gigs aren’t that different from 2010s “it girls,” like Alexa Chung and Paris Hilton, staking claim behind the DJ booths at clubs and parties. Najjar sees the Hilton model as an ideal. “When she became a DJ, everybody rolled their eyes, but look at her now — she’s playing Tomorrowland; she’s booked all the time,” Najjar said. “She’s a really incredible DJ, but she still has all of her other businesses.”
And, for social media stars, DJing could be even more prudent than it was for their predecessors. Lia Haberman, a creator economy expert and corporate marketing consultant, notes that more and more influencers are turning towards other careers.
“There’s more influencers than there ever have been before so that means there’s a smaller pot to share, whether it’s ad revenue or brand sponsorships,” said Haberman. “It’s just that much harder to make the money that could sustain you to be a professional influencer.”
The model that motivated some of the pandemic-era mega influencers, like Addison Rae, to release pop songs is now less viable than it was in 2021 for those without Rae’s following. “As social media gets more fractured,” Haberman said, “I do think it is harder to have the scale of audience that you need to make something like selling a music single popular or lucrative.”
A smaller, more devoted audience may not have the fortitude to shoot a single to the top of the Spotify charts — but it can certainly fill out a venue. And in nightlife, leveraging these followers has become strategic. Jayma Cardoso, founder and creative director of The Surf Lodge in Montauk and The Snow Lodge in Aspen, has had influencers, including Pohl and Najjar, play at her venues. “DJs, right now, are the new rock stars. They are driving more traffic than even an amazing established musician,” Cardoso said.
These creators, Cardoso noted, “can sell tickets, they can fill the audience, they can maybe even introduce us to another audience that’s not on our radar. I think it’s very win-win.”
But bringing influencers to prestigious venues doesn’t come without conflict. Bling Empire’s Lee began DJing in 2012 and said her social media presence in the past few years has been crucial to her success. However, she noted, “The TikTok audience can be a little cruel.”
On social media, Charly Jordan is one female DJ who has received much flak for what some perceive as using her following to get big gigs — some online critics say she doesn’t have the same level of talent as other DJs who worked their way up without social media or who had more formal training. Pohl has faced similar criticism. “I feel like there’s such a stigma for the influencer to DJ pipeline,” she said. “I constantly have to stick up for myself.”
But purists will need to come to grips with the idea that social media influence is becoming not only helpful in fostering a DJ career, but essential.
“We live in a different time today. It’s not just about your craft — there’s so much more to being a DJ. Can you sell the shows?” Lee says. “Clubs will book the DJ, that [has] a bigger following because, at the end of the day, it is a business.”
