Jonah Berry is lounging in the Central nightclub where his company throws a party every Thursday night. Holding a cocktail and leaning against a brick wall, he nods his head to a swelling beat and stares into a set of mesmerizing strobe lights.

His business partners and friends make their way into the dark room and greet each other as they randomly break out dance moves.

“We work hard and we play hard,” said Jonah Berry, founder and CEO of lifestyle brand Gotta Dance Dirty. “Partying is a huge part of the brand and it hasn’t become a problem to where we have to change anything yet.”

Berry founded GDD in 2008, the summer before his senior year at UC Santa Barbara. He was working in a boutique clothing store when, on a very slow day, he decided to create his own music blog to share music with friends.

Berry started small, posting one song per day. But, after signing on friends to contribute, the site snowballed into Gotta Dance Dirty Media, LLC., a media group that revolves around electronic music. Although there are plenty of electronic music blogs and websites, such as ilictronix and electrojams, none replicate the business model of Gotta Dance Dirty.

“We are unique because we are so comprehensive,” said Berry. “We cover so many different angles. There are plenty of electronic music blogs out there, but none that have the same online presence, that throw events and are selling a brand.”

Under the brand’s umbrella the team works on event promotion, production and artist development. GDD even has its own apparel line that is known to sell out shortly after being restocked. 

“Before we turned this into a business, I didn’t realize it was going to be anything other than sharing music with friends,” Berry said.

With events such as HARD Fest in Los Angeles, Ultra Music Festival in Miami and the Electric Daisy Carnival, electronic music is becoming increasingly more mainstream. Some critics even argue that it will soon be more recognizable than pop music.

Derek Schultz, an electro music follower, equates the rising popularity to artists allowing their music to be played on the radio, incorporating other pop artists in their tracks and creating sounds that appeal to a broader audience.

He says the sharing of music genres works both ways. 

“Ever since electro music has started to come on the radio, I’ve noticed that pop artists have started incorporating electro synths into their music,” Schultz said.

“Some examples are Chris Brown, Rihanna and Britney Spears. Music is more about being mainstream now than showing off vocals. And more and more artists are using digital sounds.”

“People keep wondering how big it is going to get, but it doesn’t seem to be slowing down at all,” said Steven Ewald, who started off as GDD’s marketing manager and now calls himself the Chief Visionary Officer.

Ewald credits Daft Punk’s 2006 appearance at Coachella—before Gotta Dance Dirty was born—for his initial fixation with electronic music.

“Seeing Daft Punk at Coachella was absolutely mind-blowing,” Ewald said. “At that point I had no idea that this really even existed.”

The brand includes a team of 11 contributors to the website and five that focus on business development. Contributors are stationed in Miami, London, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Type “electronic music blogs” into Google’s search tool and Gotta Dance Dirty 3.0 is the first name to appear. The site gets anywhere from 350,000 to 400,000 hits per month and GDD’s Facebook page gets more than one million hits per month.  

Another distinction that GDD prides itself on is the lack of obnoxious ads on its blog.

“Gotta Dance Dirty has never been plastered with advertisements,” Ewald said. “We only use content that works on the site or fits in.”

Berry declined to comment on the overall income of the company. He said that because GDD has been a registered LLC. for less than a year, the figures are too difficult to determine.

According to Berry, everyone contributing to the brand knows how to DJ—with the exception of himself.

“I’m the last one standing that doesn’t do it,” he said.

The group’s highest concentration of followers are in L.A. and Sydney, Australia.

“If we just keep putting out good content, the sky’s the limit,” Berry said.

It seemed as if there was no limit to what the company could achieve at the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California. On the second day of the festival, after promotions on the GDD website, music lovers filled the Sahara tent—known for its big-name electronic DJs—wearing GDD merchandise.

“It was amazing to see all the people that came out and rocked our stuff,” Berry said. “It was really great.”

GDD currently promotes Friday nights at the Avalon in L.A., holds its own party at Central on Thursdays and recently kicked off a series of pool parties in Los Angeles.

“We’re not just trying to write about our artists,” said Trevor “Bones” Moffitt, one of GDD’s DJ’s who works on the event and business platforms of the brand. “We’re trying to bring out the entire electronic culture through all the events, through promoting new artists, through letting people know and just being really versatile.”

Moffitt is the resident DJ at the Avalon nightclub and goes by “Bones” when he spins. He is currently reveling in the sounds of POPOF, a French DJ.

“He’s pushing hard right now,” Moffitt said of the artist.

All three business partners have “day jobs” that somehow overlap with their specific position within GDD.

Berry works for Infamous PR, a public relations firm that represents electronic music. Ewald runs his own social media firm called Social Source, and Moffitt uses his graphic design skills to create fliers and graphics for HARD Fest.

The team has a strong vision for the future of Gotta Dance Dirty Media. According to Moffitt, by next year they will have a party tour to bring electronic music to every state.

“There are a lot of small towns that don’t really get to have what we do here in L.A.,” Moffitt said.

Berry hopes the media group will have its own label one day, although he said it will be “way down the road”.

For the time being, they are enjoying their success and are appreciative that they are able to wake up every day and pursue their passion.

“It’s exciting to have it pay the bills and see that we can make it as large as we want it to be and it be sustainable,” Ewald said. “We do what we love and make it a business without selling out.”

 

Reach Laura Varney here.