Meet Dan Goode | World’s Most Followed Wedding Saxophonist & DJ

We had the good fortune of connecting with Dan Goode and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Dan, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
We live in a world in which we have the opportunity to have more freedom than ever. Freedom of time, freedom of travel, financial freedom. And yet, most people still opt for the traditional route, which almost always leads to the opposite of freedom. Study, get a degree, work for someone else, stay compliant, stay confined.

I was lucky enough to have a taste of making money through music fairly young, and I believe that is partly to thank for setting me on a trajectory of being inclined to be self employed and entrepreneurial instead of following the “status quo”.

At 12, I had a taste for making money with music by busking on the street, making hundreds of euros on a national Dutch holiday (Queen’s day). At 13, I performed on my first stage, and was hired for my first ever professional gig for a corporate agency, for €300 (which at the time was mind blowing)!

Looking back, I believe the corporate event instilled a sense of confidence in my own abilities and taught me to always aim high and believe in my own value.

When I was 15 I was faced with the question of what I wanted my life to look like. Did I want to take the “safe”, academic route, or “pursue my dreams”?

Despite being academically successful, I opted for the latter, thankfully.

Even at 15, it felt like a risk, like I was rebelling against what I “should” be doing.

Instead of opting to study math or science to get into a prestigious university like Oxford or Cambridge, I was going to leave my birth country (the Netherlands) and move to the UK (where most of my family lived) to study at a boarding school, the renowned Chetham’s School of Music.

At Chetham’s, I studied Saxophone, Music tech and Music. I passed my ABRSM grade 8 Saxophone with distinction, and won the music tech award, whilst being the only student at Chetham’s to record and self produce a full length jazz album, “Playin’ It cool”.

At 18, I was faced with a similar dilemma as before: go to a conservatory or dive in the deep end and start a business on my own?

Naturally, given my proclivity for risk, I again opted for the latter.

So I moved from Chetham’s in Manchester to London aged 18, with no connections, and barely any cash to my name. I rented the cheapest room in a shared house I could find in one of the cheapest (and most dangerous) neighborhoods in London and had just about saved up to afford 6 months of rent (£2400 for the 6 months).

My first ever booking in London was for my landlord, who asked me to learn classic Bollywood songs. It was for £80 (quite a pay cut from my 13 year old self!) but I was excited to be making money in the real world.

Strangely, one of the videos recorded of me playing sax at that event went viral and was seen by hundreds of thousands of viewers, and I earned the title of “white guy playing sax” in the Tamil community!

After that first event, my business grew, slowly at first, and then quite rapidly, to the point where I was performing at over 100 events each year, and making 6 figures, aged 20. This enabled me to purchase my first home, and travel the world in my early twenties, including the States, Tokyo, Italy, France, Portugal, Greece, Spain, Sri Lanka and more.

Without having started my own business, I’m not sure any of the amazing things I was able to experience would have happened, definitely not to the same degree.

That idea of following my dreams and passion has stuck with me throughout my life, and I feel most alive when that feeling is the strongest.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
It all started aged 6- with music lessons at school. Specifically playing the recorder! As someone who liked to achieve in all areas (I was part of around 10 different after school clubs including various sports clubs and acting), achieving “levels” on the recorder, which was the musical instrument given to everyone, was another fun challenge.

Aged 9, after having passed level 5, two of my best friends started playing Saxophone. My parents asked if I was interested, and since it definitely seemed like a cooler instrument than recorder, I was all for it. I remember being thrilled when I opened it up for the first time and realized I already knew how to play it, being very similar to the recorder.

Things escalated quickly from there. I would come home and practice for ~5 hours a day, weekends included, playing along to backing tracks. Safe to say, my dad and the neighbors weren’t the biggest fans of this!

But it led to me making hundreds of Euros on Queen’s day for several years, performing on stage, and getting booked for my first corporate gig. I also started a band with 3 other fellow students and performed in school, and traveled across the Netherlands performing at various churches.

I then joined a weekend jazz ensemble with which we performed various events, notably one celebrating the Queen’s birthday at the British ambassador’s residence in the NL.

I also joined the swing band in high school (aged 13/14) and had the privilege to perform a solo on stage to the “Mission: Impossible” theme at THIMUN (The Hague Model United Nations) which had 8,000 people in attendance.

Around this time I also began producing and releasing my first songs online, which inevitably led to me starting to learn DJing. At 15 I DJ’d my first ever club (Paard van Troje / Paard) in The Hague.

I continued to produce and DJ at boarding school in Chetham’s, performing weekly at school parties, whilst recording my full length album (“Playin’ It Cool”) with a full jazz band (drums, bass, guitar, piano), and releasing music on Soundcloud and Youtube.

It was here that someone introduced me to the idea of combining Sax & DJing. At the time, no one “famous” that I was aware of was doing this, so it seemed like a fairly silly idea… Little did I know that it would become my unique selling point within a year of leaving Chethams!

After leaving Chetham’s, I was thrust into the real world. I think I have my naiveté to thank for not having the limiting belief that Sax & DJ would be too “niche”. I think a lot of people believe that just because no one else is doing it, that means there won’t be an audience for it.

In my case, the opposite was true. The idea of combining Sax & DJ was largely an alien concept back in 2014. No one was really doing both. It’s definitely interesting to see that now Sax & DJ is a hugely popular choice at clubs and weddings… To the point where memes have been made about “Sax players learning to DJ” and printing money!

One of the things that kickstarted my career was performing for Liz Locke, who was a candidate on series 6 of the Apprentice UK. She hired me to do my first Sax & DJ gig for her housewarming party.

Her review: “Dan is not only a talented Sax player and DJ but a true gent. His energy and professionalism coupled with the amazing playlists put together both on the Sax and for the DJ sets made for the most amazing party!! All my guests are raving about Dan and cannot wait to see him back at my wedding. ”

This definitely bolstered my confidence, and the testimonial, featured on my profile on LastMinuteMusicians.com (which now has 193 testimonials), ended up helping me break 6 figures just a few years into my career. I performed at London’s top venues; The Berkeley Hotel, The Dorchester, The Rosewood, the Landmark, The Ritz, and many more.

Private events allowed me to have the funds to build my dream studio in my house, and focus on music production under my alias, Daniel Chase. From 2017- 2021, the Daniel Chase project gained over 100K followers across different platforms and now has over 5 million streams on Spotify alone. My first track, “Somebody Else” (released independently), is now coming up on 1.5 million streams. “Drowning” with B3RROR was played at ESL (Electronic Sports League) events across the world to hundreds of thousands of viewers. My track “Hold U” with Dutch influencers “Vessbroz” was released on Smash the House records, the label of Dimitri Vegas and Like Mike, ranked the world’s #1 DJs according to DJ Mag.

In December 2021, I made a 3 month trip to Los Angeles, and in January 2024, I made the move permanently.

Having played at private events and weddings for over a decade, I was able to quickly rebuild my business in Los Angeles and broke multiple 6 figures in my first year, performing at venues like the Ritz Carlton Laguna, Terranea Resort, the Fairmont San Francisco. Having the confidence in my abilities but also the willingness to set my ego aside and help provide tremendous value for others was what enabled me to scale my business so quickly, whilst retaining my agency, Wedding Sax DJ, in the UK.

I also started my coaching business, The Luxury Musician, to empower other private events musicians and DJs to scale their own businesses to multiple 6 figures, as I had done twice from scratch in my career in two different continents and countries.

At The Luxury Musician, I have now worked with over 50 musicians and DJs to empower them to value themselves much more highly and command exponentially higher rates. In many cases, my clients have been able to TRIPLE their rates within a matter of a few weeks to a few months, invariably booking their all time highest paid gigs.

One of the biggest lessons I learned throughout my entrepreneurial journey was the power of solid marketing and branding. Most musicians/ DJs unfortunately are pretty terrible at the branding aspect and high quality content creation, in addition to being able to present themselves in the absolute best possible way in terms of dress and performance style.

Inside the Luxury Musician we help our clients completely transform their branding, overhaul their social media and expand their marketing to the most effective channels, enabling them to reach record revenue months and years, ditch the low paying gigs, and focus on high leverage activities.

It’s been truly gratifying to see the results others have had, and it’s only the beginning of the journey towards revolutionizing and empowering the talented musicians and performers within the private events music space.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Los Angeles/ California in general is literally one of the best places on earth to visit. The weather is awesome, the views are epic, the people are super interesting. If you wanted to, you could drive up to Big Bear and go skiing, hike in the San Gabriel mountains, and then drive down to El Matador beach all in one weekend. Death Valley is awesome to visit and Vegas isn’t too far away either!

Although I will say, finding a place with truly good food is tough. Some contenders are Avra, Casa Madera, Toca Madera, Katsuya, Elephante or Laurel Hardware if you want great pizza and truffle fries! Danbi in K-town is pretty sweet too.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I would love to shoutout Ron Kao @virtuousviolinist as a great friend and one of the official mentors inside The Luxury Musician program!

Website: https://www.dangoodeofficial.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dangoode/

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/dangoodeofficial

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@DanGoodeOfficial