Apt4B Radio: A Festival Microdose for “Intense Music People”

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An interview with the co-founders of Apt4B Radio, a Los Angeles-based DJ collective and event production team.

If you’re in the Los Angeles area and need a taste of the festival scene between events, Apt4B Radio may be for you. The concept came together when two aspiring DJs — who thought they may have signed up for a fake competition — forged a real friendship that has turned into an event production venture.

Today, they count about 20 active members in their collective, which stages no-phone electronic mini-fests in apartments, lofts, and local venues across LA.

“A bunch of us DJs had a house party one day, and it was just constant back-to-back,” said Jacob Niles Creer, Apt4B Radio’s CEO. “You would go in one room, there’d be someone else with a deck spinning, another room, there’d be someone else with a deck spinning. And it was like, ‘What if we just did this for a living? What if we just let other people experience this and we shared our love for music with other people?’ That’s how it started.”

Along with COO Liv Enriquez — who, like Niles Creer, is originally from Orange County — Apt4B Radio seeks to re-establish people’s connection to sound and community. Their longform events allow attendees to lose themselves in the moment, much like festivals do, while providing a showcase for local talent, many of whom are BIPOC, queer, gay, and non-binary.

Below is my conversation with both co-founders of Apt4B Radio, edited lightly for length and clarity. We discussed how they came together, their mission, and more.

The bio on Apt4B Radio says “For intense music people.” What is an intense music person to you?

Liv: An intense music person is somebody who will go out of their way for music. They might go through some uncomfortable things for the sake of music. So it’s just prioritizing music over a lot of other things.

That has stemmed from going to music festivals and how some people are like, “Oh my gosh, I could never put myself through that.” For me, it’s like, “Oh well, it’s all worth it in the end for the music and being able to experience the music.”

Jacob: For me, intense music people are the people who regularly attend concerts, festivals, shows, have band T-shirts on, and actually talk about bands you’ve never heard of before. People who taste music and experience music as a total part of their essence, their being, like they couldn’t imagine a world without music. People who believe in the artistry of music.

A big part of festivals is the experience, but intense music people care about the music. They care about who they’re seeing. They care about what they’re seeing. Even if they don’t know the group, they’re excited to experience something new where the music is the focus.

Since this was born from the idea of people who love going to festivals wanting a space for yourselves in the LA area, how did you go from just being intense music people to now having something that you’re promoting?

Jacob: I fell into the festival scene later in my life. I discovered how wonderful it is for people to be connected through dance, through music, through songs, and just experiencing that human connection. Music is mostly unique to humans. A couple other animals, but mainly humans, you know?

After learning how to DJ, being in the scene, and going to different warehouses, afters and spaces, I realized there wasn’t a spot to just have that festival energy. We want festival microdoses to keep us going, and to experience that magic that festivals constantly bring.

How did you get into electronic music?

Liv: I started going to EDC back in the day, right out of high school. That was 2012. My first experience — which is kind of crazy — was one of the first Vegas years. It was just crazy to be a part of something like that on such a huge scale. It really opened me up to the PLUR life, too.

And Jacob, for you?

Jacob: I grew up listening to EDM all of the time: Daft Punk, eventually Skrillex, Modestep, and a bunch of UK stuff. My cousin was a cybergoth, so her birthday parties had Dance Dance Revolution, like the actual DDR arcade pads hooked up into a PlayStation. So I grew up with a fundamental understanding of PLUR, rave culture, and EDM, but I didn’t really get into live events until a System of a Down concert. That was my first big concert.

After being involved in DJing and hanging out with a bunch of ravers, I’d been heavily going to shows and festivals. Even before that, I wound up going on a super big festival binge all around America — Chicago, Iowa, you name it. I went to tons of different states and saw how they got down for raves and stuff like that, and I realized how connecting and universal dance and music are.

Bringing that back home to LA, OC, SoCal, and trying to share what I’ve learned from my travels has been very fundamental for my EDM journey.

How did you two meet?

Liv: We did Your Shot, the school and DJ competition from Australia. It was their first year doing it, so we both got some targeted ads for it and then decided to do it.

Jacob: We thought it was a scam. I mean, I know I thought it was a scam. I got a targeted ad, but of course, I’m like, ‘Well, what harm could you really do with my email address that’s been leaked across the universe about a hundred thousand times? Whatever.’

Then, showing up and seeing a bunch of EDM influencers day one in the interview, I was like, ‘Oh, this is real.’ We met through that program. And that’s how we met a lot of the people who work at Apt4B Radio, either people from the scene we met in the competition, or people who are friends of people in the competition. So it was truly a canon event.

What are your roles within Apt4B? Are you co-founders?

Jacob: Indeed co-founders. In terms of, if you translate it to corporate structure, I’m CEO. I call Liv my COO. I couldn’t do this without her. We are co-founders. I consider her very much my equal. I very much respect everything she has to say. And we always have conversations to make sure we’re aligned with our values on things. We see eye to eye. I don’t know if you have a different perspective, but —

Liv: No, I agree. It’s hard being a woman in the music industry and to be able to have people that value your opinions and support you. That is something that is a given, but it’s also just something I think everybody should have if they’re trying to create something like this.

It’s not something that can be done by one person. So to be able to have a team early on who believes in the mission, that’s super valuable, and it’s been a great journey so far.

When I saw the rules and everything, it made me think of Tinzo and JoJo’s Book Club Radio. Was this inspired by that?

Jacob: Yes, very much so. We have very similar values. We love the energy that Book Club Radio brings. So that was a big inspiration for us. Bringing that same New York serious music enthusiasm to SoCal. Separate a little bit from the influencer culture, and come back to the roots of music, through authenticity, expression, and art.

Needless to say, Book Club Radio, we’re big fans. They’re very much a founding inspiration. We do things a little bit differently, but very much an inspiration in a mold, to translate our vision. They were a great starting block.

Liv: That was such a fun process to work through, those rules. Jacob and I really finessed those to fit what we really wanted to prioritize for our collective for Apt4B.

Can you talk a bit more about the rules?

Liv: I feel like it sounds so intense, right, to have rules for your events? But it does change the energy or the expectations of the parties that we’re throwing. It filters out the people who are not there for the music. If they are not interested in going to an event that has these kinds of rules, then maybe we’re not for them, and that’s okay.

We’re not trying to just have anybody off the street come to our events. We want somebody who’s coming in with good intentions and an open mind. That’s why that language is there in the rules, and also, the ‘no phones’ thing, too. Setting up those clear expectations.

We printed out the rules on this gigantic poster board poster sheet from the Octavia Lab in the Downtown LA library for people to sign and to have. The actual writing and signing of the rules is a fun thing we do. It’s not just a waiver that’s on your phone. Part of it is analog in that way, too, and you’re just writing like you’re part of history, too. Our first poster we used a few times and it’s pretty full now, so we’ll probably have to do a new one soon.

Fostering that PLUR energy that we’ve talked about is important to us, too.

How have you tried to mix your events up?

Jacob: Sometimes we’ll do private parties and sometimes we’ll do public events. So I think between those we’ve had five events. We start every event with the concept or a theme. We did Aptchella, trying to microdose the Coachella experience of having a bunch of different styles of music on multiple stages. We’ve done Tenants Only, where we were trying to establish ourselves and get people to sign the lease — our poster that Liv mentioned earlier.

We have a variety of events, but it always starts with a theme to tie everything together and keep it cohesive while still being open to a bunch of different music styles.

How are you selecting the DJs who are playing, and is there any particular genre you’re trying to stick to?

Jacob: If we are inside a coffee shop, we’re probably not gonna have hard techno at the coffee shop. Maybe, depends on the coffee shop. But more importantly, we want to have the right energy for every single event, and respect the spaces we’re in. So we pick DJs based on making sure we have a variety of representation — of BIPOC folks, queer folks, men, women, gay, non-binary folks.

We try to make sure we have a good balance of that. That’s important to us in DJ selection, and there’s a variety of styles that match the theme and energy that we’re going for for that event.

Are the sets recorded? How can people listen?

Jacob: We record both stages with a variety of different cameras. We livestream as well. We don’t livestream both stages. We don’t have Coachella money yet, so it’s a little bit difficult to have multiple channels streaming at once. There’s also sometimes a copyright issue. But we do try to stream on YouTube, Mixcloud and Twitch in real time. Then we post the videos up, on Twitch as well as YouTube.

What’s the best way for people to learn about the parties?

Jacob: Instagram is always gonna be the best way. But we have a Linktree in our bio on our Instagram that we keep up to date with our newest events. We do have a website, which is actually Apt4B.radio. I update that with the current events and ticket links.

We send out text blasts through our ticketing platform. So those are the best ways to stay up to date with what we’re doing. We don’t have a newsletter at this point, but we will eventually have a newsletter as well.

How often will you be doing live events?

Liv: We’re aiming for monthly, but it’s just a little tricky because we go to a lot of music festivals, too. We did Lightning in a Bottle renegade style. I think we’re in an experimental phase right now, too. Trying to stay consistent is important to us.

In the long run, what is your goal for Apt4B Radio?

Jacob: The long-term goal is to share our love for music across the nation. We want to have events outside of SoCal. We have teams with some people who come down for every event in places like Vegas or Arizona who are supporters, which is kind of crazy.

As I mentioned, we have traveled to many different states, so we definitely want to throw events outside of just SoCal. We want to throw other events, experimenting with different things like bands. That is something we are committed to.

We want to have different mediums, not just all digital. We want to have vinyl at some point.

We want to play around and grow organically. We’re not in a rush. We’re not in this just to make money. We’re in this for a love of the art, so we wanna experiment with how we can share that art with the most people possible.

Apt4B Radio is partnering with Divine LA to present The Groove Lab on Saturday, July 11. They’re planning to decorate the space in tribute to DoLaB’s Woogie stage, along with a living room chill zone for attendees to decompress from the dancefloor.

For more info on upcoming events and to purchase tickets, visit Apt4b.radio.