When in doubt, just add music!

O Beach Ibiza has been bringing you the Ultimate Daytime Experience for more than a decade. These are the words we live by and we put our heart and soul into them. A big part of this is the soundtracks to your summers.

In music we trust. Your favourite day club takes a music-centric approach to everything we do because music is scientifically proven to be beneficial for your well-being and we want to make every moment count. It’s why you’ll hear a carefully curated montage of nostalgic tracks and big crescendo drops during our live shows, and it’s why we regularly update our Spotify playlists plus stream live from the venue during the summer months.

Music’s important to you, it’s important to us and it’s important to our Musical Director Grant Collins, who’s been part of the O Beach Ibiza journey from the early years. Inspired by our creative processes, the frequent interest we receive from aspiring DJs, and the urge to bring you fresh tracks, we grabbed five minutes with Grant to chat about the magic of music.

How do you find new music? Where do you look for it? What random places do you go to to find inspiration?

I spend on average between 8-10 hours a week looking through new music.

I get sent a lot of promos by record labels before they are released through an online platform called Inflyte where I can listen to new tracks and download the ones I like once I have given some feedback.I also use websites such as Traxsource and Beatport to search for new music. Here I can look through charts and new releases for each genre, but I can also search for DJs and labels I like and look at their personal charts to see what tracks they’re loving at the moment.

How do you work with O Beach Ibiza’s Director of Brand & Events when you’re creating music to accompany the shows? 

So Gemma and I work closely on creating the music for all the new shows each year. She ideates new themes for each event and comes with an eclectic list of tracks she’d like incorporated into each show. It’s then up to me to try and make it all work and sound good. This can be quite the task as it’s often 10 seconds from one track followed by 20 seconds of another track that she has chosen, with different sound effects thrown into the mix. What I start with is usually very random and often the songs are from a variety of genres so it can be challenging to combine all these elements and create a seamless piece of audio.

Do you plan sets or freestyle?

Generally, I don’t plan my sets. I like to freestyle depending on the crowd as every day can be different. I don’t like being reliant on one pre-planned set or playlist. 

Do you ever hear a song and think ’not for me’, but change your mind later?

This happens to me quite a lot because I listen to so much music. I skip through them quite quickly so a track might not grab my attention at first but then I’ll hear it again the next day or under a different circumstance and realise that I actually quite like it. I’d recommend giving a track a couple of chances before writing it off–it might grow on you.

Tell us your top three musical career moments

There are many, but here are some that stand out to me:

~Becoming a resident DJ for O Beach Ibiza
~Warming up for Tiesto in Dubai at a beach festival in front of 8000 people

~The first time I played alongside DJ EZ. He´s one of my idols and one of the DJs I looked up to the most when I was learning how to DJ.

Catch DJ Grant Collins on the O Beach Ibiza decks most days during the summer and relive your Ibiza holiday via Grant’s brand new Best of 2023 Mix curated for the O Beach Ibiza’s Soundcloud channel.