Follower count and alerts

This page is for DJs. If you run a venue or a night, start here.

A live count on screen is one of the few things that makes a room look twice. When it moves, the screen celebrates, and that visibly encourages the next person.

The count

Once Instagram is connected, your follower count can sit on screen and update itself while you play. There are 4 sizes and 3 styles, so it can be a headline or a quiet detail in the corner.

Both are set under Display settings in the Engage tab, next to the Instagram card.

The alert

When the count goes up, the screen plays a short celebration. It is the most effective thing on the display, for one reason: the room sees that other people are following you right now.

Why it counts rather than names

An alert can say that your following went up. It can never say whose. Instagram publishes your follower total to a connected app and stops there. No permission exists that would reveal who those people are — not to us, not to anyone.

So an alert reads “+1” rather than a username, and it always will. This is a limit of Instagram’s platform, not a feature waiting to be built.

What that means in practice:

• You cannot thank someone by name on screen.
• You cannot tell which follow came from which room.
• You can see how many arrived during a given night, which is the number that actually tells you whether the room was worth playing.

A small delay is normal

We check the count on a timer, not the instant someone taps follow. So an alert can arrive a short while after the follow itself. Over a whole night it evens out. In any single moment it can lag by a minute.

Last updated 2026-08-01