TopherM
3:22 PM - 27 February, 2012
DJBurner........
I've been a gigging DJ for about 10 years now. With the advent of digital/MIDI DJ rigs that are easier to use and more portable than ever before, I find the DJ market more and more saturated and harder and harder to get good paying gigs. I live in a tourist town where I used to be able to pull $200-250 for a 4-5 hour gig in 2002, and now the same gigs pay $50-100 and most typically want you to do a two hour gig and have multiple DJs on a single night.
Anyway, 7 years ago I was at a karaoke bar when the karaoke DJ walked out on the spot. The bar had a house system, and I BSed my way into finishing the show for them. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, and it showed that night, but they did offer me the weekly gig. I was only at that particular bar for 6 months, but I soon got a bi-weekly karaoke gig at a popular club down the street. My karaoke is definitely a DJ show with karaoke in between, and it fills about 200 seats a night.
Anyway, I'll tell you two things about karaoke:
#1: It is harder than DJing.
In particular, there a ton more crowd interaction required, and not just "hype" stuff, but actually being genuinely witty and dealing with lots of diverse people.
#2: It pays better and is more steady work than DJ work. Good karaoke hosts work the same gig for years and years. I can only name a handful of places that have longstanding house DJs. I work twice a week every week at the karaoke gig, and don't miss the days of beating the streets for DJ gigs.
And my favorite story of all.......the other DJ guys I used to hang out always gig together, mostly due to the trend of shorter and shorter sets out at the clubs, so they can basically sell 2-3 DJs together to fill out a full night. Anyway, they have a good time at my karaoke gig, but are always giving me s**t that I'm "not a real DJ" anymore. I've known these guys forever, so I don't really care so much, but a few months ago they had a new guy who decided to join in on the "you're not a DJ" mantra. One thing coming from my boys, not the same coming from a guy I just met so I tore him a new one that went something like this:
"Seriously? Let me ask you something. How many gigs did you do last month?"
Guy says, "Uh, about 4-5."
"So you made about $600-700 max last month?"
"Uh, yeah, maybe a little less than that..."
"And how long have you been giging?"
"Uh, about 8 months."
"OK....well I started DJing 10 years ago, and doing karaoke 7 years ago. In that time, I've done almost 1,000 gigs and pulled down about $250,000 as a part time DJ. I could care less if you think I'm a real DJ or not, I'm here to make money, not to be a starving artist like most of the DJs in this town."
Anyway, all that to say that while I enjoy really expressing myself as a DJ, that's a few bumps down the list of why I'm doing it, with #1 being TO MAKE MONEY, and I'm splitting $350.00 a week ONE WAY for two steady 5 hour gigs a week, so I'm accomplishing my main goal just fine, while the other DJs I know all work in food service or at surf/skate shops and struggle to pay rent as "real DJs."
RANT OVER!
