What's the Point of Your DJ Career?
a.k.a. Plenty of dance music artists find themselves working towards a goal they don't necessarily even want.
Before we get started, I’m guessing that many First Floor readers are reeling from yesterday’s news that approximately half of the staff at Bandcamp has been laid off. Given that, I’ve gone ahead and removed the paywall from this Bandcamp-focused piece I published just last week:
If you missed the article the first time around, it’s once again available for everyone to read, so go ahead and dive in.
Aside from that, I’ve also completed an additional essay (addressing a different topic), which you’ll find below.
What is the trajectory of a DJ career supposed to look like?
Most DJs start casually, learning the basics at home or in some other non-professional setting (e.g. a friend’s house, a local workshop, etc.). Eventually, they’ll work up the courage to get behind the decks somewhere, most likely at a bar or house party, and after doing that a few times, they might make the leap to a proper club, most likely in the side room or opening up for a bigger act. From there, a DJ may start to build up a local following, gradually playing better timeslots and bigger venues around their hometown, and if that goes well, out-of-town promoters might begin to take notice, offering to fly them to other cities (and maybe even other countries) to do their thing. At that point, the cycle often begins anew, with a traveling DJ starting out at small clubs and parties and steadily working their way up to larger venues, all the while acquiring the clout that comes with being not only a touring artist, but also an out-of-town headliner. In the midst of that process, the festival circuit frequently comes calling, at which point a DJ may suddenly find themselves playing for thousands—or even tens of thousands—of people. And if that goes well, they might even find themselves doing it every weekend, making gobs of money while being celebrated as a member of the DJ world’s top tier.
Of course, only a fraction of DJs ever get anywhere close to the top of that particular pyramid, but that sort of lifestyle—that of the jet-setting artist who’s constantly on the move, playing tunes to massive crowds of adoring party people multiple times per week—is routinely held up as the ideal, even within supposedly “underground” circles. The industry, media and fans all push a narrative that this what artists are supposed to want, and that notion has been reinforced by dance music’s predominant economic model (i.e. the one that governs festivals and medium-to-large nightclubs), which insists that only a relatively small group of touring DJs are capable of drawing a crowd, and are therefore the only ones worthy of our collective attention. (The way that artist fees are structured, being a touring act, and preferably a touring headliner, is also one of the only ways for many professional DJs—at least those whose careers aren’t based around weddings and corporate gigs—to make a decent living.)
Given that, those few artists who do manage to break into the touring circuit are supposed to feel lucky. After all, how many people on Earth get to make their living as touring DJs? A few thousand, maybe? Less? A few hundred? It’s hard to know for sure, but whatever the exact number is, we’re talking about a privileged group who not only get to see the world on other people’s dime, but also get to do so while usually earning far more than their DJ counterparts back home.
It’s no wonder that audiences have historically had so little patience when these artists express even the smallest bit of dissatisfaction; DJing itself isn’t particularly difficult, especially in an era of digital files, sync buttons and automatic bpm detection, and while artists’ mental health concerns are perhaps taken a bit more seriously than they once were, the average punter has very little sympathy for the trials and tribulations of someone who’s regularly flying around the globe and getting paid four- and five-figure fees in exchange for playing other people’s tunes for a few hours. Back in 2018, Fox News host Laura Ingraham infamously commented that basketball star LeBron James should “shut up and dribble,” and the dance music sphere, despite touting itself as a progressive, forward-thinking community, often communicates a similar sentiment to its artists, effectively saying, “shut up and DJ.”
I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I sometimes feel the same way, and even the most compassionate dance music aficionados probably got a chuckle at some point from things like the DJsComplaining Twitter account, which now seems to be inactive. (Its mantle has more recently been picked up, at least in part, by the seemingly dozens of DJ-related meme accounts that routinely post on Instagram and other platforms.) As insensitive as those chuckles can sometimes be, there’s also a whole lot of silly and ridiculous stuff happening in dance music—and frankly, there always has been—so of course people are going to make jokes about it. Are some of those jokes overly mean? Absolutely. And does the prevalence of social media both facilitate commenters’ casual cruelty and algorithmically amplify its impact? Without question. We all know this, and yet… the well-being of the average touring DJ continues to rank pretty low on our collective priority list.
Here’s the thing though: Not every DJ who talks critically about their chosen profession is griping about airport security lines, disrupted sleep schedules, the bpm range of whoever happens to be opening up for them or how things used to be better “back in the day.” Sometimes there are DJs who, despite their seemingly upward career trajectories and busy tour schedules, make comments with a more philosophical bent, pondering whether dance music’s top tier is a place where genuine artistic expression and creative fulfillment is even possible.
Those kinds of questions don’t appear often—in the context of a global, multibillion-dollar industry that increasingly revolves around gargantuan events and DJs who’ve been marketed to the masses like pop stars, serious self-reflection can often be hard to come by—but on the rare occasions when they do, the conversation starts to become truly interesting.