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The £100 DJ

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The £100 DJ, and what to expect!

Back in the day, a DJ needed a good strong back. Not just for equipment but to lift and shift their music collection. The modern-day DJ can now carry a massive music collection on a small hard drive. This is the era of DJ technology making the life of a DJ easier, but it also brings the wannabe DJ out of the bedroom and into the wedding market. Welcome to the £100 DJ.

DJ technology has made the ‘playing’ of music easier.

DJ software search engines mean a tune can be sourced and played within seconds. Unfortunately, this results in a hoard of people thinking they can DJ at a wedding. All they need is a laptop and suitable software and a music collection then they assume that they are ready to play to an audience.

Standards Are Slipping

Just at the time when people expect to have an experienced and knowledgeable DJ who knows exactly what to do, and when to do it, the market is bursting with newbies lacking the skills to do the job. We all need to start somewhere but these DJ’s are not suited to such an important event as a wedding.

Hire an experienced Wedding DJ

Because they know that most people are looking to save money they are willing to play for as cheaply as possible. Worse still, they shop around to see what other DJ’s are charging, then they undercut their fees. Nothing wrong with a bit of competition but you have a situation where newbies are charging just below the rates of fully experienced DJ’s. This is not good. You will have heard the saying, ‘You get what you pay for’, this simply does not apply.

A typical budget DJ will illegally download their music, often poor quality from Youtube, circumventing the rights of the musicians and cheating them out of their deserved income. Some will stream the music from legal or illegal online sources until the internet in the venue fails or gets slow.

Cheap DJ’s will use budget equipment where the audio sounds cheap and nasty. Even if it doesn’t, it will most certainly give you a sore head. Cheap speakers perform loudly in certain frequency ranges and do not provide a balanced or pleasant listening experience. Their playout systems will typically be low cost and low quality or they haven’t made the time or financial investment in an attempt to provide a decent sound.

Dotty lights? Dots darting all over the room are produced again by cheap lighting produced to a price. Quality and good visual impact are seriously lacking with these.

Worse still, a cheap DJ will have no insurance or safety test certificates putting your event and possibly your safety at risk. They will not provide you with a contract or have any backup system regarding equipment or personnel.

Their communications skills are likely to be lacking, some are even scared to use a microphone and will simply blurt out general announcements.

For Your Important day, make sure you do yourself proud

A wedding can cost anything from say £5000 to £50,000. Of course, the ceremony is the most important part of the day for the bride, groom and family members but don’t fall short at your reception. Your wedding reception will be attended by all the important people in your lives, so make sure you make the correct decision.

Make sure you hire a DJ with principles, one who invests time and money into a great service. One who can use a microphone to enhance your event and who takes pride in appearance, performance, safety and making sure you get what you expect.

For an investment of about 2.5% of your wedding budget, you can get great disco entertainment. Most importantly, you can get a DJ who is professional and will do anything to make sure your event is remembered for the right reasons.

For a cost equivalent of 1% to 4%, depending on your total budget, you CAN make yourselves and your guests proud.

As always, please let me know what you think on this subject below.

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Wedding Vows – Back them up and keep them safe

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What would you do if you lost your wedding vows?

You spend weeks, if not months, preparing your wedding vows for the all-important day. You want to make sure you get it right and it is on your mind 24/7. Now imagine if you lost your wedding vows when you are preparing them. Worse still, what if you couldn’t find them just before your ceremony.

It makes sense, and gives you peace of mind, to back them up.

Many modern couples read their vows directly from phones or tablets. We are surrounded by technology invading every part of our lives. Why not your wedding?

Premier Disco Evernote backup your vows

Gone are the days of scraps of paper for your notes or the A4 sheet with your vows just in case you forget them. It is far more common than you may think for one of a couple to forget their vows. Wedding vows are becoming more complicated, more in-depth, and more forgettable.

Hire an experienced Wedding DJ

Use technology to make sure it all goes to plan.

From the off, instead of using scraps of paper to keep your notes, you should be using a more permanent and shareable way to plan your wedding vows. At the least, you should prepare them and store them on a computer. This way you can call them up any time to make changes or additions.

Better still, back them up online. Use one of the many cloud services to store your vows so you can access them anywhere. There are many options around but one of the best has to be Evernote. Remote access at any time including your ceremony if you need to.

Imagine misplacing your vows on your wedding day just when you would like to read them through. Imagine standing at the altar and your mind going blank.

Bride and Groom Exchanging Rings Premier Disco
Exchanging Rings

One final safeguard, email your wedding vows to yourself and a trusted person.

It makes perfect sense to have a copy online and your phone in your pocket. If the worse comes to the worst, at least you can save the day.

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1000 Reasons NOT to DJ at your own Wedding and use a Professional

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In this article, we address the reasons NOT to DJ at your own wedding but to hire a wedding DJ!

iPad DJ premier disco

Why is it important to hire a professional wedding DJ?

Every now and again, we are told that someone we know has been to a wedding where the Bride & Groom have decided to ‘DJ’ at their own wedding.

We were recently hired by a couple to use our sound and lighting so they could use phones to play music. On this occasion, our fully experienced DJ/Presenter was utilised to control volume levels. He had nothing else to do and was idle for the whole wedding reception. What a waste, all that experience and ability falling asleep at the desk!

There are many reasons NOT to DJ your own wedding, I will address the main reasons here.

1. A Wedding DJ has years of experience

With this experience, a wedding DJ has developed the skill of knowing what music should be played. He/she knows which loosely structured order they can be played and can be inspired by a list of music provided. The experience to know what ‘other’ tunes will work in any particular context of what is being played right now.

In contrast, a bride & groom will know what music they like. They may even have a good idea of what party music is, however, do they have the depth of knowledge to rescue the dance floor if their choices don’t work? Chances are that they will not have as much music as they think. They will be left lacking to satisfy any choices from their guests.

Thankfully, almost all couples are aware that they cannot do this so leave it to the professionals. It is extremely rare for a couple’s exclusive choice of favourite music to suit their guests. This is why using a professional DJ is vital to the success of a wedding reception. A very important reason not to DJ at your own wedding.

See what we can do for you on your wedding day.

2. Playing the music at a wedding is a full event activity

A wedding DJ will plan ahead for each event. At each event, he/she will be continually aware of the changing dynamics of the audience and dance floor. With a choice of thousands of music tracks spanning almost 100 years and dozens of musical genres, there is a lot to think about.

One single guest may very well ask for something a bit different which send the DJ down a different route changing the dynamics for the better. Situations like this opens up the mind of the DJ and helps the him/her to discover new interest of the audience. Most often, this has a positive impact on the reception.

As a bride and groom, do you really want to be stressing about this instead of enjoying the best day of your life?

Hire an experienced Wedding DJ

3. iPhone or iPad playout

To DJ at your own wedding you will need a playout medium. This is usually either an iPhone or iPad but can be any media player. Whilst these do provide reasonable quality, they are not professional systems and are liable to be problematic.

So, you have chosen your music to play. This could be via itunes, Spotify or other app you have installed. A reliable internet connection will be required to access all the music you will need. You may have already downloaded a limited playlist to your player.

Spotify Premier Disco

Typically music played from iTunes is of varying quality. Some tracks will be clean and clear while others will be louder, quieter or of inconsistent volume levels. A professional DJ will have all tracks balanced to the same volume without clips, with a gentle warmth and pitch correction. A not so professional DJ will simply adjust every track as it plays. With no DJ, this is a tiresome task with someone having to attend to the player adjusting the volume of each track.

4. Front of house volume and quality

This refers to the volume and quality of sound heard by the guests at the reception. If you decide to DJ at your own wedding, you will still need to make sure the music is heard by your guests.

A professional DJ will provide everything required including top quality speakers and amplification. Your venue may have a sound system installed, but this will have been designed for vocals and may not handle music particularly well. Sometimes the EQ of an in-house sound system has been adjusted to suit vocals and limit the frequency range to serve this purpose best. This is not good for music reproduction.

There will be many places to hire a better sound system near to your venue but the cost of this will be higher than hiring in a professional DJ from the start. Lighting can also be hired in, however it should be remembered that positioning and correct operation of lighting is important for for the overall feel of the entertainment.

5. Your wedding day will have been planned for over a year, it’s time to chill

After all the planning to ensure everything is just right for your wedding day, do you really want the stress and tie up your evening worrying about music and keeping your guests happy? You shouldn’t be, it is time to relax and have a ball.

To join your guests in a celebration of the most important day of your lives. To mingle and talk with your family and guests and to build a memory of your happy day which you, and your guests, will remember fondly for the rest of your lives.

Hire a professional Wedding DJ

A professional DJ will take your advanced requests as well as taking them on the night. He will care enough to make every effort to ensure everyone has a great time. A professional DJ knows exactly how to treat you and your guests so you can relax and enjoy!

1000 reasons?

There may not be 1000 reasons in this article. I have limited the advice into 5 simple categories. These categories could be expanded out to include many more detailed reasons why you should not DJ at your own wedding.

Getting back to the start of this post where I mentioned the couple who hired us for our equipment. The groom spent the whole night using his iPad at his table to control his iPhone at our desk. Music volumes and quality were all over the place.

Whenever guests were not involved, the music would abruptly end and a new track started. Unbelievably, Spotify adverts would pop up every few minutes. The choice of music was not always to the liking of the guests.

Politely, the guests joined in but many were left disappointed. This is not the lasting impression they should have had of this wedding.

In conclusion

It doesn’t make sense not to hire a professional DJ and to DJ at your own wedding. It may be seen as a chance to save some money but it is false economy. Your guests will remember a badly thought out reception far more than not having personalised napkins.

If you need to save a £200-£300 or so from your budget of your wedding, there are easier ways to do it.

As always, please leave any comments or additions below.

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How to Ensure Data Security and Protect your Living

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I’ve just read a post by a Dan White, of DJ Tech Tools, about another member who had all his gear stolen from his car. Everything was taken, including his laptop and his ‘only’ copy of his music collection. I am pretty paranoid about data security, read all about it below.

PremierDJ Platinum Notes

Having been digital DJ’ing now since 1998, using vinyl and CD’s for many years before that, I have made all the mistakes with my music collection. Initially, having no back-up, I managed to lose a sizable part of my music so I had to start again. Data security was low on my list of priorities but after this disaster, I now take it very seriously. I already owned a physical TONNE of vinyl and CD’s so I had to start to ripping all over again. Nowadays, I buy my music online so, at least I can re-download all my previous purchases. I really can’t believe I was so ‘stupid’ to not take proper care of my most important business asset.

I will cover most aspects of protecting music collections and equipment but will start by making sure my music is always secure. Protecting equipment will be covered in a later post. Hopefully, my insights will help you all with your own data security issues.

What do I do to ensure Data Security?

As I previously said, I buy my music online. The online retailer keeps a record of all my purchases which makes it easy for me to get a new copy of anything I lose or get corrupted etc. This is great except that if I was to lose my complete collection, somewhere near 75,000 tracks, it would take forever to download them all, audio analyse and correct them before I can get back on the road to earn my living. At least I can fall back on this if I ever have a total failure!

How I obtain, store, and back up my music collection.

I start off by buying my music online from my preferred online music retailer. There are many of these guys around, some specialising in a specific music genre, so I am sure you all have your favourites. After purchasing and downloading the files to my download folder I move the files to a ‘working’ folder. During their stay in this folder, I carry out a few tasks to make my life easier.

mp3Tag

PremierDJ

First, I ensure each track is correctly tagged with all of its identification tags so it is catalogued correctly and easy to find in the software used on my working PC’s. My tool of choice is called Mp3tag which makes it easy to tag the files. Mp3Tag is simple to use. Users are able to select which information they wish to tag to a track and the software will remember this for future use. I remember the early days when I needed to alter every tag in Winamp, Mp3Tag makes this a quick and simple process.

Platinum Notes

PremierDJ Platinum Notes

Second, I balance the volume levels, repair clipped peaks (there are often thousands in a single track), correct the pitch and add warmth to each and every track. I use Platinum Notes for this. This is a pretty complicated piece of software allowing users to select individual settings. I find it works perfectly well at the default settings, at least for music. Speech is another matter and would need to be investigated further.

Next, I re-tag all the tracks, using Mp3tag, so they are all identified with the Platinum Notes suffix. This helps me to identify any tracks in my collection which have not been tagged so far.

Storage

The first step to ensure data security. It is extremely important not to ‘put all your eggs in one basket’. If the basket is lost or broken, then so are your contents. This phrase transd=fers perfectly to the DJ world.

If you use a computer, whatever brand or format is your preference, and have a single copy of your database then you are flirting with disaster.

SyncbackPro

Premier Disco SyncBack Pro

As soon as I have the music prepared for use at gigs I transfer all these files onto my portable gig drive in their relevant sub-folders using SyncbackPro. This is the drive I use to update my working PC’s, the ones used to do the actual gigging. The portable drive is never left attached to any PC for any length of time and sees very little active time. Hopefully, by doing this, it will continue to be a reliable transportation medium for some time to come.

I immediately back up this drive to my main PC C drive in a folder called KEEP. This is a mirror copy of the portable drive and can be used to set up another portable drive if my current one ever gives up on me. This KEEP folder is regularly backed up to another external hard drive permanently connected to my PC. I know everybody that matters would say never leave your back up next to your main PC in case of theft or fire, you would lose it all, but remember I have the transportation drive and another little trick up my sleeve.

Just to be absolutely certain I never lose everything, I don’t stop there. This might sound a bit like overkill, but at least I am 100% confident I will never lose my music collection. I back up onto the cloud using two separate services.

Evernote

Premier Disco Evernote

I have used Evernote for many years to store contracts and thousands of other files on their servers. Every file is backed up, in their sub-folders, by using the Evernote import folders feature. Anything added to an import folder is automatically uploaded to the Evernote server. All my music is stored on their servers so I can access it anywhere I get an internet connection. I have found their service to be totally reliable. Evernote continually evolves with new features being made available regularly, many of which I have no use for, making it a fantastic business tool. Initial uploads of a music database would need to be scheduled over a longer period of time as they have a 10Gb per month data limit. I don’t find this to be an issue as I use Evernote for many other areas of my business. They take data security very seriously and store all data on multiple servers to ensure no downtime.

Livedrive I HAVE NOW STOPPED USING THIS SERVICE DUE TO THEIR POLICY OF MAXIMISING THEIR PROFITS AND POOR CUSTOMER SUPPORT

Google Drive

Premier DJ Google Drive

 

Google Drive is a cloud-based backup service. I have, in the past, used a number of different free and low-cost services but each has had its own problems; ranging from poor customer service to profit maximisation once you are looped in. Google Drive, for me, is the best solution I have ever used.

It comes at an annual cost of under £100 for the full version but I see this as an excellent investment in my business. By integrating it with Syncback Pro it works in the background regularly comparing the files on my hard drive to those on the server. If something has been added, Syncback will automatically upload it. If you have deleted any files from your hard drive then Google Drive will keep the deleted files for 30 days so you can recover them if required.

This is my if everything else goes wrong, fail-safe backup accessible anywhere.

So, my music is backed up securely in many ways to ensure total data security. I have one complete database stored in the following ways:

Transportation external hard drive

Main PC C drive

External hard drive connected to my main PC

Evernote

Google Drive

No system is ever 100% foolproof, but I reckon my system is as close to it as it can be. I can be pretty much certain that I will never lose my music collection.

Finally

The post I read about the kit being stolen showed the complete disregard this particular DJ had for his livelihood, perhaps not by design but certainly at least through oversight. Not only was every copy of his music collection stolen, but also some pretty serious kit went missing. One of my initial thoughts on this was why leave it in a car? It only takes a few minutes to empty the car and your music and kit would be safe. In my business, I use an LWB Hi panel van. This is way more secure than a car with windows waiting to be smashed by an opportunistic thief, but I still empty my van at the end of every gig session. The kit is locked in a secure place between gigs.

Just as a quick addition to this post, I will be covering vehicle security in-depth in a later post. Whilst writing this post my van was broken into with ease! Thankfully, my gear had been unloaded but my golf clubs were taken. At the time of writing the latest info is that the clubs have been recovered but I still have to identify them. GOT THEM BACK, ALL GOOD!

Data security is one thing, physical asset security is also a very serious matter.

If you have any advice or anything to add, please comment below.

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iPad DJ

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Are you an iPad DJ? Would You Ever Use an iPad to Gig, for Real Clients?

I’ve just read a post about the use of iPad apps as a DJ. Not really sure about this as I think there are a number of issues, which can be handled, that make iPad DJing a bit awkward. To iPad DJ or not?

Premier Disco audio bars

With the advent of the new generation of iPads and only one connector used to mean you could only connect a single external device at a time. This included a charger or anything else like a mixer etc. This was obviously a big issue, but recently a new adapter was released to allow more than one connection. This should be OK, but over the years there have been many adapters or converters available for many uses, not the least electrical sockets, which we were later told not to use because they were dangerous.

Hire an experienced Wedding DJ

I am not saying the iPad adapter will ever become dangerous, but I am sure it has a maximum capacity for the amount of current which can be used at any time. In the relatively near future, developers of DJ hardware will release new hardware for the iPad DJ, will the iPad be able to deal with this?

In my business, established in 1979, I started using PC’s in 1998 for events. The first software I used was PCDJ Red. Over the following years, technology has taken a much tighter grip on how I work. I am not behind the times as far as technology is concerned, but always have reservations about technology no matter how good it gets.

Computers, PC’s and Macs, have become vastly much faster and cheaper. Laptops are far more adaptable and powerful than ever.

Improved technology has increased the reliability, and affordability, of computers and laptops, not to mention the iPad. However, they are not infallible! Having used PC’s since 1998 for gigs, I have had very little problems. Usually any problem stems from new software needing additional resources, forcing an upgrade of the’system’.

I used laptops for a couple of these years but resorted back to PC’s. The main problem with a laptop is that it was prone to be knocked. With all the USB leads connected it was a  real lottery whether all would stay in place or not. Additionally, if anything was to go wrong with a laptop it became a nightmare. Personally, I can troubleshoot and repair a PC, but a laptop is another thing altogether. I have replaced laptop screens, hard drives, memory, VGA connectors, and more, but a lot of why a laptop is so small is because most of the important things are part of the motherboard.

Working on laptops can be a real challenge for a business. It is easy to destroy one just by being a little careless and many issues can only be fixed by replacing the motherboard. It is far from easy, unless you are techy, to conduct repairs on a laptop.

PC’s are far easier to maintain. Much more accessible, larger component parts, and most importantly, for me at least, bolt-on PCI boards. Newer versions of these boards are available. The story remains the same, something breaks, unplug it and put a new one in. Reliable and easy maintenance in one.

This brings us to the iPad. There is no doubt that iPad’s have made their mark. Many DJ’s are using them every day with great success. Given some of the points I have made earlier, I doubt the long-term reliability and usability of them. Yes, you can look good, or at least cool by using an iPad. What if something goes wrong? What do you do?

My typical playout system at a gig is a PC. On a shelf beside me is a fast and totally capable laptop with the exact same software and files as my main PC. In my laptop bag is a smaller, older, barebones laptop with exactly the same contents as the PC. The backup laptops are never used for playout as my PC is totally reliable. I prefer it this way, issue free performances every time.

Premier Disco Algorddims DJay Softwre

Will this be said about the iPad in a couple of years. Imagine using one for a few years, with its small size and delicate demeanor. After being dropped a few times, after connecting and disconnection hundreds of times, after using it all day for Facebook or other apps. Do you really think it can hack it? Do as I do and take others as back up, but I bet your iPad will go wrong before my PC does!

Below is a link to the original post I read. It is trendy and cool to use an iPad, but is it the best option?

Have a look at the beat apps to DJ in 2020

Remember, this post contains my opinion on this matter, you may agree or disagree. That is a good thing. Wouldn’t the world of DJ’ing be boring if we were all the same!

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