Wedding Digital DJ Failed

[Noxia]

...do the boob slap...

[DJ Nada]

Wedding DJ's are so painful to watch. Why would he even bring that fat girl? The next wedding I go to, I'm going to put the DJ in a triangle choke, hookup my external drive, and turn the bride into a pole dancer.

The sad thing is, most people pay these guys $700+ to do these events. That's borderline fraud.

[photojojo]

Why would he even bring that fat girl?

She wanted some cake?

[Archies'bald]

She wanted some cake?

She wanted to catch the Bridal Bouquet?

Or maybe just eat the Bridal Bouquet?

[wrong chris]

The sad thing is, most people pay these guys $700+ to do these events. That's borderline fraud.

wedding djs are an easy target, but for the sake of playing devil's advocate which i love to do; let's see if the services they provide are worth $700+

Wedding DJs are:

- usually expected to provide the PA system and sometimes lighting which is included in their fee

- expected to fill requests

- expected to have a library of music that covers a very broad spectrum of music that appeals to a way larger demographic, as opposed to a couple genres of dance music that most people don't give a shit about.

- expected to to do shifts which are generally longer than the average club dj slot of 2 hours.

- expected to be an entertainer, even though nobody comes to weddings for the music or to watch the dj. so they embarrass themselves if they try to hard and if they don't try enough they look like they don't want to be there.

- expected to play to one specific audience only onetime (unless divorce lol)
that they may or may not learn how to cater to before the evening is over. not like a club where if they play drumnbass every friday, you know that you have to play drumnbass on friday...

-their gigs are generally seasonal, most people marry in the spring/summer.

- if they mess up, they're not just wrecking some drunk 19 year olds night on the town - they're fucking up an ancient ceremonial tradition that the clients and their family/friends will remember for the rest of their lives.


sounds like a pretty reasonable fee to me man! :P

[DJ Nada]

I accept your challenge Duerr!

Here's why $700 is too much to pay most wedding djs.

1)Some guys show up with a huge booth, CDJs, and boxes of CD's, ginormous speakers, assistant, and whatnot. This is 2010, not 1991. I could fit all the equipment needed to rock a venue in a car trunk. DJ's can't claim providing equipment is a huge cost these days. Laptop, controller, folding table, and Bose L1 could almost fit in 2 suitcases.
If we're talking about lights, that's different. Lights take up lots of space and take time to set up. I'm talking about trusses and a DMX controlled light show though. Most wedding DJ's just set down 2 moonflowers, 4 spots, and call it a night.

2)Requests? So? That's what limewire is for! (J/K never ever dj with stuff off limewire) I don't see that as being a big deal. I've seen DJ contracts where a list of requests is submitted before the event. Plenty of time to go download that stuff, and get a idea of what music you need to be playing.

3)How to get a big library? Get Napster for $14 a month, download the billboard top 100 for the past 20 years, and download some of those variety pop albums and line dance songs. Then download Protected Music Converter and... well, you see where I'm going with that.. After you get all that, sign up for a record pool and you get all the hot new songs automatically!

4)Around here, clubs don't book DJ's for 2 hour slots, they book them for the night and give them a percentage of what the bar makes. But anyway, $700 is a lot to make in 4 hours. Not like they'd have somewhere else to go on a Saturday evening. (I have a pet peeve with DJ's that refuse to play a minute longer than they're getting paid for. What, you have another gig tonight or something?)

5)I think entertainment comes standard, DJ's are entertainment.

6)If you can't figure a crowd out in an hour, especially a crowd that's giving you requests, you suck as a DJ. Oh wait, that's why you're a wedding DJ

7)If they mess up, they already got paid, who cares? I don't know how else to explain all the painful videos on youtube.

8)Most wedding DJ's don't mix or scratch or anything. Some of them just play pre-mixed CD's or pick songs off Itunes. The real reason some people are wedding DJ's is because any self-respecting club wouldn't let them near the booth. They play the chicken dance, cupid shuffle, electric slide, conga, and some random love songs and everyone's happy. An Ipod can do this easily.

9)Here's proof wedding DJ's suck:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zINMeLClCzE <--MUST WATCH!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKMSqvqA8hc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwnL5v-Vsp8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NospIS8mpKo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NYlNQBj1n8


So yeah, there's my Youtube Wedding DJ's suck rant. Funny thing is, I'm going to do a wedding (my first) soon. Then I can critique my excessively pop playlist containing no songs released in the past 5 years.

[BradCee]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKMSqvqA8hc

is that from the same wedding where he did the boob slap?

[DJ Nada]

Yeah, it looks like it. You can see the drum set in the original vid, and she pokes her belly into the frame... I wonder if she got the cake she came there for?