I’ve always been a bedroom DJ rather than a professional and always just messed about with gear like a kid with new toys.
However, I’m now considering putting more serious effort into it and begin to play publicly as soon as I’m confident.
The one thing putting me off as a new DJ is the cost of music. True, individual songs from Beatport and iTunes are not particularly expensive per se. However, the issue for new non-gig playing DJs is that songs become outdated within a couple of weeks nowadays. Therefore to refresh a set almost on a monthly basis can become expensive for bedroom and beginner DJs.
For this reason, I’ve been looking into DJ music pools. I’ve currently signed up to Digital DJ Pool for the $1 for 5 days trial, followed by $12 per month if I continue. However, they mostly just have chart/poppy music and remixes of them. A better option seems to be DJ City, but at £60 up front, it’s pretty expensive (even though that does last 3 months).
I’m just wondering if anybody is aware of any hidden gems in terms of music pools that has depth of quality as well as reasonably priced. I do have a Spotify Premium subscription but don’t believe I can download tracks from there in high quality, plus DJ promos and remixes are rarer there.
Anyone got any pointers?
PS: I’ve read the DJTT blog post about music pools but just wondering what others are doing.
I can’t speak to DJ pools, specifically, but I just had to jump in and mention that a hot track is a hot track, no matter how old it is. Don’t give up on those over-2-week-old bangers!
I can speak for myself and say that I love using DJCity as my record pool (although I’ve never tried any other). Its an investment, thats for sure, but one I dont mind spending. I personally play a lot of open format events that require top 40s, remixes, hip hop, and edm, and I always feel prepared at all my gigs.
There is also no limit to your downloads, so if you’re willing to try it for the 3 months, stock up on as much tracks as you can and cancel before it renews. And before you buy it, plan for a mock gig and see if their catalog is diverse enough to provide you with a good track list. They don’t have everything, but they’re pretty dang close, I would highly recommend it.
