Would you play a pre-recorded set at a live event…
and mix in live as well?
Nope.
Cheating.
Absolutely not. You couldn’t really call it a “live” event if you did that anyway.
Not a chance man
Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, personally.
Would you go to your day job and not do a damn thing, even when others depended on you completing your work?
Your job as a DJ is to make sure people are having a good time. While they may potentially have a good time to the music you play in your pre-recorded set if you’re lucky, odds are they won’t if you’re consistently doing this. There are different vibes in a club each night, different groups of people, etc. The famous DJs that supposedly play pre-recorded sets accomplish that because all the fish in the EDM world are just happy to “see” famous dude or woman X “supposedly playing.” I’m guessing you don’t have that kind of popularity.
Besides, part of the joy of something like DJing, at least to me, is playing the right song at the right time or discovering new combos of songs and transitions that are really cool. You can’t really do that in a pre-recorded set.
Well, imagine you make it huge
And they request you play this exact setlist
They pay you thousands
Now what do you do?
Never!
what would you do for an hour or whatever? stand there and look at facebook?
i play out because its fun, not because i want to be seen.
LOL thats what I was thinking too.
def not!
but, I was at a festival once, when a certain #1 dj in the world came out, put in cd and left the stage for 1 hr. Idk what happened, but it must have been important lol.
yes! i do it. when? when i’m playing at a club alone all night long.
i arrive at the club. set up my stuff. do a short soundcheck. put in a mixtape. go to the bar. have a few drinks and talk to the staff/manager/friends. once there are people starting to come in i go up to the booth and start doing what i’m payed for.
drinking/high5-ing like a douche/jesus posing/saying no to song requests/flirting with your girlfriend/and maybe some mixing 
Not work with those promoters.
Sure I would but the circumstances would have to be astronomically abnormal (my price would be high).
Yes, in two situations:
-
There is not enough things working to make mixing possible (Traktor bugs & USB-Stick broken, barely impossible to happen but I’m ready for this nightmare).
-
I’m getting a huge amount of money to do so.
Otherwise no, because I don’t want those few DJ-skill-knowing-mutha-fukas whispering to each other that I don’t know how to mix. And because I would get bored to stand there for hours doing nothing.
Sticking to a set list and playing a pre-recorded sets are tw2o different animals. I have been booked at cluybs where they restrict your playlist and do so very hard. They want that same sound every night. It’s the reality of DJ’ing as a job as opposed to an artform.
You have to learn to find a fine balance and take whatever style is handed to you and throw your own twist on it.
#vegas
I do not see any reason why to discuss it. There is even a article on the DJTT website. This was discussed over and over again and absolutely nothing has changed.
I see no problem at all on playing a pre-recorded set. Not all big names do it and there is a lot of “underground” artists that play a pre-recorded set.
The people dancing doesn’t care if you are mixing or not. Only DJ’s and wannabe’s care if the current DJ on deck is playing or not. If the club is full, people are dancing and spending money, the promoter and club owner are happy, why bother? I bet that people would get angrier if you mess up a mixing and engaging on a 4 minute 8 bar loop to mix two tracks.
You could bring up the “We must stand together and fight against these fools”, “we must mix and show them what DJ’ing really is…”. But in the end, it doesn’t really matter ( 
).
You could open up ableton and set the mixing curves along two tracks with your set with it, you can load up Traktor and set up load markers to automate the process of loading tracks (loading on the 1 could save the “mixing” trouble).
Wake up people, it’s what your public says about the party and the songs that you played, not the way you “mixed” that will get everyone pumped about you.
This is the single dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.
How long do you think DJ’ing will last if everyone thought like that??? Clubs would stop hiring DJ’s altogether, and instead of hiring 7 different guys for 7 different nights, they’d have one guy creating sets in Ableton (actually, I’d be available for this gig…) to be played at the different nights.
As soon as the punters start to realise that there is no need for a DJ to stand there waving his arms, they’ll not want/expect to see one there.
You are sorta right. And yet sooo wrong. Live performance is the staple of what DJ’s do. You can play music in many other ways, that is true but then don’t call yourself a DJ - you’re a selektor/producer/performer
Wow. The people who throw events and the people who attend them in your city must be pretty dense.
Here people notice.
I get it guys, it’s not a popular opinion. It’s just a consumer driven thought. Biggest festivals around here get really cramped up when the big names of pre-recorded sets are set
It is really dumb? Or just reality? There’s two names (that I remember) of… “Performers” who hired DJ’s to play for them, while they acted on stage. So, it DOES happen. I bet if you google you can find even more cases of this. So, it is a dumb statement?
And yeah, unfortunately, the real masters of scratching, playing live, creating amazing sets creatively using different styles and techniques aren’t getting booked. The last festival I went for had two stages: one cramped up to see Guetta, Aoki and the sorts, and the other one almost empty seeing some techno artists. It’s not about technique, but music taste. And, EDM main artists tend to play pre-recorded sets. It’s sad, but it’s true.