DJs tend to get a bad wrap when it comes to professionalism. Many people feel that DJing is no more than a hobby that immature people gravitate to when trying to maintain their youth vicariously through music. For some cheap djs, that may be true. But for true entertainment professionals, this is our livelyhood, our bread and butter, and we eat, drink, sleep, and breathe what we do. Which is why this past Friday, I was the go to DJ for a local school.
For the second time in 2 years, I was just sitting down to dinner with my family when a call came in. It was one of my colleagues who learned that one of our competitors had not called or shown up to perform a ring dance for a local high school. My first thought was, let’s roll and I made my way to the venue. But on the way there, I began to think, “Why does this keep happening? How common is this? and lastly, why didn’t they call me in the first place?” The answer for all 3 is the same. Money.
Many schools as of late have been sending dances and social activities down the drain. The committees are told, “Find the lowest bidder and sell as many tickets as possible.” This is unfortunate because more times than not, the schools end up in a situation like last Friday. They paid a small fee for a novice DJ to entertain the student body and end up with Un-Edited music, under-powered audio equipment, or worse, no DJ at all.
Like anything else, you get what you pay for. Choose the wrong entertainment for your school and you will have low turnout, less tickets sold and the administration will be reluctant to do it again. But if you hire a professional, you will be a hero
