Am I truly a DJ?

I’m not the pro here whatsoever, but Rock On Brother!!! That was one kick ass story haha in my opinion there’s nothing wrong with your situation but to each there own right? When the time comes buy your stuff the proper way if you can perhaps, I know all the music I listen to its worth paying for I’d say, they deserve it I love my SHPONGLE!!!!

Although I might be slightly less harsh than Terry, I’d have to agree with him in general terms.

Smart buying is way better than “dumb” downloading. There is no way you can know a 200GB collection intimately. Or play them with any regularity. Or have them prepped correctly. Or have them all in appropriate playlists or … fill in the blanks.

Back in the days, a vinyl 12″ (especially if it was import and/or a special remix) would cost upwards of (today’s equivalent in euros) 20 euro. 1 (ONE!) track!!!! And there was no downloading vinyl. So you listened, listened and listened again and if you weren’t sure, you wouldn’t buy. So everything you DID buy and that DID make it’s way into your record crates, was something you felt really good about playing and playing a lot.
The price of any track is now easily 1/20th of the price of vinyl and as such a modest budget will still get you 20 or more times as much tracks as in the vinyl days.

This is why we say there is no real excuse to NOT pay for tracks you plan on using. I will, occassionally, do a quick download of an album, listen to the tracks on it and either buy a few tracks, the entire album or delete the folder. Mostly I will listen online though, where you can listen to a part of a track before buying it. At many places you can even hear the entire track before purchasing.

If I understand your story correctly, you are also playing out at corporate events. The moment you (or your boss) starts to make money playing music in any (semi)public performance, that music has to be paid for. And if you can’t afford it, then your boss should be buying the music.

Looking at it from a bit more constructive angle, the way to get anywhere as a DJ is to create your own style. Just having everything around and playing whatever people ask for (even as a mobile DJ!) is not gonna make you a career out of it. By consciously chosing what music you want to buy (and play for your audience) you are automatically creating that style. I do not know of any DJ with a filled calendar that got there on the merits of the SIZE of his/her track collection. I have known quite a few DJs back in the day who managed to rock the house with a very small collection, but who just picked winners (this doesn’t always mean chart busters, but tracks that fit into their sets and got the crowd going).

Like Terry, I have been DJ-ing a long time. I arrived at the digital age with over 25.000 tracks on CD, another few thousand in vinyl and some miscellaneous (minidisc, cassettetape and even DAT tape 🙂 ). All of it paid for over the course of 37 years in the game. So, yes, I have a large collection, most of which tracks I haven’t played in YEARS! I am currently starting from scratch and setting up my core collection, which I plan to keep between 1200 and 1500 tracks. The thought of knowing all of these intimately and have them all tagged, beatgridded, cue points and loops set and everything is pretty daunting. I can’t imagine doing that for my entire collection. It is nice to be able to give in to a request if you have it, but I am 100% positive that I can play any event with my core collection and have a happy floor. Even if one or two people had to forego their “favorite” track.

If you plan on being a cook, you don’t go out and steal recipe books, pots and pans and ingredients. If you have little funds, you start with little recipes which need modest ingredients. You can find recipes online for free (DJ vids galore, sites like ours full of useful tips and information), so no worries there.

So, do yourself a favor, change this perception in your head that it is ok (under whatever circumstance) to illegally download and (publicly) use tracks. Find the free or almost free (DJ Pools) tracks, be highly selective about what you buy and learn how to pick the winners that fit your style.

Don’t give up on DJ-ing though, just start tunneling all that passion you clearly have into the right direction.

I can’t leave it at that.

Part of what I do for a living is work with helping children in developing countries (primarily Sudan) to improve their situation and their lives. It is the most rewarding thing I have ever done in my life, but it is a struggle because the world is balanced against them.

It’s really easy for somebody who lives in a developed country to forget this. Even when our lives are hard, they are pretty soft.

If I had to steal to help improve the lives of those kids in Sudan, I would do it in a heartbeat.

Vinesh, don’t focus on labels, don’t focus on what anybody else thinks. Just ask yourself this question:

Is your life better because of this? Has it opened up opportunities for you?

I will, however, say that if it starts to actually improve your financial situation that then you should certainly start going legal.

“due to financial crisis in spite of my passion”

If it takes two years to save up enough to buy a DDJ-SB, which is not a terribly expensive controller, then I can see where shelling out 99 cents (or the local equivalent) for every track is a hardship that cannot be borne.

Now, I will say that I personally believe in spinning free tracks and that this should be a consideration too, but I disagree with you saying that the state of the economy there and his own economic state doesn’t enter into it.

I also would’ve been able to keep my mouth shut about it, but Terry was being a real *censored* about how he responded.

I am using moderator privilege here to close the topic as it is moving far beyond the scope of the OP’s original post/question.

The official position on the blog and here on the forum is that we do not condone, let alone stimulate or applaud downloading illegal music. Obviously we are aware that it happens and it is up to every individual to make the right decision here.

I will leave the discussion on whether or not you are a DJ if you use illegal music up to each individual reader.