Late Bloomer DJs

Train, get your skills up, play gigs. Love what you do and commit to it.

As long as you are breathing and loving music, it is never too late.

I feel a bit strange answering here, since I only have a bit more than half of your life experience but I agree with everyone else – do it! You’ll never find out if it’s the right thing for you if you don’t try. Most of the technical stuff comes with practice and the love for music is what’s important.

And I think your chances for getting gigs are not too bad. It’s all about finding the right niche. Sure, you probably won’t play in a club packed with raging teens, but that shouldn’t be your goal anyway. But if you aim for upper scale bars that host DJs, you seem like the perfect fit. Mature enough to relate to their customers, enthusiastic and with the ability to play a more sophisticated music selection. The market definitely is there and the number of DJs who fit that market is probably very limited.

And then, what could you lose? From a financial point of view, a pair of 1210s is probably worth more if you resell it in a few years and other quality DJ gear also doesn’t lose much value over time if treated nicely. DDJT is probably the wrong site to praise vinyl, but if you already have a collection it would be a shame not to use that resource.
You could lose some time, but what I read from your post, you’d be listening to music anyway, so why not mix it. And I have never heard from anyone who regretted starting to DJ. Some just quit after a few years because priorities in their lives changed but I never heard anyone complain about wasted time or money.

Aaliyah was wrong, man – age isn’t just a number. The good news is that it doesn’t really matter in terms of following your dreams.

It depends entirely on how you define success, though. I didn’t start “DJing” until 37. I’m 41 now – and I have a weekly radio show on NSB Radio that roughly 200 people tune in to. I’d like to play out more (and what Phil said, btw: if you care about this stuff, you’ll never lose your nerves. It’s part of actually caring about it), I’d like to one day do a mix that I’m completely happy with from beginning to end – but I’d consider myself successful in terms of the things I aimed to do when I started playing, which was mostly have a creative outlet for the music nerdness.

The world (and the DJing world, in particular) could use more music lovers playing recorded music for people …

The way I look at it is this: You obviously like listening to music. So why not play around with the music while listening to it (aka dj’ing)?. There’s no pressure, you just load the tracks up on your dj gear instead of your regular hi-fi set.

As for playing in a club: I find it good practice to imagine a packed dancefloor while playing at home. I try to get into that saturday-night vibe and sort of put myself in the position of someone in the crowd. Then I judge if the records I play would make me want to dance. I know it sounds kinda silly, but it works for me!