Hey Jason. Yes, Pioneer can be found in most venues. Not all, mind you, but most. And this is the bigger venues. If you start playing small venues/bars and such, you can find literally everything ever produced. I have been at places with the most horrendous chinese OEM stuff.
Two things to notice. With the price of Pioneer gear, once a venue has committed to buying a setup, they will make it last 10 years plus (15 years if they can keep it running), so there is very little chance in the meantime for others to penetrate that arena. Secondly, it has become a somewhat self-fulfilling prophecy. At some point DJs started asking for Pioneer gear, so venues started to put in Pioneer gear. DJs playing at those venues would start asking for Pioneer gear at other venues they played.
Another thing is, there wasn’t much real competition at the time the Pioneers really took over the booth. Some were good/better at marketing but had lesser quality products, some had better quality products but really nasty marketing. Some of the inventions specific to CD DJ-ing came from other companies (Denon for example), but were picked up by the better marketing company.
Having a lot of contact with the repair guys at my favorite rental company, I can safely say they are less than excited about opening up Pioneer gear, knowing what they will find inside. It’s innards ofter bely it’s price.
In controller land the world looks a lot different. I don’t know of many venues that will have their own controllers, what will happen (most likely imho) is that more clubs will not have a setup of their own at all anymore, just a housemixer to hook up controllers to. DJs will bring their own gear. And there it becomes a personal taste. And there is WAY more competition on the controller market than there ever was on the CDJ market. Also there is much more differentation, depending on your workflow, your favorite software, your budget, you can almost always find a controller to fit YOUR needs. And since you can bring your own gear to venues, there is less and less need for an “industry standard” that everybody knows how to use.
To state that Pioneer is at the top of the controller market and if you can’t afford Pioneer something else is a “next best” option is not correct, imho. They have spent a lot of time catching up lately, embracing Serato as their preferred platform (not surprising with Serato NOT producing their own gear, unlike Native Instruments for example).
However, they are by no means the preferred or standard controller.
I second Staz’s remark about letting go of the Pioneer dogma and focussing what your preferred workflow is, what software fits that workflow best, determine what your budget is and then, and only then, make a shortlist of the controllers that best fit your wish list. You might be surprised what comes out of that.
With over 150! controllers to choose from, fair chance it could be something else than Pioneer, even if you did have the Pioneer budget.
Greetinx.
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