Well the way I see most Djs doing this is with pen/paper. Or you run into various situations described on stuffdjshate.com, where the person requesting the song is rude, obnoxious, or intrusive.
I think every DJ should take the occasional request every now and then, I understand it’s the DJ’s job to read the crowd and figure out what works, but it’s arrogant to think you know better than the crowd. Personally, I take requests, but I may not play the song immidiately or at all. To that end, I’m trying to find a technological solution that works better than paper/pen or otherwise intrusive.
I’m not talking about an app that “replaces” the DJ or does the DJ’s work for them in any way. I simply want to change how requests are made, and how DJs receive those requests. That’s pretty much it. It’s still up to the DJ to decide if they want to play the song or not.
The concept of “social participation” – people pulling out their phones and voting for a song doesn’t work, and no one’s really solved this problem. I think something can be built around the hashtag idea, for djs who wish to participate
But I think in general there could be a lot done. Maybe in the future, this system could link with Serato/Traktor/etc and even find the song for you in your library. Just throwing out some ideas, based on what was discussed above.
