Jay

I’d say possibly one if you feel you need it to relax, but usually just water for me or a Coke if I need some sugar in the set.

If you were considering using CDJs, I’d recommend not getting CDJ1000s. As a controller DJ, I’m guessing that your music is in digital? The CDJ1000 isn’t Rekordbox compatible, which makes life much easier. Maybe try looking at the 350, great for beginners, or the 900, but there is little need to own CDJ2000s as someone making the transition from bedroom to gigs. Good luck!

Hi Peter, good to see you taking steps and asking questions!

As a DJ, you should be looking not just at quality music, but at the quality of said music, or KBPS. Many MP3 rips from YouTube or Soundcloud are only about 128 KBPS, whereas the best MP3 files, ones bought off Beatport and the like are 320 KBPS. I’d encourage you, if you get the chance, to listen to a song at both qualities through the same set of speakers and notice the difference. It might not seem like a huge difference, but if you were to play a lesser quality on a set on massive speakers, say at a club or a live gig, then the difference would be easy to spot by people with an untrained ear.

Starting up as a DJ, I’d recommend getting a Soundcloud account and following artists you like. I’ve found EPs for free download from the legitimate artist on Soundcloud that I had bought years ago, and you’ll also find a lot of remixes and mashups if you search for songs you’d like to DJ with. And almost all of the time, these free downloads are 320 KBPS MP3s.

DJ Vintage is right – it’s better to have 100 golden tracks than 10,000 that will mean nothing in a years time. By carefully selecting each track and loving it to bits, you’ll know it a lot better than some random chart topper from 2009 that had a really good drop.