You bring 50,000 songs.... but what if

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I have several cases of CDs that I take to all weddings; Misc, Current, Wedding (assorted styles, including Light Jazz, Movie Soundtracks). If I know that I'm going to be doing a lot of Country or Beach & Shag, or Latin music, then I bring one more case with that style of music; size of case depends on style of music or combination.
Now, since I am also 50% digital I am leaving more and more CDs at home. I still bring the Misc and current to all events. When I do Sweet Sixteen parties, I bring the mini-current music CD case and the Misc case. I hardly ever use the Misc cd's because quite a few artists are on the Laptop. However, not all of my older Current music is on Laptop.

Goal is to have only one music case, Current music, as backup for External HD and Computer.
 
Great stories in this thread.

I remember some DJ's in the 80's lugging amps that were so heavy, you had to have two guys roll that thing on a dolly.
Coffins were home made or custom made from a wood shop.

Damn DJ's have it easy now.
 
DJ JohnThe1 said:
Great stories in this thread.

I remember some DJ's in the 80's lugging amps that were so heavy, you had to have two guys roll that thing on a dolly.
Coffins were home made or custom made from a wood shop.

Damn DJ's have it easy now.
Click to expand...

Roadies or a buddy that would work for beer was almost a necessity for a lot of DJs because of the weight and bulkiness of most gear back then. Now we have amps at 20 lbs and many still find it too heavy, hence the birth of the IPR'S and new XLS at less than 12 lbs.
 
DJ JohnThe1 said:
Great stories in this thread.

Coffins were home made or custom made from a wood shop.

Damn DJ's have it easy now.
Click to expand...

Ha Ha.."Back in the day" When i worked for multi-ops, We use to have "Pizza Parties" at the shop..(or the guys garage)

We got some pizza and a couple of sodas..In return had to build cases, fix casters, change out latches, All of the system up keep was done this way.

We even built a pair of scoops one time..

I think back to when i started...(In the cassette days) And me being me, I guess i would have liked the vinyl days....Nothing wrong with a good workout!
 
ok look at it this way...

How many of you can tell anyone here on how many songs can be played at a say 6x hour show - it no matter a wedding, dance, engagement etc

is it 100 songs ?
is it 500 songs ?
is it 75 songs ?

you guys have to look at it in a playing time frame

so how many songs do you really need to have if you only have to play say (75) songs in a 6x hour period

even whats shown here is way too many ( all various artist cds) each case holds 100 CDS
cd-collection1-640x480.jpg


have fun guys
 
Those of you saying you only need 1,000 songs to play a show.....

Obviously don't work in bars very often...
My diverse music library continues to separate me from the masses.

I do not go out expecting to play "only hits" I encourage people to dig a little
deeper in there minds. I like the occasional "B" side track.

If i was stuck playing just the "hits" i might as well go home and turn the juke box back on.
 
Back in the day when I was young and my hair was black, there was only 3 or 4 radio stations to listen to and 3 TV stations to watch, so everyone listened to and watched the same thing. There wasn't as many music choices out there as there is now. Today, as has been already been pointed out, everyone is used to hearing what THEY want to hear 24/7.

I remember using turntables with 33s and 45s. If it was outside, you had concerns with the sun warping your records or the wind blowing the tonearm (sometimes even the penny taped on top didn't help). If it was inside, people dancing would cause the floor to bounce and the needle to skip.

I've done my share of events with my Teac reel to reel. Cassettes and cassette singles were a huge improvement. Then came CDs, and now computers. Now SD cards, dongles, and thumbdrives with huge memories on them are becoming commonplace, the next 10-15 years should be exciting.
 
DJBob said:
I remember using turntables with 33s and 45s. If it was outside, you had concerns with the sun warping your records or the wind blowing the tonearm (sometimes even the penny taped on top didn't help). If it was inside, people dancing would cause the floor to bounce and the needle to skip.
Click to expand...


No wonder, ya cheap bastard... :sqlaugh: :rofl:


I used a nickel -- no expense spared in my setup... :D
 
When I had just CD cases, I would carry an adjustable kind of lift to keep the table level and not bending from the weight.

And now, in December I get a complaint from a guest who asked for a real obscure song and demanded I go on-line and get it. When I told her my laptops have never been on-line, she flat out told me I was a liar.

Yes, times have changed.
 
DJ JohnThe1 said:
Great stories in this thread.

I remember some DJ's in the 80's lugging amps that were so heavy, you had to have two guys roll that thing on a dolly.
Coffins were home made or custom made from a wood shop.

Damn DJ's have it easy now.
Click to expand...

Sounds like my old amp rack. 2 hafler 500's mono + 2 hafler 220's mono in 1 Rack. add in the Eq's & processing that puppy weighed a few hundred pounds.
 
Its why I narrow the chance for a client to complain as I likely have almost any fun party celebration type hit in multiples of genres including ethnic music. I rarely if ever get challenged with any request. Most peoples hard drives have more music choices on it than many here have mentioned they carry. No matter what format you have that makes it easy for those to think gee maybe next time we should just hook up my Ipod I have 5 times as much as most DJs who think they know it all.

With a hard drive there is no excuse to bring everything. Fortunately I no longer have to bring 8 crates of vinyl or the wall of CDs I used to bring.
 
Precisionpower said:
Those of you saying you only need 1,000 songs to play a show.....

Obviously don't work in bars very often...
My diverse music library continues to separate me from the masses.

I do not go out expecting to play "only hits" I encourage people to dig a little
deeper in there minds. I like the occasional "B" side track.

If i was stuck playing just the "hits" i might as well go home and turn the juke box back on.
Click to expand...

Kinda on the same track as you..I like having a large variety of songs just in case that one song will create some special memories.

Yea, yea, I play 20-30 same songs from event to event, but the music is always changing and there are always new hits around the corner that seems "everyone" wants to hear.

When we dj at bars, we are becoming really popular for playing requests...even if they are off the wall. We also don't wait an hour to play your song, you get it right away. We want to keep you at the bar all night, not send you away by not playing the music they want to hear that night.
 
dunlopj said:
When I had just CD cases, I would carry an adjustable kind of lift to keep the table level and not bending from the weight.

And now, in December I get a complaint from a guest who asked for a real obscure song and demanded I go on-line and get it. When I told her my laptops have never been on-line, she flat out told me I was a liar.

Yes, times have changed.
Click to expand...

..And that's when I ask her politely to hand over her keys and tell the bar tender to cut her off... :sqwink:
 
Much to Dennis' point, the absurdity of these large libraries for the average wedding dj can be easily explained this way, and the math really does drive it home nicely:

"And look at it this way: If you take any professional wedding dj and list all of the songs they play at every wedding they do for a year, you will find that not one dj will ever even play 5000 unique/different individual songs during that time. They just CAN'T! Even assuming the best-case scenario of 80 songs played per-reception, to play 5000 songs, the dj would have to do at least 62 weddings that year without repeating a SINGLE SONG ONCE! So really... 100,000+ songs? When you look at it this way, it almost becomes comical!"

(From the FAQ on my site)
 
STG, the way I explain it to my clients is that I bring 4 days solid of music before we would have a repeat. And I also say that 90% of that 4 days is stuff that most people know and love. Again, no way in hell would I be doing that with vinyl.

I don't use iTunes, but iTunes tells you how many hours of music you have.
 
Yeah, thats a good approach. I do that with my Big Band selection on my site....

"Just how much of a selection from these genres and eras do we have? To give you an idea, we could play well over 18 straight hours of instrumental big band/swing music alone without repeating a single selection... and that does not include our popular/vocal standards from the 20's through the 50's. And our library is always growing!"

I say this to drive home that I do have more of it than anyone else in NorCal, and this alone has gotten me several gigs. When asked about Big Band, most guys will say "oh yeah I've got you covered" when all they have are a few greatest hits of big band compilations with ellington/basie/glenn miller that *may* be enough to get them through dinner. What makes me laugh even harder is when a dj would would offer up Buble when asked about these musical genres.
 
I've never brouht 50,000 songs and never will.

When I was all vinyl it was about 1,000 songs carefully picked for the kind of event I was doing. When I was mostly weddings I used a cassette library to add depth to my request ability without having to bring records I might not play.

The magic number was 4,500. It was at that number that I could hit 90% of all requests I received. For years, I managed my library by adding new selections while removing older songs that non one was asking for - always staying right around 4,500

When everything was finally avaliable on CD I was able too ditch the cassettes and manage the CDs the same way staying at about 5,000 songs.

Today my hard drive lists about 15,000 tracks, and managing the music or eliminating duplicates would be a waste of time since there's no benefit in space or weight to having fewer files. So, while I may have many more songs - a lot of them are just wasting magnetic space in exchange for saving me lots of time.
 
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