The DJ Debate: Why Spinning Tracks Isn't a Real Profession
In the glittering world of showbusiness, who pockets the easiest cash? When we talk about "earning," what we really mean is getting paid—and if top names like David Guetta and Calvin Harris can rake in up to $1 million for a single festival set lasting just a couple of hours, the answer seems clear: DJs. Strip it down, and all they're doing for such astronomical sums is competently playing music that someone else actually created. They are skilled labourers, not true artists. In what other field is taking credit for another's brilliance so celebrated?
The Illusion of Skill in a Crowded Room
Ah, but they get people dancing, you might argue. Yet how hard is it to motivate a crowd that has come out specifically to dance, with a fair share already in an altered state? These revellers have invested heavily in having a good time, making it a self-fulfilling prophecy. Given the sheer volume of floor-filling tunes produced over the past six or seven decades, selecting a few that others will tolerate or even enjoy is hardly a monumental feat.
To be clear: this critique of DJs is not a revival of the racist and homophobic "disco sucks" campaign, nor a tired plea for "real music"—whatever that means. There's no disdain for clubs, clubbing, repetitive beats, revelry, dancing, music, or people enjoying themselves. In fact, I respect those who are so passionate about their musical genre that they organise club nights out of love, not as a vanity project. It's the totemic worship of "The DJ" that feels truly bizarre.
The Roots of DJ Adulation
I think I understand where this need stems from. In the early 1990s, dance music was often dismissed as "faceless techno bollocks" by a sneering music press, prompting Rising High Records to repurpose the phrase for a T-shirt. The cult of the DJ appears as a reaction against such genre snobbery.
More importantly, clubbing is a communal act—it's about coming together, and having a human focal point helps. At gigs, that focus is clearly the artist on stage, but in a club, the creators aren't present, so the person operating the record player receives vicarious adulation. All the other individuals who, in small ways, make your evening special—the bar staff, lighting engineer, or cab driver—are overshadowed by the chancer deciding whether to play "I Feel Love" or "One More Time" next. No wonder it goes to their heads.
A Distorted Sense of Worth
At the start of the 2000s, I worked at a dance music magazine for a couple of years. Many regular contributors were DJs, presumably hired on the logic that if they could drop a needle on a spinning record and be praised for it, writing couldn't be too hard. I'll spare you the details, but years of being surrounded by slack-jawed sycophants had left many with a disproportionate sense of their own brilliance.
If anything, that distorted self-worth is worse now than it was then. The queue of celebrities eager for their turn on the decks—think Paris Hilton or Gok Wan—suggests DJing should be seen more as a glorified hobby than a proper job. Don't try to convince me these figures could transfer their "skillsets" to anything challenging. It's proof, if needed, that DJing isn't a real profession—it's time to put the "dancy" back into "redundancy."
