Recently, a friend asked me, "How long do you think you'll be a DJ?" Who knows? I've been a DJ for well over a decade and the playing field for the working DJ becomes sketchier and sketchier by the day. Just this past week, people I know have informed me that they are doing DJ gigs for bar tabs (& no money), being hired without any DJ skills just because of their gender and/or sexual orientation…and then you have to ad in the usual stuff like nepotism, politics and being undercut by hungry low-pay DJs.
While in NYC recently, I saw a young woman "DJ" using iTunes. The bartender wasn't shy about telling me that the young woman was hired because of her good looks and not her DJ skills. "She fits the image of the bar", the bartender said. Did I find this experience disheartening? You bet. The average professional DJ spends at least $500.00 on DJ software and break-out boxes alone (not to mention controllers, turntables, mixers, and C…