Many mobile jocks who have made the transition to DJing on PC describe the benefits in a personal way: easier load-in and load-out makes for fewer trips to the chiropractor, no more frantic rushing back to the console to change a CD, etc. But what about the client? How does PC DJing affect them? We asked several digital DJs how they sell the benefits of this technology as an asset to the people that matter most—customers.

“When I’m talking to clients, I use the word ‘production’ a lot,” says Phil Trau, owner of seven-system Pure Energy Productions in Petaluma, Calif., of which three are PC equipped. “I tell them, ‘We’re able to create production for your event, in advance.’ I explain that with DJ Power, and a wireless remote that I stick in my pocket, it allows me to start, stop, pause and go to the next song on the fly. I can automate my show during certain portions of the night, so it allows me to be out there by myself, and I can line up sets and go out and be interactive, and do coordination things with clients during background music.” But still, does that make sense to an average client?

“It’s been an evolutionary process, when it comes to educating the client,” says Cap Capello, owner of Digital DJ Services in Rexford, N.Y. “To them I refer to CDs as fossils. My prime example is Kenny Rogers’ ‘Through the Years.’ It was released in 1981, and nothing has been done to that song since then. The quality of the CD is equal to the quality of the record. What I do is I re-master all my songs in my collection—13,000 songs, using [Syntrillium’s] Cool Edit Pro.

Says Trau: “I tell the client that the PC allows me to meet with them and build a database of music that they want played, and I can line up my playlist in advance. My pre-programming allows me to coordinate with the other vendors. I’m no longer running back to the mixer because I know the song’s running out. I can line four or five songs up, go out, do a little bit of coordination, go talk to the photographer, check with the bride and groom. I can do all those things knowing that everything is handled for the next 15-20 minutes. When I tell clients about that, they’re usually pretty excited, because as DJs we’re relied upon to be coordinator, facilitator, MC, DJ and wine-pourer.”

Bryan Foley, owner of Bryan Foley Entertainment in Largo, Fla., agrees. “I really don’t sell my equipment, per se, but I do mention that I’m completely automated,” he says. “And clients will ask what that means. I’ll tell them that I’m freed up to be an entertainer, and I don’t have to be a four-minute DJ, meaning every four minutes I don’t have to be behind the booth hitting play on the CD player. It allows me to entertain the crowd, be on the floor and maybe teach a new dance and start it with a remote control. I can be lining up the bridal party and the music mixes seamlessly during the cocktail hour where I don’t have to rush back in and hit play, and there’s no pause in between with the CDs.”

To Foley, who uses DJ Power, the technology sells itself. “When people see it, either during consultation or at a gig, they think it’s cool. And it gets the grooms a lot more interested, too. And that’s not even including video, which I also incorporate into the show, as well as karaoke.”

Trau sometimes prefers to offer his clients a radio station analogy. “I tell them when I worked in radio we would do programming for the day,” he says. “The program directors knew that during certain parts of the day, a certain demographic of people was listening, and they programmed the day around that. I tell clients that at their party we as DJs are programming based on our knowledge of crowds and music flow. I usually just let them know that I’m not replacing my expertise with a computer, but the computer is aiding me in the tedious tasks that we have to do—looking up songs, loading and putting them away. They can usually see the value to that because most clients own a computer and they know how valuable a computer is when balancing a checkbook or doing other tasks. We’re using it as a tool, not a toy, and we tell them that.”

Tim Raley, owner of Georgia’s Kr8shuns Mobile DJ Service, sees things slightly different. He prefers not to hard sell the benefits of PC DJing. “A lot of people are confused by the technology and they think that I’m downloading all my songs,” he says. “Unless they start talking music, then I’ll tell them I have 12,000 songs available at any time. And I tell them I can have any request on in a matter of seconds. With [Visiosonic’s] PCDJ, I press the find feature and load it up and it’s ready to go.

“I do sell them on the fact that the music never skips,” Raley continues. “I tell them no matter how many people are on the wooden dancefloor, the music is never going to skip. I always use the analogy of, ‘How long does it take to take a CD and cue it up?’ It’s 30 seconds to find the CD in my collection, it’s going to take me 5-10 seconds to open the CD drawer, drop the CD in and close it. It’ll take another 5-10 seconds to cue it up. I’ve wasted two minutes. With PC, I take their song and load it up and I’m ready to go motivate the crowd, or I’m ready to go find the photographer and tell him it’s time to cut the cake. I’m not tied down all night long. The autoplay feature, I do tell them about. During cocktail hour I can load up several tracks and it tells me exactly what time I need to be back, and I can walk outside, build the bridal party line up and not have to rely on anybody else. As a single system operator, it’s great.”

Most of the DJs we talked to agreed that the best way to convince a client of the benefits of a PC DJ is for them to see it, first hand.
“I have an office and a shop, and we try to get clients to come in here,” says Trau. “When I get them in here and I show them DJ Power, I ask them to give me requests, and then I’ll show them how I type it in and line it up, and I will show them a couple folders with a playlist for a wedding I have coming up, first dance, dinner music, etc. They look at that and they’re impressed with the level of organization. It especially works when the client has a knowledge of music. I ask them to give me a couple of songs, and I end up having most of them, because I have 50,000 songs. With that alone, they think, ‘Wow, that’s valuable to us because now our guests will have a wider variety of music to choose from.’ If you have a system that you can use as a tool, and you’re not utilizing it in your sales to your clients that this tool is making you a better prospect than your competition, I think you’re wasting the money that you invested in the technology.”

Says Raley: “I still tell clients how much easier it is for me, though. I went straight from vinyl to PC, so I have a lot of CDs right now that have only been spun one time, and every event I was lugging in four crates of records. The difference in load-in and load-out is 20 minutes, and I tell clients that I’ll never pass a booking because I have an appointment with a chiropractor.”