Those of you interested in hiring a DJ or seeking to provide music to your special occasion, often find yourselves evaluating the budget, value, and reasons of how to pull off a successful and meaningful event. There’s several things to consider, when planning a musical event (i.e. audience, demographic, room size, power, the weather).

With music technology being so much more accessible these days, it pays to know what you’ll be getting when choosing between a music streaming service, your mp3 player, your home speakers, or even a personal microphone. The following list attempts to summarize the advantages of hiring a DJ or essentially using a computer to automatically go through playlists.

Advantages:

• A DJ understands the subtle nuances of what’s hot and what’s not; what should be played and when.
• These are a lot of complex concepts and situations, which would be really hard to program a computer with.
• The human DJ can respond rapidly to changes in the environment and adapt quickly, while computers are much slower at learning.
• Your local DJ is an artist and it would break my heart to see them replaced with a computer.
• A DJ is better equipped to interview and understand a person’s needs.
• A DJ carries the expertise, to provide adequate sound and levels for variety of places. Hearing loss can’t be recovered after all.
• A DJ offers the know-how to install, set up, and utilize any sound system.

Disadvantages:

• DJs sometimes have their own agendas, while many club owners just want to make fans happy.
• The average DJ, while paid too little and generally treated poorly, are very expensive compared to a premium streaming service.
• Humans are unreliable. We get drunk, show up late and sometimes go home with the bartenders. If computers ever do this you should all be really scared. 🙂