Dealing with a difficult public as a DJ

Dealing with the public can be a little difficult at times; some nights on the decks can be a breeze, while other nights can be a struggle. Especially when you’re sober and everyone around you is drinking, it can be quite a headache to deal with others when we DJs are simply trying to do our jobs in the nightclubs. So, I am going to cover how we can deal with people that can really annoy us at times and how we can also handle ourselves better, and even develop thicker skin as DJs.

Dealing with music requests as the DJ

This is really for those more commercial DJs that play in nightclubs. I am not going to talk about wedding or function DJs because that is a different ball game and I myself have never really been one of those. As an ex-Trance DJ I never really had this dilemma until I made the switch into the more commercial nightclubs, so I like to talk based on personal experience. As a DJ in a commercial nightclub, people will very often ask you to play their requests.

And when I started it drove me mad, because I never ever had to do it as a Trance DJ. Sometimes it came across or at least felt like an insult to a certain degree, depending on how people asked. So, most of the time I always gave into demands, because I wanted to keep the peace when it came to those annoying people forever coming up to the DJ booth. The thing that happened most of the time is that it would destroy any flow of the DJ set, something that I was used to getting into more as a Trancer. 

It also started to kill my passion for playing live because I felt like a jukebox and not a DJ on various nights. So, how did I start to turn it around? Well, there were a few things I started to do to get the public off my case. Sometimes it was a straight-out, “No,” while most of the time I gave out the, “I’ll play it later” or “I don’t have that kind of music” type of response - just enough to get people out of the DJ booth and not too pissed off at the same time. People while drunk can get quite aggressive at times.

You don’t need that around you, plus security can be useless sometimes or at least too late to move people out for you. My point is you do really have to find a happy medium at the end of the day. I have said this before - you should always play a 50/50 ratio, for yourself and the crowd. If it’s all for the crowd all the time, then there is no skill in introducing new music to an audience that is quite literally brainwashed to only like popular music that is played on the radio, and there would be no art form to being a DJ. Or If you just played for yourself you may as well never play in a nightclub, because if you did that then what is the point of it all? The music you play should complement who you are and what your audience are into; if not, than maybe nightclubs aren’t for you.

Dealing with unwanted reactions from the public

As mentioned earlier, people can get quite rude or worse yet aggressive, so how can you handle that? There are really only one or two things you can do, and that’s to either completely ignore them, or politely ask them to leave. If nether works try signaling security for assistance, as you don’t need that type of rubbish going on when you are getting paid to do your job. All that I have mentioned has happened to me, so therefore I write about it. Some nights can feel uncomfortable too, like there is just something in the air that night that makes people feel very agitated, while others can be a breeze with no issues whatsoever.

What do you do when people aren’t dancing?

DJing can be a lot like fishing, and sometimes when people aren’t dancing because you are trying something new does not mean that it can’t be successful later on down the track. You really have to lure people in, especially when it comes to commercial music. I could give them what they want for three songs, then completely throw out something random to test the water and try it out and people would dance to it. This is all because the mood and scene had been set beforehand, therefore they are more likely to dance because I have built momentum. 

If I’d played three songs in a row nobody had of heard before, the likelihood of them walking off or not dancing would be greater. It can be quite strategic in a way, and that’s what I like about being a DJ in Melbourne - it can be a challenge at times or seem impossible to get the people out of the cardboard box mentality of only liking what they know. That’s where you start to develop a style or a way to differentiate yourself from other DJs that just won’t have the balls to experiment and put themselves out there.

Discouragement can come to mind when things don’t pan out the way you would like them to. It’s all a part of the process; nothing really goes to plan, you can’t plan for a perfect DJ set, and even if you did it wouldn’t be fun, because you would already know the end result. It is all about trying new things and almost trying to force the public to expand their taste; it’s not easy, but it will be rewarding when you can pull it off.

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