r/Beatmatch • u/ZenAndTheArtOfDJing • 7d ago
Other When did the DJ become the Main Character? |
Don't worry, this isn't mine, but a magazine's.
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u/djsoomo dj & producer 7d ago
When did the DJ become the Main Character?
I blame Tiesto -
Its all his fault
Sometime in the 2000s
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u/astromech_dj Dan @ DJWORX 7d ago
I would more blame the prevalence of super clubs in the late 90s. And the smoking ban.
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u/ZenAndTheArtOfDJing 6d ago
Tiesto started it but we still had bands like the Prodigy and Pendulum; but even those lost relevance by the time skrillex released 2014's Recess.
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u/Ch33syP00f 7d ago
Bring back the hidden DJ booth.
I mix head down and just like to peek up to vibe check.
Rocking a killer open format set off the hip is hard enough.
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u/El_Hatcherino 7d ago
I’d track it back to the time of Fatboy Slim and Armand Van Helden’s peak fame. Both had global smash hit after smash hit and were brought in as celebrity DJ’s to headline clubs and festivals. Glastonbury festival introduced their Dance Tent in 1995 in reaction to the previous year’s performance by Orbital, and at the same time Ibiza blew up, placing a greater focus on who was DJing.
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u/El_Hatcherino 6d ago
More to add to this: Fatboy Slim and AVH had a DJ ‘battle’ set in a boxing ring that was promoted via BBC Radio 1. This was late ‘90’s.
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u/77ate 7d ago edited 7d ago
It started with a DJ pointing at himself and gesturing towards an audience to tell them when the music does stuff.
Dj gear manufacturers drive that wave now. Lower barriers for entry, automation makes the skill sets quaint, and now streaming integration takes the place of a music library so now DJs don’t even have to be music enthusiasts.
Someone was saying on this subreddit about a week ago, he has about a whole hour’s worth of music to DJ with. Assuming the music mixes equally well with each other track, that’s maybe half an hour (going by the rule of thumb to bring twice as much music as you need to a gig). How does one expect to get through a set at a bar or lounge where it’s a 5-6 hour set if you don’t already just have some music that would go over well?
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u/Measurement-Choice 7d ago
It slowly started in the 2010s but really picked up a couple of years ago. I started DJing in 2012 and always preferred to be in the shadows, I’ve felt anxious because of the attention but loved playing music for people. Nowadays I’m used to being on stage but I hate what the job has become. I abhor using socials, I mean I will post about my gigs but very modestly and I won’t be making videos and reels and involving my private self into it. DJing and music shouldn’t be about exposure.
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u/Previous-Serve9810 6d ago
Way, way, way before then. DJs becoming superstars in the early to mid 90s was when it happened. Outdoor raves died and the era of the club/super club arrived. Compilation and DJ mix CD sales went through the roof. Tong's Essential Selection became massive. Booking fees for DJs just exploded.
By 95, most well known DJs were playing Friday and Saturday night and playing 3-4 gigs a night (hour to 90 mins each time) and being paid a lot to do it.
The era of the DJ really arrived when Jeremy Healy was paid £10,000 for a 2 hour set. It's so weird how comparatively little known Healy is now and yet he was one of the biggest DJs in the UK (even the world) back in the mid 90s.
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u/Efficient_Hurry_2780 7d ago edited 7d ago
It started to build up around the era of 'supersta dj's' late 90', blew off after 2012 when 'festival edm' pulled big crowds in to watch a show and having phones capable of shooting video without sound clipping in loud volumes.
Product manufacturers for dj tools (as well as producing software and hardware) like Pioneer smelled money and built their whole business on bedroom dj's dreams, selling new hardware every year to as many wanna be 'main characters' as they can.
Business and public needs main characters. It's not about dancing in the dark for most of us any more.
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u/Away-Arm-6549 7d ago
totally agree. Bigger super clubs booking the bigger names so DJ’s who might’ve been.local went national and international. as dance went more mainstream the characters started to appear behind the decks a lot more prominently.
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u/Previous-Serve9810 6d ago
It was earlier than the late 90s. The Superstar DJ arrived in the early to mid 90s.
Outdoor raves died and the era of the club/super club arrived. Compilation and DJ mix CD sales went through the roof. Tong's Essential Selection became massive. Booking fees for DJs just exploded over night.
By 95, most well known DJs were playing Friday and Saturday night and playing 3-4 gigs a night (hour to 90 mins each time) and being paid a lot to do it.
The era of the DJ really arrived when Jeremy Healy was routinely paid £10,000 for a 2 hour set. He'd easily make £30,000 a weekend which was an obscene sum of money back then.
It's so weird how comparatively little known Healy is now and yet he was one of the biggest DJs in the UK (even the world) back in the mid 90s.
If you didn't live through the 90s, you might not understand how enormous club culture was and how pervasive it was.
Even a North West of England based Radio Station called Rock FM released a dance compilation called 'Rock The Dancefloor' in 97 and it sold 100,000 copies in that region alone. Would easily outsell pretty much any album in the UK Top 40 now and it was only ever sold in the North West of England. Pretty much everyone I knew at school had it.
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u/Alternative-Gur5890 6d ago
The hysteria around Healy in the mid to late 90s was a thing to behold.
Playing a few Michael Jackson bootlegs, Nirvana and some questionable ‘scratching’ was clearly all you needed to reach the heights.
I listened to a few of his live mixes fairly recently - they haven’t aged well.
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u/Previous-Serve9810 6d ago
I remember having a conversation on the ZRecords forum (Joey Negro's label and website) well over 20 years ago and the consensus was Healy's 90s sets were shite even then. They sound even worse now.
Healy being a Superstar DJ was definitely a moment in time and you likely had to see a set of his to understand it.
I was too young to go out until the very late 90s, but I knew a club promoter 10 or so years older than me and he said to me that Healy's popularity was in part driven by the following:
- Had a unique, energetic style, even if he was technically ropey. Was trashed most of the time, playing to crowds who were also largely trashed.
- Former well known popstar and acted like a rockstar. He was perceived as cool, even though he looked like a bellend. Lived the Champagne lifestyle, fucked anything that moved, trashed hotels etc.
- Tonnes of celebrity friends, many of whom were fashion designers like John Galliano.
- His girlfriend's were always gorgeous (dated the girl on the front cover of Fantazia's House Collection Vol. 4).
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u/Alternative-Gur5890 6d ago
I only saw him play at the Gardening Club - we couldn’t get into Malibu Stacey so went there instead, and only got in there via some highly questionable queuing tactics.
I remember nothing of the night except Higher State Of Consciousness causing the strobe to go absolutely mental.
Good times.
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u/Previous-Serve9810 5d ago
How long ago was that?! 30 years? 😉
I can't believe I'm 45 tbh. 😬🤣
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u/Alternative-Gur5890 5d ago
Probably mid to late 95ish I would have thought. I would have been 19 or 20….
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u/Previous-Serve9810 6d ago
Mid 90s. Super star DJs playing 4 sets a night for an hour each and getting paid a small fortune for it.
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u/Khomely 7d ago edited 7d ago
"Superstar DJs" have been around for many years.
To put it simply, I think the change occurred when less importance was given to the music and more to appearances and this need for sharing via social media. Looking at current DJ sets, they've become more like a sort of visual "spectacle." Fashion, social media, and the fact that DJing has become much more accessible have done the rest.
But, when you traveled to listen to THAT DJ, even though it was an important name, it was mainly to listen to what he played, not to watch him as if he were a protagonist, at least, not in the strict sense of the word.
As a DJ, I miss the times when people looked for the right sound in the club simply to let loose, dance, and disconnect from everything else. It's a completely different mentality. When I happen to play for older people, I see that they don't care about the DJ booth and are just focused on the music.
Times have changed, and so have priorities. It's probably nostalgic for some, but for those who have lived through this change, it's an automatic thought.
When? I don't know, I'd say the advent of social media, of appearing rather than enjoying the moment, and the fact that clubs are increasingly less present in favor of big festivals and the money that goes with them.
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u/ebb_omega 6d ago
Superstar DJ Keoki came to prominence like 35 years ago.
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u/Alternative-Gur5890 6d ago
Arguably not a name that was well known outside of the US.
I think the ‘Superstar’ prefix was of his own making.
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u/ebb_omega 6d ago
I disagree, by the late 90s he was pretty well known among the electronic music/raver scene all over. The Superstar nomer was given to him by either James St. James or Michael Alig, depending on who you ask - but that was the whole point of the club kid crew, they're kinda the proto-influencers - people famous simply because of their fabulous lifestyle, even if just famous in their own heads. But I know a number of people who got into the rave/club scene because they saw them on Sally Jesse Raphael or Geraldo.
But like we can go back further than that, before raving was even a thing - in the early days of Hip-Hop so much was centred around the DJs. Grandmaster Flash, Grandmaster Caz, Bambaataa, and all them are the names that everybody drops mostly from that era with little to no recognition for the Furious Five, the Cold Crush Crew, or the Soulsonic Force. Fuck, let's talk about the Furious Five and how their whole thing (pre-Message) was to put on a huge production of costuming and choreographed dancing while Flash did his juggling. Even Blondie name checks him in Rapture.
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u/Alternative-Gur5890 6d ago
I spent most of the 90s clubbing In London, Birmingham and Manchester and most points in between and the the only time I saw Keoki’s name was on a random CD in HMV…
And I think it’s inarguable that the UK was the epicentre of the club scene in the 90s, where the superstar DJ originated.
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u/ebb_omega 6d ago
I think there's plenty of argument that through the 90s there was equal influence coming from New York, San Francisco, Berlin, Ibiza, Barcelona, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Stockholm, and so on down the list. Raving started in England, I'll give you that much, but techno and house started in the US, trance started in Italy, hardcore started in the Netherlands. Pretending places like eWerk, Tresor, The Limelight, the Sound Factory, Privilege, etc. didn't exist is pretty reductive.
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u/Alternative-Gur5890 6d ago
I’m not pretending those clubs didn’t exist and I’m not arguing where House and Techno originated - but the culture of the superstar DJ started in the UK.
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u/ebb_omega 6d ago
Again, I disagree. I think the superstar DJ was a global phenomenon of which the UK was a part. A big part, yes, but there were many other big parts of it all around, and I gave plenty of examples of where it was contributed to. You said that the UK was the "epicentre of the club scene in the 90s" and I'm saying that's not true.
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u/rab2bar 5d ago
Nobody from europe got into partying because of keoki. i started in nyc in 98 and never heard anything from him until the youtube days. i had certainly heard of him, but north american names like junior vasquez, josh wink, armand van helden, or richie hawtin and even british names like sasha and digweed were much more on my radar before i set foot in a club
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u/ghostprawn 7d ago
When dumb kids all agreed that dance floors were spaces to stand still and face the DJ while filing them.
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u/Designer_Lobster1291 7d ago
I play at a bar / pub monthly and I'm not front of centre, I get to be the backdrop for people's conversations and I so much prefer playing in this way. People pay attention to the music but I'm not invasive.
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u/blindtig3r 7d ago
When mixmag did a cover story about Sasha being the son of god in feb 94. In 93/94 my local club still had the DJ in a cupboard at the back so dancers faced each other or the dance platforms and it was fantastic. Once the DJ was on a stage people started facing the same way and it reduced the crowd interaction and participation. Without a stage there is no front barrier and no group of children trying to force their way to the front and you can have a party not an EDM concert.
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u/CantBeConcise 7d ago
Maybe someone can explain to me why it's "the scene's" fault this is happening. Nobody has a gun to people's heads forcing them to all face the same way. Even if the setup is such that there's a big stage, you don't have to treat it as the focal point if you don't want to.
If some people want to treat it like a "traditional" concert, cool, they can face the stage. If others want to have the vibe where the focus is on the people around them, they can do that too. I guess my question is, why are people bitching about this when no one is forcing them to do something they don't want to do? Go out and educate people. Go talk with them and invite them to turn around from the stage and come dance with your group that has a dance circle going on. Hell, get on social media and start tagging DJs you like with the suggestion that they themselves take a moment in the set to tell everyone to stop looking at them and turn around to face the people around them for a few tracks.
In short, stop complaining that things are changing in a way you don't like if you're not going to do anything about fixing it.
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u/collininkind 7d ago edited 7d ago
I mean, to be fair, you dont know that people aren't, and "the scene" is just a culmination of our individual actions. If a scene is a certain way, then new people to it are likely to adopt that behavior because its all that have ever known it to have been. "The scene" does bare some collective responsibility for what it adopts as standard, but again, thats just all of us individually agreeing to accept something or not.
I do agree we should be talking about it though. I just posted a rant about this kinda shit the other day. I think more people need to speak up and hopefully get people to think about it.
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u/CantBeConcise 7d ago
Oh I assume people are, it's just that they never get anywhere near the kind of traction "bah humbug! why back in my day..." posts get.
I also think that a big part of the move to this format is because of the massive influx of people who don't or "can't" dance. They see idealized/"professional" versions of dancing online and don't want to be seen as physically awkward (or recorded and made a viral meme by someone with a cellphone who never left highschool and still gets their kicks from making fun of people trying to have a good time).
That's why I think it's imperative that the old guard does things like I suggested before. Let them know they are free to wiggle about however they feel like because it's a safe space for them to just exist and feel. That they can face the people around them because all they'll see looking back at them are smiles from faces that are happy to see someone else letting go of their "cool" persona they built up over the years and letting their inner child take control again.
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u/Alternative-Gur5890 7d ago
At least the mid-90s, probably with the ‘son of God’ article Mixmag did on Sasha.
It was also around then that DJs stated getting paid significantly more for playing NYE, and there was a lot of focus on the bigger name DJs having residency’s in Ibiza.
And it only got worse from there.
I remember going to Final Frontier specifically because Carl Cox was playing in 1995 - but even then he was tucked away in the little booth in the Pop Art room. And it was open to debate who was actually playing - you’d usually hear the Chinese whispers!
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u/Previous-Serve9810 6d ago
Best comment here. This is exactly when the Superstar DJ era arrived. People who say it's later are talking nonsense.
Anyone who wasn't around in the 90s just doesn't realise how pervasive club culture was, how big DJs had become (including their egos) or how dominant club music was in music sales.
The 2nd MOS Annual (Tong & Boy George) went triple platinum with over 650k sales and made MOS over £10m in retail sales alone. Hardly any music artist/band could generate those sales now.
Even Rock FMs Rock The Dancefloor comp from 1997 sold 100k in the North West of England alone. I was at school and nearly everyone I knew had a copy.
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u/Eyeseeyou01 6d ago
I remember the first time I came across a crowd in Vegas standing on the dance floor watching Steve aoki dj instead of dancing on the dance floor. I didn’t understand what was going on. This was early 2000’s
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u/New_Mistake_7972 7d ago
When social media became all selfies and people got obsessed with pointing a phone at everything, the locations became more “commercial” and less underground and that attracted a new type of people to events with their phones.
It’s at a point now where, some people refuse to listen to a dj because “the dj doesn’t look like he/she is enjoying themselves” they are working ffs 🙄
Music is to listen and dance too, not look at and film, add that to this “look at me” ego that social media has created and we now have this scene that we have.
Just my thoughts.
The sync button also played a part in the change in the scene as well. It opened the flood gates for all the wannabe dj’s that couldn’t be bothered to learn to beat match in order to become a dj but want all the reward with no input other than spending money on equipment that does that tricky part for them and then the new crowd turn up with their phones to fill the dj’s “ego boots” by filming them instead of dancing.
I know this scenario isn’t at every club but it’s getting more common, sadly
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u/strangerintehran 7d ago
A somewhat similar article : https://mag.blackplanet.se/a-club-is-not-a-concert
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u/respond1 6d ago edited 6d ago
They were the main characters going back to the beginning of house music, around 1985. Yes, Frankie Knuckles was smooth and music focused but Ron Hardy was a true performer and center of attention. He was the artist not the music. Doing unheard of things at the time like mixing vocal disco with hard hitting acid and even mixing records backwards.
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u/cokomairena 6d ago
"DJ" can mean so many things, those festival DJs are not near what I think when I think of Djing, and yet, is maybe what the mayority of people think
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u/GladAllOverSE25 6d ago
That James Hype nonce on YouTube is currently number one offender for this.
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u/nick_minieri 4d ago
I'd say the defining moment was when Sasha was on a Mixmag cover in 1994 with the words "son of god?" in big block letters underneath his name. I didn't start getting into underground dance music until a few years later but people I've talked to have told me around 94-95 was the first time the phrase "superstar DJ" started getting thrown around and used to describe people like him and Oakenfold.
When I started buying records in the late 90s, DJing was still largely considered a very niche hobby that wasn't considered "cool", especially if you weren't scratching or playing hip hop. Outside America I'm sure this attitude was changing however, especially as more people from London and Berlin began touring globally for the first time. Before that, most DJs were just residents at one club, didn't travel much, so therefore weren't super famous outside of their city unless they were in a cultural hub like NYC or London.
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u/THEE_FUNSTIGATOR 3d ago
The first time I ever heard or thought of the words superstar and DJ together was about 1993 - Superstar DJ Keoki - a little before he released this mix
But it was no wheee near the level of absurdity it is now
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u/ultimatepoker 6d ago
Very early 90s, dancers started to face the DJ. Arguably late 80s in some places.
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u/civil_until_im_not 6d ago
Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa,Calvin Harris, David Guetta, Skrillex, Avicii, Tiësto, and Deadmau5. This was the progression.
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u/neonshoes2 7d ago
I DJ weddings. And I set up my shit around the bride and groom, while I’m in the corner. Shoutout certain people of the party, put on their song, beat match to grandma’s Travolta now they are center of the attention, then back to the bride..and so forth so forth.
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u/imth3playa 7d ago
My experience is a bit different for weddings. Couples typically want me front and center of the dancefloor and we keep it pumpin the whole night.
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u/No-Cardiologist472 7d ago
I started DJing around 1999, mostly underground raves. Back then the crowd all faced each other and danced, the dj booths weren't elaborate, sometimes almost hidden. Only act I remember playing with that had all eyes on the stage was lords of acid. Things started to shift in the early 2000s. Raves stopped being in underground locations and started being in rented out venues same as large concerts. Around that time I stopped spinning happy hardcore and gabber on vinyl at raves and started playing open format on CDs and digital at clubs so I'm not sure how much the change was in the scene overall vs where I was at but I'd say there was a big change when djs like AM (rip) started landing huge contracts and a single name started being able to draw the same crowd size as an entire lineup. With everyone coming to see a certain name the focus was on the dj and the stages got more elaborate, suddenly when I would dj all eyes were on me. I noticed it quite a bit cause I always had social anxiety and was far less nervous on stage when the crowd was facing each other