Photo: digitaldjtips.com
Photo: digitaldjtips.com

So many DJs start young. High school (and sometimes earlier) is when the bug bites most people. They’ve been watching DJs since they were young, fooling around on turntables and building their dreams of making it big.

But, it’s not all fun and games. As Avicii has just confirmed, DJing is a stressful job that doesn’t even come close to fitting into that 9 to 5 model. That has its good points, though. Working on a different schedule means that, to a certain extent, we can make our own hours, be our own boss. That alone is enough to attract people to DJing.

But, most of us learn at some point in our journeys that the work is not as easy as we might have thought and not always as pleasant as we’d hoped. You have to navigate difficult clients and periods when business seems to dry up. You have to become an expert in so many more fields than you thought you would, like marketing, accounting, promotion… Through it all, one thing is a given: you’re bound to make mistakes.

Wouldn’t it be great to have had a mentor walking that path with you from the get-go?

Joey Santos over at Digital DJ Tips had the same thought. He’s collected wisdom that he wants to dispense to all the young or new DJs out there. Here are his “7 Things I Wish I’d Known.” Let me know if you can suggest any more.