Assembling a DJ Collection

If you're just starting out there are just two big things you need to consider, "what's my budget" and "whom am I playing music for?"

What's my budget?
The number of CDs you purchase depends very much on how often you intend to play, for how long, and what range of audience. If it's just for a couple of hours once a week, you can scrape by with just twenty or so well-chosen albums. Some of the popular nights in Manchester and Leeds centre on a core of about thirty CDs. You may want to budget for ten to twenty CDs to begin with.

It's unusual to find an album where every track's a winner, that would equate to an album rating of 2.0 or over on PP. At a more realistic level, I would search for CDs that have at least four songs with an accessible DJ rating of two. With crude mathematics: 20 albums, two songs from each per session, track duration of four minutes, yields about two and a half hours total playing time.

Where it starts getting expensive is when you want more options. The option to tailor music to any particular night, in any particular mood. With thirty CDs you should be able to keep 70% of your audience happy, going up exponentially to about 150 CDs to keep 90+% dancing away.

Continued investment of effort and money inevitably keeps your music fresh and exciting. A collection should continue to expand as long as you keep playing.

Whom am I playing music for?
If you want a successful event you will need to find a balance that satisfies both your guests and yourself. Here are some considerations:

Play the music the people like, but be sure to set your stall out early on and commit to a specific identity. Your music should say, "This is what THIS night is about", making it easy for your audience to know what to expect. Every new night suffers from a fluid audience at the start before it settles down. Chasing the desires of such a fickle group renders the music unpredictable from session to session and results in a damaging lack of identity.

Play music that you like, because you're the one putting in the time and effort. It will help brand the night. But keep a careful eye on the audience, otherwise you could end up playing to an empty room.

You should be able to identify quite a few of the necessary albums by checking out what music is being played locally and at lessons,. Also, choosing what you like gives you the chance to introduce the locals to what you think is good music. You've got to take risks sometime.