A Calgary company is hoping to make some noise on the canned music front in Vancouver.
Voxbox Studios DJ Skool expanded to the West Coast earlier this year to service a growing market for mobile disc jockeys in Metro Vancouver.
“There are a lot more DJs coming into the marketplace and they can get into the marketplace with very little capital,” said Ed Lee, president of the Vancouver chapter of the Canadian Disc Jockey Association.
Unlike their nightclub counterparts, mobile DJs work venues ranging from weddings and fundraisers to school parties.
Lee said the industry has grown because of easy access to music. While his association has a dozen registered DJ companies, he said it would be difficult to provide an accurate estimate of how many mobile DJs there are in Vancouver because many aren’t “legitimate” businesses.
And that lack of quality control is creating a problem for the industry.
“There are a lot of DJs out there, but they’re not trained properly,” Lee said. “So they’re going out there and training at somebody’s wedding or something like that, which is a little frightening.”
Voxbox, which opened Vancouver’s first mobile DJ training school in March, was started four years ago by David “DJ Damage” Gale, a veteran DJ with 24 years of experience in the business. Voxbox, which has 24 employees and annual revenue from its Calgary operation of around $250,000, offers eight six-week courses that range in price from $350 to $500. It currently has 75 students enrolled in its Calgary studio.
“I thank the [trunk-slammer DJs] for inspiring us to focus on this,” said Gale, Voxbox’s president.
He pointed out that, aside from Voxbox and a few schools that teach people how to mix music, there are virtually no established DJ training businesses in Western Canada.
In addition to classroom instruction, Voxbox Studios sends its students out to apprentice with professional DJs.
But having the technical skills to mix songs is only half of the school’s program.
“We teach the students that there’s a hell of a lot more to the DJ industry than just rockin’ the dance floor,” said Gale.
Learning the mobile DJ industry’s business side is a big part of Voxbox’s curriculum. Gale said his school’s instructors stress the importance of professionalism and customer service.
Gale added that the DJ industry is largely made up of independents who play by their own rules.
But he pointed out that “the people who think they can just drop 500 bucks on a laptop, download a bunch of free music and pre-program a set list, they just don’t get it, and it’s hurting the perception of the industry.”
Gale added that inexperienced and untrained “laptop DJs” have lowered the bar in the industry and forced many trained professional DJs to drop their prices in order to compete.
For example, according to Gale, a trained professional DJ might work seven to eight hours at a show for $250 when he or she should be getting $1,000.
He said that raising the industry’s overall level of professionalism is one of the main reasons he started the DJ school four years ago in Calgary.
Gale believes the same model will work in Vancouver.
While the school thus far has only one student enrolled in its new Vancouver branch, Lee said Gale has been working hard to develop the Vancouver studio as quickly as possible.
“He’s offering something we don’t have out here,” Lee said.
Like Gale, Lee said education, training and standardized business practices are key to the reversing negative public perceptions of the mobile DJ industry and raising its value in the marketplace.
“We now have a light at the end of the tunnel where we can see that there’s a place we can send DJs who want to start in this industry and get proper training.”
Lee said if the school can improve overall DJ quality, other mobile DJs will begin to appreciate the importance of professionalism and training.
“Trunk slammer DJs do things their own way; there’s a lot of ego out there,” Lee said. “But if we can educate the industry, they can get proper training and the general public will have better experiences with DJs than the ones they’ve had in the past.”