Another Nail in the Coffin for Vinyl as DMC Goes Digital

After weeks of “will they, won’t they”, venerable DJ mix organisation DMC has finally announced that it will allow digital DJs into the DMC World DJ Championships, as reported by DJ Shiftee over on the Dubspot blog.

It means that Serato and Traktor Scratch Pro DJs, (for instance) can now show off their turntablism skills using DVS (digital vinyl systems), alongside their traditional vinyl DJ contestants.

Here at Digital DJ Tips, of course, we go one step further, focusing on DJ controllers, gadgets and gizmos that you can throw into a backpack along with a laptop, ditching the decks entirely: We think that DVSes are a half-way house between the old way and where things are inevitably going. (We also think that CDs in any shape or form are just plain unsexy, full-stop – but that’s for another day…)

However, we do appreciate that for easy DJing in some clubs as they stand today, and for certain styles of DJing (including hip-hop, where scratching and turntablism, à la DJ Shiftee, require it) digital vinyl fills a need. Seeing it in DMC is a significant moment in the acceptance of digital DJing as simply the way DJing is done nowadays.

Vinyl is now hard to buy
As DJ Shiftee says, vinyl just doesn’t make sense any more – if you go into a record shop nowadays (good luck in finding one), they probably won’t have what you want on vinyl and if they do, it will cost you a lot of money.

And if you’re just going to buy a digital file online, why do anything with it other than play it with some kind of digital DJing set-up?

Digital DJs are in good company nowadays…
DJ Shiftee also points out that with so many premier-league DJs now digital (he cites Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Baambaataa, A-Trak, DJ Premier, DJ Scratch, Jazzy Jeff, Diplo, Neil Armstrong, Richie Hawtin, Rusko, Craze, Klever, Josh Wink and Carl Cox among others), things have moved way past vinyl.

It’s good to see DMC catching up – now let’s wait and see if they admit controllerism as a category at some point soon. Would love to see someone like Ean Golden performing in that. (Have you seen the classic Ean Golden Guitar Hero live video? No? there’s another chance to see it below…)