Recently, nearly 8,000 of our 350,000 monthly readers completed the Global Digital DJ Census 2014, the biggest survey of its kind anywhere in the world. Created by Digital DJ Tips and supported by Decksaver, this census gives a unique insight into the state of digital DJing today – as it’s really experienced, by real DJs like you, in well over 200 countries.
Below you’ll find some highlights of the results. Want to know how many DJs use controllers? How many play out (and how often)? How many produce music? What type of music DJs spin? How they mix? How long they’ve been doing it? How old they are, where they’re from? The answers to these and lots more questions are below. Please feel free to add your thought in the comments below; we’d love to hear from you.
Finally, thanks to everyone who took part, and of course to all of our partners who kindly donated prizes to the Mega Giveaway that accompanied the survey (Algoriddim, Allen & Heath, American DJ, Decksaver, Gemini, Hercules, Hercules Stands, Magma, Mixcloud, Mixvibes, Mixed In Key, Native Instruments, Reloop, Serato, UDG, Virtual DJ and Zomo); the winners will be published just as soon as we’ve finished organising all the prizes…
2014 DJ Census Results
Showing just how universal DJing has become as a hobby or career, our audience is pretty evenly spread between the ages of 18 and 44, with a healthy 10% or so getting started early (under 18), and 13% “silver spinners” from 45 upwards still braving the late nights, a quarter of you guys being 55+. We salute you!
Always a curious figure this one, with the overwhelming number of our readers being male (even more so among our survey takers than our website viewers, actually, which may just mean males prefer to fill in surveys!). Well done to our single-digit percentage of female readers, and let’s hope to see more over time. After all, any decent dancefloor has to be somewhere close to 50/50 male/female split, surely?
About half of our readership are or have been married (or as good as 😉 ), the other half being happily single, possibly the better state to be in if DJing takes a hold and you’re out spinning several nights a week…
Again, about half of our readers don’t have or live with children (about 10% of our readers are under 18 themselves of course), the other 40% having kids in their households, with around 1% having five or more! Where do you get the time? (To DJ, not to have kids. I’ll stop there…)
So most of you have a full time or part time job, with roughly 20% owning your own businesses or working for yourselves, including as DJs. Nearly a quarter of you are students, with thankfully very few of you out of work (or unable to work).
No surprises here at DDJT HQ on this one (we have the web analytics from the site to compare to, of course). Most of you are stateside, with us Brits a healthy second place, and Canadians, Germans, Indians (welcome to the party, India, new this last two years), Aussies and South Africans filling out the top 7. We have readers in over 240 countries in total, by the way!
So, roughly one in five readers are new DJs (as in, you’ve been doing it for under a year), with nearly a third of you doing it for under three years. Just over half of you have been at this game for a decent length of time, though – very decent in some cases…
A great split of DJs among the Digital DJ Tips readership when it comes to how often you get to DJ: Nearly half of you get to play out at least every now and then, with a third of you lucky enough to do so regularly. Just over 20% have yet to play in public, though. (Don’t worry, we’re here to help you change that – if you want to, of course…)
Again, we’re proud of how wide our readership is when it comes to the type of DJ you are. Party, mobile/wedding, lounge/bar/pub, club resident, DJ/producer… we can count pretty much the whole spectrum of DJs as our readers. Whatever your style, we are proud and glad to have you as part of the family!
This is a really interesting chart. When it comes to your aspirations, many of you are really happy to be doing this for fun, but even more of you are aiming at becoming DJ/producers, which is great! The dream of landing a club residency and even touring is strong among our readers, too. We are here to hopefully help you reach those dreams. (And if you’re one of the 20% who are happy to be DJing in your bedroom? Well, good for you, too…)
You’re a realistic and open-minded bunch, most of you happy in your DJing but keen to learn more. Fewer and fewer DJs are “converting” to digital nowadays, probably representing the fact that digital DJing is now firmly established. Our 20% of highly proficient DJ readers are more than welcome. (You guys keep us in line, and are kind enough to help everyone else with your wisdom regularly in the comments and forum, too. Thanks!)
Not many of you produce music or play on the radio (or have a web radio show, that bit of the question got cut off in our picture), but nearly a third of you have dabbled in both, and many of you want to, with only 15% not interested in learning to produce music (slightly more for radio, about 25%).
Controllers and laptops truly rule here (it’s the orange bar), with everyone else in a distant minority, with just over 10% of you using CDJs, 10% of you modular laptop DJs (sorry, the bar got cut off; it’s the dark grey one). And iOS/ Android DJing is still tiny compared to laptop.
So what’s not really clear from this chart is the detail: Over 40% of you own some kind of PA system, and over 30% some kind of lighting; about a fifth of you have rented both of these items at some point (nearly half of you have never owned or used any kind of lighting, and the figure for PA gear is just over 35%). Adding to your set-up with pro audio and lights is clearly something that interests lots of you.
Neck and neck between Traktor and Serato (if you add up Serato DJ and Serato Scratch Live / ITCH), with Virtual DJ a respectable third. Traktor DJ has roughly double the users of Algoriddim’s djay among iOS users, and nearly 20% of you use Ableton, which makes sense in light of the production aspirations many of you have.
We love this chart: The vast majority of you are DJs who love to mix but who also like to mix up the genres; our type of DJs! About 20% of you are “specialists”, mixing DJs who stick to one style, and about 15% of you are in the mobile game. Again, great to have you on board, whatever style you prefer!
House in all its varieties, hip hop and pop dominate your music choices, but the more underground dance varieties (bass, techno, and – nowadays – trance) command healthy followings, too. It’s great to see Latin and Caribbean music strong among the smaller styles, too, and of course the special style of lounge/downtempo DJing will always have its aficionados (a full fifth of us).
Assuming everyone answered this question honestly, it’s good to see nearly 80% of readers buying their music legally (or at least, some of it). The 20% left presumably use download pools, with the inevitable handful of filesharers, too. What we haven’t specifically shown you is the store breakdown, but basically it’s dominated by iTunes and Beatport.
Less than half of you have succumbed to the joys of subscription-based music discovery, but you won’t be surprised to hear that Spotify utterly dominates here (again, we haven’t published that chart). Also, you guys absolutely love SoundCloud…
Only around a quarter of you use DJ download pools to get your music. What we haven’t shown you is the breakdown of who uses what pool, but Promo Only, DJCity and Digital DJ Pool are the big names among our readers, we can report.
A “future” question to end with then. (We’ve published the full answers too above, as the chart itself is unclear.) It seems that Pioneer was on the mark with its XDJ-1000 CD-less “CDJ” (half of you liked that idea), and also that built-in screens and computers appeal to you, too, in your controllers. About 30% of you don’t mind ditching the jogs – meaning, I presume, 70% want to keep them right where they are…
Conclusion
Old or young, mobile or DJ/producer, mixing or riding the microphone, and playing practically every type of dance music in all kinds of venues, our readers are a diverse crowd indeed. Overwhelmingly digital-centric (we are called Digital DJ Tips and it is the Global Digital DJ Census, so we shouldn’t be surprised on that one I guess…), you’re also eager to learn and truly open-minded to other DJing styles and gear.
But if we had to narrow it down to one “type” of DJ, our “main” reader is in their 20s or 30s, in the US or UK, uses a controller, has been DJing for a few years, enjoys better their DJ skills, plays out at least occasionally, and wants to get more involved in production too. We hear you: we’ve got your back! You’re shaping what we do and where we’re putting our resources over the next 12 months, and we share an “executive” version of this report with the whole industry too, so your voice is heard far and wide.
And if you didn’t take the survey and want to get your voice heard? Watch out for the Digital DJ Census again around September 2015…
Got a view on anything above? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below!
Phil Morse
