Over To You: Do You Have Any Experience Of DJing Remotely?

Digital DJ Tips Platinum member Simon wants to know: “Have any of you explored or executed DJing remotely via streaming to a party or a club from another location? I would love to hear your experiences good and bad as regards to reliability, sound quality, and so on.”

Digital DJ Tips says…

The closest I have ever come to this is personally is streaming a set from Moscow using Mixlr to my mum’s kitchen in Manchester while she was cooking! Another (very different) example: Our founder, Phil Morse, remembers seeing a promoter attempt to stream Judge Jules in the early 2000s. They streamed his set live into a club in Manchester from a studio in London and Phil says it was more than a bit iffy from a performance and technical perspective.

However, times have changed and there is more powerful equipment and technology these days. As long as you have a strong internet connection and have a computer powerful enough to stream in HD, there shouldn’t be too an issue… in theory. At Digital DJ Tips, we are currently experimenting with different hardware and a service called Telestream for the purpose of providing live streaming training, which is essentially technologically the same thing.

The practicality of remote streaming in this way does depend on which type of DJ you are though. If you are the type who puts on fire and lighting shows, then it won’t work without you and your fans feeling shortchanged. Likewise, it’s unlikely to work well if you are the type who likes to play in cosy venues, get a genuine vibe going with a small crowd and take them on a journey. So that pretty much covers everyone, right?

Actually not so fast – there are lots of DJs who play gigs in Second Life and other such spaces, and with VR around the corner, who knows what will happen next? It’s certainly an area that has possibilities, although it’s the “one to many” aspect of remote DJing that we think, as we said, is ultimately going to create barriers and friction.

All-in-all, yes, it’s possible and yes, it’s interesting but we have no real experience in this field and As such, we’d be glad to hear of anyone’s experience in remotely streaming a set into a club or other public venue.

So, over to you: Have you ever streamed a set to a party remotely? Which streaming service did you use? Were there any notable issues? Did it work? Let us know in the comments below…