Mobile DJ

Mobile disc jockeys (also known as mobile DJs or mobile discos) are disc jockeys that tour with portable sound, lighting, and video systems. They play music for a targeted audience from a collection of pre-recorded music using vinyl records, cassettes, CDs, or digital music formats such as USB flash drives or laptop computers.

Mobile DJs perform at a variety of events including wedding receptions, Bar and Bat Mitzvah receptions, company parties, school dances, anniversaries, and birthday parties. They also perform in public at taverns, nightclubs, and block parties.

Business models for mobile disc jockeys include full-time, part-time, multi-operator, and single-operator companies.

The concept of mobile discos started in the United Kingdom in 1966, when Roger Squire began an entertainment service in North London named "Roger Squire's Mobile Discothèques". The word discothèque is French for "disco". Within two years, Squire had fifteen mobile discothèques performing approximately sixty functions each week. He performed at events attended by celebrities and royalty, at countless college dances, wedding receptions, and all kinds of social events. Over the next few years, many copycat "Mobile Discos" started to emulate his successful formula. During this period, London got its "Swinging London" reputation. Squire later set up a disco equipment supply service that sold disco sound and lighting systems to budding DJs, both in the United Kingdom and abroad.

In the 1980s and 1990s, mobile DJs began to form associations and create professional business networks that evolved into annual trade shows and internet discussion forums. The early 1990s saw the emergence of organized professional trade shows such as the "Mobile Beat Show" in Las Vegas, Nevada, and the "DJ Times Expo" in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Seminars by numerous respected DJs such as John Rozz, Ray "Ray Mar" Martinez, Stacy Zemon, Mark Ferrell, Peter Merry, Randy Bartlett, and Steve Moody have helped DJs to better understand their profession, how to be more professional and to treat being a DJ as a business operation.

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