What kind of DJ are you?

As far back as I can remember, I wanted to be a Pro DJ - and I remember just how that felt.

I wanted so badly to be the one who was up there behind the decks. In charge, busy, approachable but also slightly intimidating (if I'm honest) – because that was the way successful DJs made me feel.

I don't expect you're like me at all, but between ourselves, I was actually a little shy and awkward when I was in my teens. Even in my early twenties, I still found it much easier to deal with parties and other social gatherings if I had something to do. Well for me, that "something" was spinning the discs.

I had a deep love of music, of course. In my case, exclusively reggae for most of my youth (I was SO fortunate to be young during the greatest period of reggae music – 1976-79 – when true geniuses like Coxsone Dodd, Lee Perry and Augustus Pablo were churning out deeply experimental, innovative and hauntingly beautiful new tunes), and then I "branched out" into R&B!

What I've learned is that there are two sorts of DJs that make it.

Firstly, "generalist" DJs who play a range of popular, mainstream tunes (for their target community/audience/age-group) and can always find work through advertising and word-of-mouth at kids' parties, community events and so on.

Secondly, there are DJs who work within a specific musical style, only playing tunes from within a particular niche. As far as this comparison goes, I'm towards the specialist or niche end of the market - but nowhere near the extreme of that end! I still play reggae (the wholesome kind, not anything with nasty, homophobic lyrics) and R&B – but that only makes me slightly niche. Real niche DJs go so deep into a niche they ONLY play a sub-sub-genre.

Recently I cam across a fantastic audio program by a man called Earl Nightingale. This is old-time stuff – I don't know when it was recorded, but decades ago, believe me. In this program Earl Nightingale (great name for a DJ… and he was a radio announcer!) talks about two kinds of people: river people and goal people. He says river people have a calling – they just want to spend their lives immersed in the activity they love. (It's the idea of immersion that makes him call them river people.) Musicians, artists, religious community leaders are all examples of river people.

Well, some niche DJs – most what I would call extreme niche DJs – are like this. They would rather play the music they love and get paid $100 than play a wider variety of music and get paid $200. Is that you? If you recognise yourself as a river person, then accept it, clarify it and build your DJ career round it. Some of the most commercially successful DJs are river people. They can be very successful commercially by becoming identified with a style of music, and often define musical communities of shared interest or taste - which is the most powerful marketing achievement you can have as a DJ.

Just accept, if you are a river person – a deep niche DJ – that you might find that it takes longer to break through as a DJ than someone who (as you probably see it) compromises their musical taste to get work and renown.

Turning to goal people or generalist DJs – well, don't feel left out! After all, I'm only a slight niche DJ myself: For a long time I only listened to reggae music - and strictly the roots variety for many years, at that! Then I broadened out an began to appreciate, and play for my customers, R&B!).

Generalist DJs do us all a favour by being most people's first experience of the art of DJing. They provide a great service to the communities they work in, and invest huge amounts of money and time in keeping their selection of music up-to-date so that they can do their job well.

Now if you're a goal person - in other words, if one of the reasons you're involved in the DJ business is because it is a business that can be very rewarding financially - then you can probably see that a more generalist approach is more compatible with commercial ambitions. I wanted to be The DJ – but I wanted to earn a great income, too – and I'm not so dedicated to the music I love that I want to set up rules about only playing this or that type of song.

So within the broad genres of R&B and reggae I cater for my audiences. Part niche, part generalist. There's a fair chance that this will describe you too.

When you've worked out exactly where you stand on this subject, you will be perfectly positioned to make plans about the other things you need to address in order to become a successful DJ. Like marketing, programming – and, most importantly of all for new DJs, getting the best possible value for money from your equipment budget.

Well, working out whether you're a goal DJ or a river DJ really makes a difference because it affects the types of equipment you should be considering.

You can learn to select equipment that works for you, and that works well with all the other items you select, but you need to take this knowledge with you into the marketplace – don't just believe every marketing message you come across. If you get the right information about equipment, you can build your DJ career right from day one.

Or as Earl Nightingale put it: "The big thing is that you know what you want".