A DJ is not necessarily needed for the following five reasons.
Reasons to hire a DJ (Not):
- A DJ brings the equipment: – Not needed for silent disco because you’ve rented the equipment from me.
- A DJ supplies the music and the music player – Not needed because you can use your phone and a pre-made Spotify playlist (one device playing music for each of the three transmitters that I send you – maybe 1 phone, 1 laptop, and 1 tablet -each running three different streaming music accounts)
- A DJ decides how loud it should be – Not needed because each headphone wearer has their own volume control to adjust at will.
- A DJ decides what _ONE_ song to play that everyone has to listen to. – Not needed (as much) because you will be playing three different playlists simultaneously and your guests can choose which of those three songs they want to listen to. -Also, because of those three simultaneous choices, human nature chooses the best of the three songs instead of judging the one song.
- The Last reason to hire a DJ is so that they can do announcements. Unfortunately, I have to tell you that even with three DJ’s it can be difficult to do announcements effectively with silent disco. The reason is that unless all three DJ’s announce the same announcement at exactly the same time, guests are probably not listening to the channel that the DJ is announcing on and also, they may not even be wearing their headphones at all when the announcement is made. For that reason, even with live DJ’s silent disco is not a good format to use when announcements must be made.
But remember, without a DJ, You do need to supply music and a music player for each transmitter.-For example: Your phone streaming a Spotify playlist. (Or Apple Music or Tidal or Amazon music or YouTube Red or Pandora or music already on your device) Or your laptop or your tablet or your ipod or your mp3 player. If you are familiar with the premium version of streaming services, they offer really good playlists already made and they make it very easy to create your own playlist. Spotify even offers cross-fading between songs. (in the settings)
Tips to DJ a Silent Disco Party:
Set the source volume while wearing the headphones at 50% volume.
Some dancers want their music louder than you do.
If you set the source volume while your headphones are turned all the way up, your guests can’t make the music any louder in their headphones.
You want to set the source volume with your headphones only half-way up so that your guests will be able to turn up significantly farther than that.
Make sure the source volume is the same on each channel.
You want the source volumes the same on each channel so that dancers don’t have to readjust their volumes when the switch channels.
Set the source volumes while wearing the silent disco headphones.
Switch between all three channels. If one channel is quieter than another, adjust the volume on your phone, tablet, or computer until that channel matches the others.
Don’t split out the channels by genre.
You want to have fun songs from every genre on every channel.
Half the fun of silent disco is switching channels and the social interaction between the dancers trying to get each other to join with them in listening to their favorite song.
If you make each channel predictably different, you split your crowd and rob them of the fun of their interaction between each other.
Use mostly fast, fun and/or singable songs.
There is something about silent disco that makes people want to have fun, jump around, or sing-a-long.
Play songs that are fun, fast, and singable that lend themselves to that type of behavior.
This is not the time to play songs that are serious, sad and/or mid-tempo.
Use as many genres as possible.
This is not a night club atmosphere where you want to stick to just a few genres and keep the beat the same through the whole night.
With silent disco, guests want you to mix up the playlist.
As alluded to above, silent disco is not the place for serious dancers. It is the place for serious fun. The way you achieve that is by playing favorites songs from all over the map.
