What does it take to be a vinyl record DJ

The News, Portsmouth

Southsea DJ, Sam Foot talks about all things vinyl, what it takes to be a  vinyl DJ and the future of vinyl records

Transcript

00:00 [music]

00:10 My name's Sam and I DJ under the name of Coco Fono

00:16 and we're in my front room/home studio with all my lovely records

00:23 and I've been collecting vinyl records since at least when I was about 9 years old I think

00:32 and never stopped really.

00:36 It is a bit of an obsession and some people say it is an addiction

00:40 which is probably pretty close to the truth

00:43 and yeah it is becoming more and more for the privileged I think

00:50 and I'm buying less now because buying new stuff is expensive

00:56 and if you're DJing and expect to get paid for it

01:00 as an example a new 12" record could be up to £14

01:06 of which if you're beat mixing you'll only play maybe 3 minutes of

01:11 so over 2 hours at 14 minutes for every 3 minutes

01:16 you're not going to get paid that, you're not going to recoup that money

01:20 so again it's kind of a privileged thing.

01:23 More of a passion project.

01:24 More of a passion project for a lot of people

01:28 or you just choose to not have other things like a car or a house I think.

01:35 The digital side you can have a controller and you can press the quantise button

01:41 which will automatically link in the BPMs

01:46 so they're already beat matching to a certain extent

01:51 and there's lots of other tricks as well where you can do a lot of work

01:57 before you go out and do a set digitally

02:01 so it's pretty much all done.

02:03 That's still work, you've still got to do it, you've still got to choose,

02:06 you're still a selector, you've still got to choose good tunes.

02:09 That's still, and I do DJ digitally as well

02:14 but the vinyl side is just because I've been doing it so long

02:18 I'm comfortable with that

02:21 and I have started using DBS which is an encoded disc

02:26 which is exactly the same as a, shall I get one?

02:29 Yeah, go for it.

02:30 There it is.

02:35 They look exactly the same as a record

02:40 and it's just got an encoded band

02:45 and that will play the tunes off your laptop or USB stick

02:55 using normal turntables but you've got to have a specialist kit for it.

03:00 And it acts and feels exactly the same

03:05 but it can open up a lot more opportunities

03:09 for doing different styles of mixing.

03:11 But yeah, I just do enjoy the process, the physical side of it

03:16 and it's always a challenge.

03:21 Tell us about those challenges.

03:23 Well it can vary, if it's in a club there's a lot of things

03:26 where if it's not set up properly the dance floor can actually make the needles jump up and down

03:31 and I've done that a few times.

03:33 I've been, we used to do boat parties in the Solon.

03:38 Oh, so imagine the water balloons.

03:40 Yeah, so the boat was all over the show

03:43 and they can, especially the Technics can handle to be right on angle and still play

03:49 but this was ridiculous and it was next to the engine room as well

03:51 so it was all reverberating and shifting up and down.

03:56 And yeah.

03:59 What was the outcome of that though?

04:01 Did you manage to play a full set?

04:04 Yeah, kind of.

04:05 It was not brilliant because it was quite choppy.

04:11 And I was downstairs and bottomed a bit the boat

04:15 and the guys at the top were even worse because that was even worse.

04:20 And yeah, there are various different locations like parties in the countryside.

04:26 You've got lots of different challenges there with weather and leaves and things like that

04:33 and yeah, parties in cellars and all sorts of other places where,

04:39 I've been to a house party, I think that was in London,

04:42 where there was literally plasterboard coming from the ceiling from upstairs

04:47 where there's another party and the floors were going, landing onto the decks

04:51 and completely ruining the records.

04:53 Oh.

04:54 Yeah, that was, yeah.

04:56 Like I said, it's a privileged thing.

04:59 And because there are so many people that are DJing, whether it's analogue or digital,

05:09 it's a very crowded market in that, unless you're right at the top.

05:15 And usually you have to be a producer as well or a recording artist as well

05:19 to actually get those gigs.

05:23 A lot of them now are just open decks where people just turn up, they don't get paid.

05:32 They just want to show people their music or hope to get better gigs,

05:36 but there's a lot of that going on.

05:41 Like anything in the creative industries, any artist, whether it's musicians or visual arts,

05:49 they do a lot more for free now than just to get somewhere else.

05:53 And there's a joke across that whole industry of getting to do gigs for exposure

06:01 and the joke is, "I only need three more exposures to pay my rent."

06:08 So whereas it was my full-time job for over a decade, really full-on,

06:18 every week and clubs and bars and whatever, and it did pay my rent.

06:24 And I was making a living out of it, it was proper.

06:28 And I was spending a lot.

06:30 You have to reinvest into new music all the time,

06:34 so my spend on records was quite high back then.

06:38 But now, yeah, like you said, it's a passion project for a lot of people.

06:48 I still get paid to go and DJ, but it actually hasn't changed

06:54 the same amount as I was getting in 1992 to 2024.

07:00 It's pretty much the same amount,

07:04 which obviously is not going to be enough to keep buying if you're buying vinyl.

07:11 Which is a bit of a shame.

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