CoronaVirus: How it will affect the DJ industry?

With the coronavirus well and truly everywhere in the news, you may well be wondering how this is going to affect DJs.

Some have already said they don’t believe it will change how they work. However we would like to throw a couple of probabilities and possibilities at you.

Firstly, the obvious concern has been the cancellation of large scale gatherings such as sporting events and conventions. Where does a DJ draw the line as to which gig is safe to take on?

A large corporate event with an afterparty, do you know where those guests have been on business in the last two weeks?

What about a karaoke gig for Dave and Lisa’s anniversary, so many family members from all over the place sharing your microphones.

We’re not trying to scare people in to not taking on gigs, not at all. We believe you will be affected in some way, perhaps the large corporation chose to scale back on larger functions or a family might decide not to have a welcome back party for Barry who’s been in northern Italy for the last month.

Alternatively, a family might throw a party to welcome Shirley home out of quarantine after her Asian cruise!

So keep an eye on your bookings, maybe try and get some alternate sources of income as a backup and try and avoid shaking hands with or taking requests from that guy with sunburn and the sweats!

Secondly (and this is a longer term issue), the supply of hardware is going to dry up. If you’ve got everything you need and don’t plan on getting anything new for a while, this won’t be much of an issue.

For those looking at investing in some new equipment, just be warned there are likely to be shortages down the line. With most of the equipment DJ’s use being manufactured in China and many factories shut down, retailers have already been warned by several brands that shortages are coming.

Products with speaker components have been affected, this includes some headphone brands, desktop monitors and PA speakers. The last shipments to leave China are only just arriving, but with production on hold, there aren’t anymore on the way. Even if the factories reopen tomorrow, by the time they get back up to production and then shipping them, is an average time of around 3 months. That's well in to ‘wedding season’.

Most suppliers have already warned us of forthcoming shortages, lighting, headphones, speakers, monitors and even cables and accessories will be thin on the ground soon. In fact, even while writing this, we’ve been warned of shortages across the board from more manufacturers.

To give you an idea of how complex this issue is, of the factories that are open most are short staffed and are having difficulties getting components from other factories. Furthermore, of those actually getting products out the door, getting the containers to the ports has proven an issue as well. Reports are showing that cargo ships have been leaving the ports in China with as little as 10% capacity. At that rate, the cargo companies will not run empty ships, it makes no sense. So they are likely to wait longer at the ports until they have more cargo. Which means the average time for a full container to reach Europe will be even longer.

djkit have taken the precaution and opportunity to purchase as much of the affected products as we can to make sure we can still supply you, the working DJ, for as long as we can.

So make sure you have sufficient, working backups for your essential pieces of equipment. If you’re planning to make an important purchase soon, then it might be worth considering bringing that forward.
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