Beyond the DJ Booth
Brian B and Joe Bunn tackle questions about the private event DJ industry, share music, gear/gadgets, and stories from their events.
Episodes
94 episodes
When The Client’s Daughter Hijacks The Decks
A packed dance floor can disappear in one song, and sometimes the person asking for that song is the one signing the check. We open with a wild high end wedding story where the playlist is a tightrope: a huge do not play list, a “keep it upbeat...
Handling Bad Song Lists From Couples
A packed dance floor is not guaranteed just because a couple hands you a long playlist. We’re Brian B and Joe Bunn, and we’re starting the season by getting real about what happens when client expectations, modern music culture, and the actual ...
Working with Live Musicians
Somebody sends us a mystery package and it turns into a real conversation about community, merch, and how much value listeners can create around your brand when you actually let them in. From there we shout out Patreon supporters around the wor...
Are Pay to Play Venues Worth It?
Paying a venue to get on their “preferred DJ” list sounds like a shortcut until you’re staring at the invoice wondering if it actually produced real work. We dig into a real pay to play example with clean numbers: a $2,500 annual buy in, seven ...
How Private Event DJs Stay Sharp
You can usually tell when a couple filled out your DJ planning form with AI, even if they never mention it. The answers look perfect, but they don’t sound like them and that can wreck the very thing people pay a premium for: personalization. We...
Learn How to Say No
That tiny moment when a couple scans your QR code at a wedding show can decide whether you book the date or never hear from them again. We talk through what went wrong with sending people to a long website contact form, why friction destroys co...
From Conference Stages to Wedding Madness
The part nobody tells you about being a working DJ is how often you’re building in the dark. Social media gives you instant dopamine, but long-form work like podcasting, education, and community takes time to show results. We open with some rea...
Breaking Down Backup Plans
One dead play button can turn a wedding ceremony into a nightmare, and we both know that “it worked at soundcheck” is not a safety plan. We start with a few Beyond The DJ Booth updates, then get into DJ life the way it really is: imperfect, fun...
How to Reduce Wedding Prep Time
Wedding planning shouldn’t take an hour of copy-pasting, second-guessing, and chasing missing details. We’re sharing two big updates for mobile DJs: a cleaner way to shop our gear and a new tool designed to give you your time back.First...
Songs That Work Every Time
The fastest way to learn what’s real in the DJ business is to stack three very different gigs back to back and tell the truth about how they went. We do exactly that, starting with a corporate event where the timing is off, the band is loud, an...
What To Do When Disaster Strikes
TikTok can delete two weeks of momentum with one vague notification, and that’s exactly where we start. One of us gets hit with a sudden account ban for “impersonation,” no real explanation, and basically no support loop, which turns into a big...
Are DJ Conferences Dead?
DJ conferences aren’t “dying” because DJs stopped caring. They’re struggling because expectations keep rising while budgets stay stuck in the past, and we’re done pretending that isn’t the real problem. We talk candidly about a recent DJ show s...
Fun Fact: Networking Works
You can be an incredible DJ and still feel stuck if nobody knows you well enough to refer you. We get honest about networking for DJs, what actually moves the needle, and why “just posting more” is not a substitute for real relationships.
Not Every Show is a Rager
Your next gig might be flawless or it might be a total stinker and either way you need a plan. We kick things off with a new “stinker button” idea (yes, a real button) and a no-filter rant about DJ trend overload, especially the endless wave of...
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How DJs Survive Bad Corporate Gigs
A packed dance floor can come from the weirdest place and sometimes it’s a “Take On Me” to “Crazy Frog” transition that has a club screaming like it’s 2005. Brian B and Joe Bunn kick off season seven by unpacking what that kind of moment really...
DJs + Sax Players: Amazing…or Absolute Chaos?
Chances are you’ve played a Mike D edit without even realizing it. We open the episode by giving flowers to one of the most influential remixers in the DJ world. His unexpected passing hit the community hard, and we share some stories about mee...
How Record Industry Changes Will Affect DJs
The song is fire, but the tag says 2026. We kick things off with a rant every DJ will relate to—bad metadata—and then follow the thread into the biggest shifts reshaping music discovery and live events. From Netflix flirting with the label game...
Must Play vs Do NOT Play Lists
Two lists can make or break a wedding: the must-plays that define the couple’s voice, and the do-not-plays that guard against landmines. We pull back the curtain on how we handle both without tanking momentum, from planting a clear 25–50 song i...
Not On My Bingo Card: DJ'ing A Cotton Gin Convention
A plane party at 35,000 feet. A mega yacht dance floor at sunset. A salt flats set that looks like a music video. We chase big-feel dream gigs, then get brutally honest about the nights that humble you: a Hilton Head corporate convention where ...
Awards Shows and DJ Disasters
Big stages magnify everything...the wins and the wipeouts.In this episode, we break down awards season through a DJ lens: the Golden Globes walk-on music debate, the Grammys stacked with performances (and a few brutal tech gremlins), and...
Why DJs Keep Ruining Good Songs
It’s Love Week, which means no clichés and no pretending. Brian opens with a question he’s clearly been holding in: why are there so many 140+ BPM edits in music pools right now? Are DJs actually asking for this? Or are we all just pre...
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What Would You Do If You Couldn’t DJ Anymore?
What would you do if your main gig disappeared tomorrow?We put that question on the table and followed it into some unexpected places : law, sports agency, music programming, even D1 basketball before circling back to the core skills tha...
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How a Chandelier Almost Ruined New Year’s Eve
A packed dance floor can die in one flick of a switch.In this episode, we break down two real events where tiny, overlooked details nearly derailed the night - including a New Year’s Eve celebration hijacked by a blinding rental ch...
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Bruno’s Back, And DJs React
The comments were spicy, the questions were fair, and we decided to hit record and bring it all back. We kick off with a new segment called "Bring It Back" built to revisit hot takes and fix misses. We start with the update on Joe's office ease...
In-Ear Mixing, Cleaner Setups, Better Shows
Some sets feel effortless - not because the crowd is easy, but because your monitoring and setup give you control before the first blend. This episode breaks down the practical choices that make private events smoother, from the IEM workflow we...
