Record companies and movie studios like products. Real, tangible, physical products you can buy, place in a bag, and carry home. This keeps the issue of distribution and ownership nice and straightforward - those who are holding the product in exchange for money hold a licence to use it, within predefined boundaries. Accountants, lawyers, and those fresh out of an economics degree can cope with this model with no problem at all.
But what if the customer doesn’t necessarily want or need a physical, touchy-feely product in a box? What if, for example, they can download the album or film or book or whatever, and this fits in with their highly digital lifestyle?
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Ten years ago, when I left home, I realised that I could earn a surprisingly decent living by playing records in a pub. Certainly on the face of it, the “work” involved is ideal: you spend Friday and Saturday night in the place you would have been anyway, surrounded by your friends, playing your favourite records, drinking for free and getting paid for it. This is where my career began in earnest, as it paid for me to eventually leave the backwater of the Thames-valley provincial town and move to London.
It didn’t take long to realise that, in reality, there’s a little more to it than just playing the records you like. The pub DJ is there for one purpose and one purpose alone: to sell more alcohol. The role of the club DJ is a little more complex: they are more like some kind of attraction, but the DJ in the pub beforehand does well to know his place. He’s basically an extension of the bar staff, and that’s how he earns his keep.
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