From music production and record labels, to content creation and teaching, we look at the many ways that modern DJs expand their brands.
Let’s start with a quick mental exercise. Bring to mind three of your current favorite DJs. Now try to remember how you discovered them. Next, think about all of the ways that you currently engage with them.
We’d guess that in most cases, the answer will be more than just “listening to their mixes” or “hearing them at a club.” You might have fallen for one of their tracks. Liked their social media posts. Or wound up loving a party that they run.
It probably isn’t news to you that most DJs these days do more than just DJing.
There are many possible explanations for this, but the simplest might be natural selection. An excellent DJ and producer is better adapted to the crowded modern environment than someone who is just an excellent DJ. The DJ-producer simply has more ways of reaching people across the vast digital network we all inhabit. In a way it’s sad that success doesn’t solely stem from a DJ’s ability to move a dance floor. But given the sheer level of competition for bookings and attention, it’s also not surprising.
“It’s important to diversify what DJs do,” said Chris Graham from Listen-Up, one of the leading music publicity agencies. “Especially nowadays, with digital platforms being vital for promotion, many fans and listeners want to identify with artists not just for the music, but to resonate with their image and brand. It’s definitely useful for growing your audience, to look into the important areas of their music projects… such as if they own a record label, their production skills (how a track was made) and their own interests that tie back into their ethos and identity.
“As a publicist, I think if an artist has various strands of projects to their overall brand, it’s super beneficial to work with, as there are different narratives I can work with and create honest and engaging stories with. Identity is especially important these days, no matter the size of the artist.”
Just how much you need to diversify your craft will depend on your personal goals. Sure, there are some music scenes where it’s all but required that DJs make music. But if your ultimate ambition is to play at local clubs, or secure regular work on the corporate circuit, that won’t necessarily be true. If you’re unsure, take a close look at the career paths of DJs you admire and get a sense of what they’ve done to get where they are.
No matter what you’re aiming for, diversification is useful sensible for sustaining a career. As we’ve discussed so far in this series, the DJing world is tough, rocky terrain. Attack Magazine recently analyzed the 137,000 artist profiles on Resident Advisor and found that only 16% had at least one upcoming booking; that figure dropped to 1.6% for five or more upcoming bookings. Gigs can dry up for reasons beyond your control—a scary prospect if you need those earnings to pay bills.
Income from other sources can be what makes DJing viable. Most would prefer to supplement their work with music-adjacent activities that support their brand. The reality is that most have part-time or full-time jobs that have nothing to do with music (we explore this in more detail below). In a 2023 report, Toolroom found that of the 273 electronic music artists they surveyed (“representing a broad and diverse group of individuals at various stages of their careers”), 82% had a full-time or part-time job unrelated to electronic music.
In this article we’re going to examine the most recognised ways of expanding your DJing and establish why they work. Rather than explaining how to do these things, we’re going to help you decide if they’d be interesting and useful to you. (We’ll be linking to some of our favorite resources if you want to dive deeper on anything.)
Before we get started, let’s say outright that the struggle is real. It’s a huge commitment to build a DJ craft and learn how to make music and figure out how to promote yourself—while in many cases maintaining a full-time day job. There are unfortunately no magic solutions here. Our overall advice would be to simply get started with a manageable commitment and let the months and years of experience build over time.
Let’s start with the most obvious one: making music. The relationship between popular tracks and DJ bookings has been established for at least 20 years now. Thanks to the advent of social media and methods of self-releasing music, this relationship has been turbocharged.
It’s easier said than done, but putting out a single hit track or scoring a viral TikTok moment could set in motion a long DJ career. Even outside of that unlikely scenario, the truth is that if you want to play internationally, in many scenes making music is close to essential. Just don’t expect it to bring in much cash. The upside-down reality is that although production takes more time and effort than DJing, it usually doesn’t pay nearly as well.
But there are many other benefits to learning production. For one, getting to intimately know how music works will make you a better DJ, while opening up the possibility of becoming a live act. If you’re drawn to the more technical and engineering side of the studio, you might eventually consider offering mixing or mastering services, or hop into the world of live sound engineering.
You could write music for other people, and you’ll have audio editing and recording skills that could be handy for podcasting or video production. Once you properly know what you’re doing, there’s also education, either in a classroom setting or via mentoring and coaching.
Finally, making music has the twin benefit of expanding your artistry and increasing your marketing clout. DJing is an exercise in self-expression that reaches another level when you create tracks in keeping with your musical vision. It tends to take years rather than months to realise this vision, which shows the world that you’re serious about what you do. The marketing benefit is that your tracks can offer a compressed idea of what you do as a DJ. In today’s attention economy, asking someone to engage with a track feels more realistic than asking them to check out a full DJ set.
Go deeper: We won’t attempt to tell you the best resource for making music out of the many thousands available. Generally speaking, though, there are many excellent certified courses you can do online, and they will likely serve you better than a hodgepodge of YouTube videos.
Putting on parties is a well-established route into the DJ world. Rather than waiting for opportunities, you create your own. In the process, you’ll likely form lasting relationships with other DJs, artists, and audiences. As extra-curricular activities go, dreaming up and executing your own party, especially with yourself as booker and resident DJ, is a rewarding project that will help you establish yourself.
Promoting parties builds skills far beyond selecting music. You’ll become familiar with venue logistics, artist bookings, ticket sales, and marketing. In turn, these experiences strengthen your industry know-how and professional network. (For better or worse, the music scene is fuelled by personal relationships and reciprocal favors.) Even a small regular party can raise your profile, helping you to gain credibility and visibility.
But it’s important to recognize that promotion is demanding. It requires patience, a willingness to manage financial risk, and plenty of behind-the-scenes hustle. Even just breaking even on a party can sometimes be seen as a big win for promoters, with rising costs meaning profit margins are usually razor thin. The upside? Your events could become a reliable platform for developing your DJ career, enabling you to build an audience on your own terms rather than relying on others.
If you’re curious about whether party promotion could be right for you, start by considering the time, resources, and energy you’re willing to commit. What could be your unique offering or improvement on an existing concept? Be realistic about your local scene. What are the venues like? What do the crowds want? If there’s never been a techno party in your town, is this the sign of a gap in the market? Or a lack of interest from the locals?
Approach established promoters to ask for thoughts or advice. Many will be happy to answer questions.
Go deeper: Digital DJ Tips – How To Throw Your First Party: A Guide For DJs
If making music is about expressing your own sound and promoting parties is about building your own space and community, running a record label is about shaping a wider creative conversation. Launching an imprint lets you directly support the artists and music you love, while clearly communicating your taste and ethos to the wider world.
In practical terms, managing a label means taking on responsibilities like artist scouting, distribution, marketing, and administration. While it’s undoubtedly demanding, and the returns are usually modest, there are plenty of compelling reasons DJs choose this path. For starters, labels build creative relationships. They naturally foster connections with producers, and can help build identity and credibility within your DJ brand.
Think about how strongly certain DJs are associated with their labels. Nina Kraviz and трип (Trip), Dixon and Innervisions, Armin van Buuren and Armada Music, Amelie Lens and Lenske, Diplo and Mad Decent—the list goes on and on. These DJs often release their own music on their own label and stage label showcase events that feature its roster of talent. In other words, a full realization of creative world-building.
Of course, this isn’t a shortcut. Running a successful label takes time and may not be profitable in its early days (or ever). But if your goal is to elevate your DJ profile internationally, or if you’re driven by discovering and nurturing talent, starting a label could be a strong way to elevate your DJ career.
Go deeper: Resident Advisor – How To Start A Record Label
If you naturally enjoy being in the spotlight, or if you have a knack for engaging posts and short-form videos, leaning into social media can become a career lane in itself. Rather than viewing platforms like Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube as promotional chores, you embrace them as creative extensions of your DJing.
This new type of DJ is part-selector, part-content creator. They tend to have an easy going charisma that feels fun or relatable—a great fit for a music scene with partying and dancing at its core. DJs like Jyoty, Partiboi69, Jovynn and many others are examples of this new breed, successfully building global followings off the back of smartly curated feeds, playful memes, and relatable content.
However, this path suits certain personalities more than others. It rewards DJs who thrive on interaction, who can spot trends early, or who simply enjoy documenting their own lives. Done well, social media can shape your career as much as your sets or productions.
Turning social media into a viable long-term career path requires consistency, strategy, and comfort with living (at least partly) in public. You need to find ways of navigating the toxicity that comes with social platforms, and learn to recognise when to step away or take a break. If you see yourself fitting this mold, embracing social media as a central part of your DJ identity could amplify your reach and open up new possibilities.
Go deeper: Bridge – We Studied DJs Who Are Social Media Masters: Here’s What We Learned | The Unstoppable Rise Of Social Media DJs
When it comes to sharing and recommending music, radio is an old medium, but it might still be the best. In an era of streaming playlists and near-total access to music, there’s still something persuasive about a radio DJ passionately guiding listeners through their favorite music. In fact, you could say that algorithmic music services have increased the value of radio DJs—warm human sources for discovery in an otherwise cold digital landscape.
There’s of course plenty of overlap between club and radio DJing, but you’ll need many other skills besides. Not every station requires BBC-level broadcasting expertise, but presenting and getting comfortable on the mic is still a decently sized learning curve. Planning and precision are more important in the radio world, with shows needing to fit the station’s brief within your allotted timeframe. The top radio DJs are also master plate-spinners, tracking and working on multiple tasks at once while always keeping their listeners and the live output firmly in mind.
As an aspiring radio DJ, you’ll face similar barriers of competition and oversaturation as producers, label record bosses, and social media content creators. But like with those roles, even if you don’t make it to the top, you’ll pick up plenty of valuable skills and experience along the way. The remit of radio is often musically broader than in clubs, which is bound to have a positive impact on your selection game. Presenting skills can come in handy if you’re later interested in podcasting, interviewing, or voiceovers. And as with the other avenues we’ve talked about here, radio comes with plenty of opportunities for community-building, networking, and expanding the scope of your DJ brand.
A while back we asked MistaJam, one of the UK’s leading radio DJs, what it takes to make it in the world of radio. “Well, regardless of what aspect of DJing you’re interested in, it’s passion,” he said. “It’s the most important thing. If you’re not passionate about it, it’s never going to happen. Regardless of what your career aspirations are, you have to be passionate about this industry because it’s brutal at points.”
Go deeper: Bridge – What does it take to become a master radio DJ?
With enough experience under your belt, DJing or any of the roles we’ve mentioned could be channeled into teaching. Where in the recent past teaching would have necessarily meant aligning with an in-person educational institution of some kind, these days it means something much more far-reaching.
You could create and sell your own courses, promoted via free content on YouTube. You could create music production resources that are accessed via a subscription service like Patreon. You could take up mentoring and help develop someone’s DJ skills over Zoom. And there are still ample opportunities out there for more traditional educational roles in schools or colleagues, with many established DJs and artists choosing this path.
If you have an aptitude for communicating ideas, teaching could become a comfortable extension of your DJing. Sharing knowledge, whether through workshops, private lessons, or online tutorials, not only provides additional income but it also deepens your connection with the grassroots of the DJ scene. There might be no better antidote for feeling jaded by the hard hustle of building your own career, plus you get the additional benefit of sharpening your own skills in the process.
Let’s acknowledge the reality for many DJs: a significant majority sustain themselves through jobs unrelated to music. Far from being a sign of failure, employment outside of DJing can offer structure and financial breathing room, allowing your music practice to flourish without the pressure of monetisation. In some ways, separating your artistic passion from your main source of income preserves creative freedom. It reduces anxiety around bookings and lets you be more selective about the gigs you take.
There are, of course, trade-offs. Balancing a day job with DJing means careful management of your time, energy, and priorities, and often requires you to make tough choices. But when thoughtfully balanced, DJs might find that stable employment complements their creative lives rather than diminishing them.
“Nobody tells you that you have to be a salesman, you have to be a marketing expert, you have to be an accountant, you have to be an advertising manager, you have to be an expert with social media—everything,” the UK DJ Brian Mole told us recently. While he was talking specifically about the requirements of mobile DJing, his words highlight the juggling act most career DJs need to perform nowadays.
No doubt about it, laying foundations across multiple areas (or “verticals,” in business speak) can be a lot of work. You may log hours, weeks, or years honing your craft and figuring these things out. But most of this is probably stuff you’ll enjoy—it’s hardly a chore to learn music production if this a passion. The reality is that, in 2025, DJing is a portfolio career. You don’t need to know the contents of that portfolio right from the start. But you’d be well-advised to explore the possibilities.
