Pioneer launched its new flagship HDJ-2000 professional DJ headphones at last month’s BPM DJ exhibition. Designed to enhance Pioneer’s HDJ series, these sleek, top-flight headphones touch down with several new innovations to reach new levels of sound quality, comfort and durability.

The 12 finalists of this year's series of The X Factor have topped the UK singles chart, knocking judge Cheryl Cole’s band Girls Aloud from the top spot. Their cover of Mariah Carey's 1993 hit, 'Hero', was recorded for Help for Heroes, which provides support for wounded servicemen and women, and the Royal British Legion's Poppy Appeal.

DJ equipment brand Numark has recently launched OMNI CONTROL, a DJ control surface with built-in audio interface and supplied with Native Instruments Traktor LE 3 and MixMeister Fusion Live DJ software programs.

Offering an intuitive solution to the problem of lugging, unloading and then packing loads of kit, Rhino Products generated a lot of excitement about their versatile 19” rack-mount DJ flight case at the recent BPM event.

It has recently been announced that their will be no more DJ Show North events following this year’s show, which took place last month at the Royal Armouries in Leeds. The event, which ran for four consecutive years, had become a fixture in the diary of many northern DJs and will no-doubt be sadly missed.

The track-listing for the UK edition of Micheal Jackson’s new album, 'King Of Pop', has been released today. The 17-track ‘hits’ album will make music history as its song selection has been selected entirely by fans of the singer. Record company SonyBMG enlisted the help of the Sun newspaper and GMTV to gather votes from 66,000 fans who submitted their favourite songs for the album. 'Billie Jean' was the most requested track ahead of 'Smooth Criminal' and 'Bad'.

What do you use to store and carry your treasured lighting gear? Heavy and bulky professional flight-cases? Plastic storage creates? Or perhaps just the tatty remains of the cardboard boxes they came in? Well now there is another option, Arriba Cases, a new range of gear cases that promise to “protect your sound & lighting gear without breaking the bank”.

Kam have recently announced that they are teaming up with Prefueled at the Beijing Olympics and will be sponsoring a host of after parties with top DJs throughout the games.

Pro Mobile will once again be hosting a series of seminars aimed at mobile DJs at this year’s BPM event in October. We hope to be able to publish the entire seminar line-up in the next issue of the magazine, but are pleased to announce one of the speakers who has already been confirmed for the event. International speaker, author and DJ Ken Day will be flying in from the US to present two seminars at BPM 2008.

Hot on the heals of the popular iDJ2 and groundbreaking DDS80, Numark announced their latest DJ hardware innovation at the recent summer NAMM exhibition over in the States. The HDMIX combines the integrated digital playback and mixer combination of the iDJ2 with the DDS80’s internal hard drive and CD/DVD drive to create a one-stop DJ solution.

The latest new lighting product from American DJ represents a new breakthrough in LED technology. The X-Move utilises a 20-watt white LED light source projected through a conventional gobo and colour wheel offering DJs a traditional moving head effect, with all the benefits of LED.

YouTube phenomenon DJ Tutor has teamed up with ToneMine.com, an interactive ringtone service and web community, to run a competition to find the best original ringtones created using ToneMine.com. The top three ringtones, as determined by the ToneMine.com and DJ Tutor communities, will receive distribution on ToneMine.com and LetsTalk.com, while the overall winner will bag a brand new BlackBerry smartphone.

The much-debated MCPS-PPL ProDub Licence is now available at www.produb.co.uk. The new license grants permission to copy music from a vinyl, CD, MP3 or CD+G collection onto a different format such as CD-R, MP3 player, flash drive or laptop for use in a professional or semi-professional working capacity (in our case – mobile DJing).

The 27th of July this year sees the 4th DJ Show North at the new "Saviles" Hall at the Royal Armouries in Leeds. This year's show promises to build on the successes of previous years and boasts a wealth of exhibitors from all levels of the industry eager to show their wares once more.

On Sunday the 20th of July DJ Superstore will be celebrating their 20th Anniversary with an action packed open day. Visitors will be treated to a great DJ day out with free food, free drink and free goody bags.

The latest LED powered lighting effect from American DJ, the LED Messenger, projects scrolling text messages onto walls ceilings or floors. Using 192 red, green and blue LEDs, the LED Messenger has 10 built-in phrases (Happy Birthday etc.) and can also store 5 user-programmable phrases of up to 30 characters each.

The recording industry today welcomed news that the Guardia Civil in Spain have arrested a commercial DJ on suspicion of music piracy.

Global music sales have fallen to their lowest level since 1985, the year that started with ‘I Wanna Know What Love Is’ by Foregner and ended with Shakin Stevens declaring ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’.

Introducing the InvincibLED, which is the latest LED lighting effect from Pro Light Concepts’ ACME brand, due to hit the shops in the next couple of months. The compact and lightweight unit projects multi-coloured and fast-moving beams of light from six separate lenses; perfect for adding action to any dance-floor.

Advanced tickets are now on sale for BPM, Europe’s biggest event dedicated to DJs. Priced at £8, the tickets not only guarantee entry to both days of the event, but also represent a substantial saving on the £12 on-the-door entrance price; if that isn't enough BPM are giving away a free Slappa CD case with the first 60 orders.

High street chain Woolworths has decided to stop stocking CD singles due to declining sales.

Chris Martin and co. have announced full details of a UK tour, set to take place this winter. Following the release of their fourth album 'Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends' on June 12, the group will play ten arena dates in December.

Following Andy Abraham’s defeat in last Saturday’s Eurovision Song Contest, Sir Terry Wogan has cast doubts over his involvement in next year’s competition. The veteran TV and radio presenter has commentated on the competition since the 1970s, but following this year’s broadcast said “frankly I don’t want to be presiding over yet another debacle”.

Digital DJs really are spoilt for choice when it comes to hardware and software solutions for DJing, with a plethora of manufacturers offering a countless number of products in various sizes and formats. The advantage of this is that every DJ can select the particular hardware/software combination that best fits their preferred way of working. The down side is keeping on top of all the different offerings to ensure that you can be confident that you make the right choice when choosing your gear. The latest hardware controller to be aware of is the XP5 from Finnish manufacturer EKS.

Last summer DJ Gee Papa aka George Papapetrou from Nicosia, Cyprus, DJed for an astounding 105 hours in an attempt to take the crown for the world’s Longest Club DJ Marathon. However, his superhuman effort wasn’t officially verified by ‘the ultimate authority on record-breaking achievement’ – Guinness World Records. He was devastated. But, where most people might have given up on the idea, Gee refined his mission for 2008, obtaining sponsorship, media support and, most importantly, booking an official from Guinness World Records to oversee the gig!