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ARTICLE
Or, worse still, you might be asking for some help for a gig that starts in a few hours because you have no music. All this drama can be avoided with a few simple steps
The first question lots of DJs ask is why they should invest in a backup system at all. As a business, that is a fair question. The old gem of wisdom says, “Do not put in a £3,000 safe to protect a £300 watch”. However, quite often, DJs are protecting £10,000 of music with a £100 hard drive.
So, how do we get to that figure?
Firstly, reputation. Not being able to perform due to missing music will damage your reputation, and that has a goodwill value. Secondly, when you look at the amount of time you put into your music, it will be clear to most people that it is your most valuable asset. In addition to the music itself, you’ve also got how you have organised it. For many, all that information is part of the data – playlists, folders, comments, and tags. All of those take time and the inspiration that hit you at the time of thinking of it.
Yes, music can be re-downloaded from reputable suppliers such as cdpool.com, mastermixdj.com, and promoonly.com. But that assumes you don’t do anything to your music. You haven’t de-duplicated it, you haven’t added tags and cues to it, and you haven’t organised it. All of that effort of hours per week adds up. If you put a notional value of £10 on each of your hours spent with your music library, you will have a large price tag very quickly. Plus, a quick conservative estimate says that downloading a large collection of music from Mastermix is likely to take more than 24 hours. That is assuming you are going to stay awake to keep clicking on links.
It is safe to say that taking steps to prevent having to do that is much easier than fixing it later. Hopefully, we have covered the first step in backup, and you now understand why you need to back up and what you are backing up.
Where to save?
So, how should you apply backup to your event business in 2025? First, let’s make sure everyone is aware of what a backup is and what it is for. If you’re an old enough DJ, you will remember good old “Dusty Bin”, Ted Rodgers, and the catchphrase 3-2-1. Well, remember that catchphrase, as it works for backup too.
3-2-1 Backup is a common backup strategy, which sets out how you should store your data. It’s sometimes referred to as the gold standard of backup. Three copies of the data. Two different types of media. One copy off-site.
What is a backup?
A backup is a separate, preferably secure, version of your data. For DJs and event companies, this covers two main things: your DJ software and its configuration, and the music and all the intelligence you have applied to that music.
Sync is frequently confused with backup. However, they are not the same thing. For example, iPhoto is a photo syncing service. You take a photo on your iPhone and it appears on iCloud. However, it is not a backup, because if you delete the photo on the cloud or on your phone, that photo is then deleted from both locations when a sync takes place. Google Drive, iCloud, OneDrive and Dropbox are not backup solutions in their own rights, but you can use them as part of one. You may also hear about archives in terms of backup;
an archive is just an old copy of your data that you do not plan to use regularly. You will also hear terms like full, incremental, and differential. For our purposes, we are simply going to do full backups for the examples given, so treat every reference to backup as a full backup. Finally, the best way to think about backup in terms of cost and priority is like an insurance policy. I hope you never need it, but you will be incredibly happy to have done it if you do.
How to backup?
There are lots of options for backing up. I am going to focus on those tools that work the same regardless of whether you are using OSX or Windows, but other tools do exist for both platforms. The simplest form of backup is a controlled sync to another hard drive. So if your main music collection is on a 1TB SSD, treat yourself to a new one and synchronise the two regularly. Then take the second one and leave it in the glove box of your van or car.
The simplest tool to help you do this is a tool called ...
To read the full article, you’ll need to have a physical copy of the magazine which you can sign up for here for 6 issues delivered to your door from just £16!
https://store.promobile.online/products/pro-mobile-magazine-6-issue-1-year-subscription
The first question lots of DJs ask is why they should invest in a backup system at all. As a business, that is a fair question. The old gem of wisdom says, “Do not put in a £3,000 safe to protect a £300 watch”. However, quite often, DJs are protecting £10,000 of music with a £100 hard drive.
So, how do we get to that figure?
Firstly, reputation. Not being able to perform due to missing music will damage your reputation, and that has a goodwill value. Secondly, when you look at the amount of time you put into your music, it will be clear to most people that it is your most valuable asset. In addition to the music itself, you’ve also got how you have organised it. For many, all that information is part of the data – playlists, folders, comments, and tags. All of those take time and the inspiration that hit you at the time of thinking of it.
Yes, music can be re-downloaded from reputable suppliers such as cdpool.com, mastermixdj.com, and promoonly.com. But that assumes you don’t do anything to your music. You haven’t de-duplicated it, you haven’t added tags and cues to it, and you haven’t organised it. All of that effort of hours per week adds up. If you put a notional value of £10 on each of your hours spent with your music library, you will have a large price tag very quickly. Plus, a quick conservative estimate says that downloading a large collection of music from Mastermix is likely to take more than 24 hours. That is assuming you are going to stay awake to keep clicking on links.
It is safe to say that taking steps to prevent having to do that is much easier than fixing it later. Hopefully, we have covered the first step in backup, and you now understand why you need to back up and what you are backing up.
Where to save?
So, how should you apply backup to your event business in 2025? First, let’s make sure everyone is aware of what a backup is and what it is for. If you’re an old enough DJ, you will remember good old “Dusty Bin”, Ted Rodgers, and the catchphrase 3-2-1. Well, remember that catchphrase, as it works for backup too.
3-2-1 Backup is a common backup strategy, which sets out how you should store your data. It’s sometimes referred to as the gold standard of backup. Three copies of the data. Two different types of media. One copy off-site.
What is a backup?
A backup is a separate, preferably secure, version of your data. For DJs and event companies, this covers two main things: your DJ software and its configuration, and the music and all the intelligence you have applied to that music.
Sync is frequently confused with backup. However, they are not the same thing. For example, iPhoto is a photo syncing service. You take a photo on your iPhone and it appears on iCloud. However, it is not a backup, because if you delete the photo on the cloud or on your phone, that photo is then deleted from both locations when a sync takes place. Google Drive, iCloud, OneDrive and Dropbox are not backup solutions in their own rights, but you can use them as part of one. You may also hear about archives in terms of backup;
an archive is just an old copy of your data that you do not plan to use regularly. You will also hear terms like full, incremental, and differential. For our purposes, we are simply going to do full backups for the examples given, so treat every reference to backup as a full backup. Finally, the best way to think about backup in terms of cost and priority is like an insurance policy. I hope you never need it, but you will be incredibly happy to have done it if you do.
How to backup?
There are lots of options for backing up. I am going to focus on those tools that work the same regardless of whether you are using OSX or Windows, but other tools do exist for both platforms. The simplest form of backup is a controlled sync to another hard drive. So if your main music collection is on a 1TB SSD, treat yourself to a new one and synchronise the two regularly. Then take the second one and leave it in the glove box of your van or car.
The simplest tool to help you do this is a tool called ...
To read the full article, you’ll need to have a physical copy of the magazine which you can sign up for here for 6 issues delivered to your door from just £16!
https://store.promobile.online/products/pro-mobile-magazine-6-issue-1-year-subscription
The full review can be found in Pro Mobile Issue 133, Pages 46-49.
