Welcome to the May edition of Pro Mobile. First I need to acknowledge the incredible job both Pete Holding and Steve Honeyball have done over the past six years. They increased the readership and quality of this, the biggest magazine for the Mobile DJ industry, and continued the great work Eddie Short started all those years ago. Im also grateful for their ongoing support as we learn the skills needed to publish a magazine.

I think Pete humbly nailed it when he said that they were merely custodians of the magazine. Its very daunting taking on this role and I realise the importance of retaining the quality of the articles. As MDJN take the magazine forward, we hope to retain the current readership and increase this by further widening the varied article content to appeal to an even bigger audience.
This will be a balance as we dont want to water down what you already love about Pro Mobile, but survival is about the willingness to adapt and change. So expect a gradual updating of our content and offer, which we hope will appeal to you, Pro Mobiles valued subscribers, as well as a wider audience.

When we DJ, we are looking to please and entertain our audience of course. We aim to do the same here, but of course we dont have a dancefloor to monitor, so we encourage you to get in touch and guide us. Its YOUR magazine after all! If you have pictures or stories to share, comments or suggestions to make, then do get in touch.

The DJ industry has challenging times ahead. With things like Spotify, Apple Music and more, everyone is now a music expert, at least in their minds. Creating playlists on these platforms is easy and can be automated, so why should people pay for a DJ? Currently these facilities cant gauge a dancefloor and whether the current music is working. It cant take and properly integrate the odd request and it certainly cant use a mic to encourage people to dance.

Theres a good chance that with the advent of AI, that these things can be developed at some point in the future, which is scary for us. To me, with 43 years of DJing experience, it seems that our skills in reading the audience and reacting seamlessly will be very difficult to fully replicate. Our ability to use the mic to interact with the audience is also going to be very difficult to replicate.
We introduce, we encourage, we joke, we comment, we organise and we react and this is where we win.

Where we maybe need to focus is sales and customer service. Personally, Ive always had a dislike for adverts and salesmen (odd thing to say when taking on a magazine which is supported by top brands with amazing sales teams!), but thats me I guess. In the last few years of my DJing career I realised that my DJ abilities were decent, my lighting skills were pretty good, I had smartly presented equipment, but so did pretty much all my local competition!

Where I seemed to win was in being prepared to bend over backwards for my venues and clients. They stated that other performers were not as flexible as I was, not as helpful and were more fixed in their approach. Ive always been a bit of a people pleaser, so being adaptable came easily and seemed natural. This above any DJ related skills, I credit for helping me make a decent living from a job I loved.

Enough of my waffling, you want to crack on and read some interesting articles. I hope you continue to enjoy reading Pro Mobile and do remember its your magazine, we are just the next custodians.