Disclaimer: The numbers reflected in this article are hypotheticals and do not represent Audio Events actual costs or prices unless otherwise noted.

If you are an analytical person that is genuinely interested in learning how or why DJs and Event Professionals charge what they do, please continue reading. If you don't care why or how a DJ or Event Professional sets their rates or only want to pay the bare minimum, then this article may not be for you.

As I began my workday this morning like most mornings, I opened my email, responded to current clients and those requesting information about my service, scanned through emails from industry publishers, and suppliers. I then scanned through Facebook and the industry groups I belong to. It’s usually the same type of conversations. In the industry groups DJs are talking gear, sales techniques, there are a few that inject their egos. In the wedding groups, brides are looking for advice, professional services, and decorating ideas. Today wasn’t all that different than any other day… Then I received an email back from a potential client regarding the proposal I had sent him for his community event. His email read

Thank you for taking the time to try and help us out. Since your proposal is more than twice what we usually pay, we have decided to go in a different direction and will not be needing your services.”

This isn’t an unusual email. Fortunately, I work with enough clients every year that feel my price is very fair for the service provided. This morning, however, was kind of a perfect storm. I don’t usually pay much attention to the chatter in the Facebook groups, but immediately after receiving that email I remembered seeing a post from a bride looking for a DJ for less than $1000 for her 5 hour wedding, as well as a post in one of the industry groups about a census done by an industry publisher. “What It’s REALLY Like Being A Mobile DJ Out There In 2017”. 

I took the next few minutes to read the results of that census. Let me tell you I felt disappointed by a lot of the results. Most shocking is just 3% of respondents are women, but second to that is that only 16% of respondents have been able to make DJing a full-time career. That means 84% of mobile DJs are part-time. The next section makes it blatantly clear as to why! 61% of respondents earned less than $6000 as a DJ.

I have been running businesses since I was 19 years old. My career before starting my own entertainment business was in the home improvement sector. Running a business is not an easy task and certainly not for the faint of heart. There is a lot that goes into it, and even more to understand. I’m somewhat convinced that most that take up the art of DJing either have little knowledge of running a business or simply ignore it, because it’s not nearly as fun as getting out and being “paid” to party.

Let’s break down how businesses earn money and profit.

Sales - Expenses = Profit

Income is pretty obvious (work = get paid) but what about the expenses? 

Here are the most common:

• Advertising
• Car and Truck Expenses
• Contract labor and Payroll
• Equipment Depreciation
• Legal and Professional Services
• Office Expenses
• Rent or Lease (Vehicles, Equipment, Machinery)
• Repairs and Maintenance
• Travel
• Utilities.

Why should this matter? It’s important to understand what it costs to run a business before you can understand why a service or a product is priced the way it is.

For the sake of conversation, this is going to refer to DJs and Event Professionals but applies to any professional service.

How did you find this blog article or our website?

• Did you search Google?
• See us on Facebook?
• Did a friend or relative tell you about us?
• Did you find us on the Knot or WeddingWire?

It doesn’t really matter how you landed here, some of the sources above cost more than others, some might be free, but you are viewing this blog article on a website that took hundreds of man-hours to develop, and many more hours to maintain and update. Not only is there a labor expense in maintaining a website but it also costs hundreds of dollars per year in hosting and registration fees. If you found us on the Knot or WeddingWire those sites are the equivalent of online magazines that rely on advertising dollars to earn their keep. These are not inexpensive ad spots together these sites can cost $4000plus per year. 



Maintenance, fuel, tolls, and other travel expenses are factored into every single product or service you purchase every day! It is part of the calculation of every product on every shelf of every business. Groceries, department stores, box stores, etc. Every single product has a “Landed Cost” how much it cost to get it to the store. This cost is the basis for setting the retail price or what you pay. Every good business knows exactly what it costs to deliver a product or service, and in one-way shape or form needs to factor that cost into the price of the product or service. It costs me $1.79+/- per mile to arrive at an event. I do however offer 100 miles round trip FREE. So I could be losing up to $179 on an event before I even walk through the door.



Labor: This is what it costs to have someone at your wedding or event. Again not unique to a DJ, but any business or service that employs people. The most common question we in the DJ industry receive is

How much do you charge for 5 hours?”

There is nothing wrong with this question, unfortunately, we have been conditioned to relate money to time. Most people get paid an hourly wage, so it's fair to assume that all service prices should be based on the time frame for that service. It's also easy to think that $1000 for 5 hours is a GREAT paycheck!!! The inherent problem with the question above is it’s never just 5 hours. Don’t forget your DJ needs to load equipment at their home, office, or warehouse, travel to the venue, unload and set up before the 5-hour time frame begins. After the 5 hours is up they need to take everything down, load their truck, travel back to their home, office, or warehouse, and unload. If your employer asked you to do something similar, when would you expect to be paid from? The time you left your employers office, or after you had already worked setting up equipment for an hour or two? Would you expect to be reimbursed for your mileage?

I've seen this comment numerous times.

All I need is someone to play music and make a few announcements.”

If this is you, are you thinking your DJ can simply show up the day of, you'll hand them a piece of paper with your wedding party names and music, and hope they pronounce names correctly and have all of your music already in their library?

This all takes time. How much time will vary depending on each DJ and the amount of effort they put into your event. I spend about 9 hours on average prior to arriving at a wedding to prepare introductions and other scripts, as well as music lists. All in, its usually around 17 hours for me to produce a wedding. Non-wedding events tend to take roughly half the time to prepare.

 (17 hours? that's all you work? I wish I could only work 17 hours!) Let's be honest that did pop into your mind briefly, didn't it? It's a perfectly reasonable question I will cover it further down.

As you can see it costs a DJ a lot of money just to book and travel to an event and we haven’t even discussed some of the most costly categories. Equipment is not inexpensive and is a huge expense even for the most basic setup. My “basic” sound and lighting setup requires around $13,000 in equipment and that number doesn’t include the backup equipment left in the trailer. If you were to rent this equipment it would probably cost between $650-$1300. Which is a pretty common rental formula of 5%-10% of replacement value.

I know what you are thinking. I’m hiring you so why would I need to rent the equipment? Equipment doesn’t last forever. It has a life expectancy and is expensive to replace. A good DJ will replace equipment every few years to make sure nothing ever breaks down at an event. That would be the last thing you want, all of a sudden music cuts out during your first dance because the DJ didn’t have enough money to replace his or her equipment. This is called a "Maintenance or Replacement Schedule." It is used to calculate how many events each piece of equipment will serve. Using the replacement cost of the equipment divided by the number of events it will likely serve will give you a cost per event. If your DJ doesn’t charge a price that covers a portion of their equipment expenses it is inevitable that something will fail and they may not have the money to replace it.

Take the equipment number above $650-$1300, and add it together with the other expenses above. We haven’t even discussed, insurance costs, music costs, accounting, taxes, utilities, etc. All of these costs will vary per DJ. Some DJs work out of their home, while others have an office. Some DJs buy less expensive equipment, (Not necessarily a good thing). But all DJs travel, all professionals should have liability insurance (a lot of venues require this, so you should ask). All DJs purchase music and have accounting expenses. 

Let’s not forget the time they take in-between your wedding and the next event working on their advertising, administrative duties, music discovery, and hopefully PRACTICE!. Part-time or full-time there is a substantial amount of time spent in-between events. Just writing a blog article like this one, can take 2-3 hours, to write, review, and publish on the website.

The above are all measurable costs associated with DJs and Event Professionals. Now for the immeasurable. What are your weekends worth to you? How many family events are you willing to miss per year? How much is it worth to miss your child’s birthday, school event, family or friends weddings, funerals or a weekend trip with the family? These are all priceless events that every event professional will miss at some point or another. 
Each and every event professional makes considerable sacrifices to serve you. Don't forget to factor this into the value of their time.

Part-time DJs will always be less expensive, but there will always be a risk of their day job taking away from your wedding either in the planning or prepping stage or maybe preventing them from even showing up. How do I know this? I have been there! There were a couple of weddings I was afraid of missing several years ago. Thankfully that never happened, but when faced with the decision to continue paying my mortgage and providing for my family, or risk losing my day job to DJ a wedding the answer was pretty clear.



Before hiring your wedding DJ, consider the following.



Good DJs usually aren’t cheap, and cheap DJs usually aren’t good. There are some exceptions to the rule, but it’s a pretty good one to follow.



Those who can’t compete with service and quality, or are not confident in the service they provide will use price or freebies as their only metric to compete. (You want your DJ to be confident, right?)

Consider comparing the cost of your DJ to other metrics at your wedding. How much more value does your DJ bring to your reception as compared to say the cost of your cheese and cracker platter for cocktail hour?

 Venues and caterers will usually break this down per person or per plate.

You can divide your DJ cost per person as well. Let's use the average. If you spend $1200 on a DJ and you have 150 guests that's only $8 per person. When was the last time you were able to do anything entertaining for $8.00? How does that same $1200 break down for the DJ based on the numbers above? Let's use $650 for equipment, $90 for travel, and $300 for all other event-related expenses. That's $1040 leaving $160 to pay for labor. At my average of 17 hours per wedding that only breaks down to $9.41/hr. No paid vacations, no health insurance, no sick time, no retirement plan.

Did you notice I have yet to mention profit? The remaining $9.41 per hour left over to pay the DJ is not profit, that's still an expense. A business only turns a profit after all expenses including labor have been paid and there is still money left over. Profit is how a business grows, expands, and reinvests into new equipment, training, etc. How does a DJ turn a profit? The most common way is to add a percentage above and beyond the total expense of the event. How much that fee is, depends on each individual business. I add 5% above expenses and labor which is very low, most businesses want 10-20% bottom line profit.

I think this article is long enough, far longer than I had intended. Hopefully, you are still reading and this makes sense. If you have ever been an advocate for fair pay please consider this when hiring your wedding professionals. Instead of asking how much for 5 hours, ask How much time do you spend on the average wedding? Or how much experience do you have? What can you add to my wedding? Do you do this full time? How do you calculate your price? (You are looking for them to mention some of these costs)



I hope that helps give a better understanding as to how prices are calculated. It’s not just about picking a number and throwing it out there. Those that do select an arbitrary price without understanding their costs usually will not be in business for long nor are they likely to give a lot of effort, because it never feels like they are getting ahead financially and they simply burn out. When selecting a professional 12 months or more in advance you want to be sure they will still be in business when your date comes around.