For years there’s been much talk of DJ’s somehow banding together, unionizing, and leveraging their power of influence in clubs, radio, and other media.
Formed July 2008 to serve as an "advocacy group on a range of public policy and rights issues," the The International Disc Jockey Trade Association (IDJTA) boasts a number of notable industry tastemakers including Hip-Hop icon Afrika Bambaataa.
Considering the negative feedback of recent events like the Million DJ March, it’ll be interesting to see which direction the IDJTA moves into for 2009.
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The Million DJ March was a little nutty, if well intentioned, if only because the idea of a million dj’s showing up for anything is rather unlikely.
But unionizing or creating collective bargaining forces doesn’t have to lead to the travesty of the Teamsters Union.
For example, they can do things like identifying people who don’t pay dj’s properly, spread the word and possibly force some change in that area.
They can also do things like establish a basis for group health insurance so that some of these dj’s can get a better deal.
Those are just two examples of things that organizing together around common interests can produce whereas getting a million dj’s to give up their income for a weekend for a cause that didn’t seem all that clear certainly struck me as doomed to failure from the start despite the positivity of that project.