National Association of DJs - London Spring Seminar

Well another informative and educational evening at the London Branch of the National Association of DJs.

As ever a great mix of headline presentations, including one from me on Continuing Professional Development - discussion, demos and of course the networking with fellow DJs.  Plus a visit from our National NADJ chairman to update us on all the national developments, including the plans to develop the need a DJ customer search service.  Add in a guest retailer with some show deal, and the obligatory raffle and it's a full and busy evening.

If that wasn't enough, it was also our Annual General Meeting where we elected our chairman (Tony), vice chairman (Richard), treasurer (Ed) and secretary (Fabio), all duly overseen by our national Chairman (Paul).  So role on the new year of activity with some new ideas such as topical debates.....

As ever lots of photos of all the fun.  And of course us presenters....thanks Glyn.

DJ Lego

In the age of celebrity DJ, there's one who's probably going to stand the test of time. Move over David Guetta, here comes DJ Lego.

So one of 16 different lego minifigs in series eight.  Nice sense of still playing vinyl, although the album cover art looks a bit heavy, with the stereotypical T-shirt and jeans look.  Happy guy though.

And with more series to come DJ Lego may well get lost in the crowd of 100+ minifigs.  But like all logo collections they live forever, handed down through the generations.  So in 30 years time he'll be in the bottom of the lego box, waiting to be discovered by a new generation.

The vinyl and cover might be easily lost...potential collectors items those.  Thomas's one is already in his lego box.  Mine's safe and sound.....

New Icons of Pop - It's Official

So the latest generation of pop music has not only come of age, but now starts to nudge the more long-standing and traditional icons of pop from their long held top spots.

Calvin Harris vs. Michael Jackson

Calvin Harris has managed an eighth top ten hit single from his album '18 Months'.  That's now trumped
Michael Jackson's seven top ten singles from each of his albums Bad (1987) and Dangerous (1991).

But let's look a little closer.  That new success is compounded if we look at the proportion of hits from those albums... So seven top ten singles from 11 tracks (64%) on Bad, and seven from 18 tracks (39%) on Dangerous.   So eight top 10 hits from 15 tracks on '18 months' is 53%.  So in the Harris-Jackson comparison, at 64% Jackson still holds the record for most productive album, with the largest percentage of tracks turned into top 10 singles from a single album.  That's probably compounded by the fact that Harris also has a fair amount of help on '18 months', with 10 of those 15 tracks being collaborations featuring a range of successful artists in their own right...Rihanna, Example. Ellie Goulding, Tinie Tempah and Dizzee Rascal.

Emeli Sande vs The Beatles

It's taken 50 years, but the Beatles have now been knocked of their top spot of the album with the longest number of consecutive weeks in the top 10.

In fact 'Our Version of Events' is also the début album for Emeli Sande, and has now spent 63 consecutive weeks in the top 10, racking up 1.8 million sales and still counting.  counting.   In the first four months of 2013, it's still averaging over 100,000 sales a month.  The Beatles have held the record since 1964 when their début album 'Please Please Me' remained a top 10 selling album for 62 weeks.

While there's a myriad of ways to measure music success, it's clear that the top 10 and single success from albums and length of stay in top 10 albums are fair ones.  And that's probably especially so in light of the huge popularity and staying power of the previous record holders.  There's also some influence of the download over physical media in there somewhere.