Meet the Amateur DJs Who Are Putting You Out of Work, Professional DJs

Harley Viera-Newton, eating your lunch

​Today in manufactured outrage: DJs who aren't really DJs, DJing for money. "DJing is the ultimate side gig for hip young New Yorkers," is the tagline for this W piece: "But not everyone's happy about it." Is it fair that models, actresses, and artists, e.g. Agyness Deyn, Leo Fitzpatrick, Nate Lowman, Alexandra Richards, etc., get all the gigs and big checks, while "New York's more venerable," "professional," and "full-time" DJs wait out in cold for scraps, clearing a few hundred bucks to Sam Ronson's post-Lindsay rate of $15,000? The depends, we suppose, on whether one believes in the unicorn otherwise known as the full-time professional DJ, which is what, exactly? iPods, something called "shoewelry," and Keith Richards' daughter's $10,000 rate per party all come in for scorn from "the professional community" here, though Fitzpatrick has had a regular night at Lit for literally years, and what else would you call Ronson but a DJ? And isn't at least half of the made-up job of being a DJ getting people to show up when you play? As Paul Sevigny says in this very piece: "DJs do so little to begin with." And, usually, they're better for it. This ain't Ibiza. [W]