DJs work really hard to do their jobs, but sometimes there are people/things out there getting in the way.

Besides the normal belligerent drunk people and overpriced drinks – we’ve polled the DJ community in Los Angeles and come up with the top 10 things that annoy DJs.

Alright, let’s get to it:

1. People who touch your equipment

Seriously, don’t touch anything. One press of a button or knob can stop everything & the whole crowd staring at you with evil eyes and boo’s. We’ve come across this situation so many times, We know we know it looks cool but PLEASE resist the primal urge to touch the spinning thing.

2. Forgetting you have your lows down

It’s common to drop your low frequencies to transition out of a song. Sometimes, we’re just that forgetful and mix in another song with our low eq knob still down. What COULD HAVE BEEN be an epic transition song drop turns into a dull, unfulfilling, blue balled switch-over. Now you’re trying to sneak your low knob slowly up hoping no one noticed. Woops.

3. The opener burning songs

We’ve all run into those douchey, entitled, know-it-all opener DJs that probably just got a slot because they promised to bring 9000 of their friends. They proceed to play an EDC inspired set with the top 100 banging beatport songs…for a crowd of 20 people. Cringe.

4. Song requests

It might be hard to believe this, but DJ’s usually have their next 5 songs planned out while consistently watching the crowd for reactions, and using their reactions to plan the next songs. A song request not only disrupts the DJ away from mixing/planning but ruins the set flow. What’s WORSE is when they don’t know the song title and starts humming/singing in your ear. C’MON!

Let the DJ do his/her job, trust the process.

5. Talking to you during a transition

People coming up to make small talk is already annoying… but talking to you WHILE transitioning songs (while your focus is at 400%) is very annoying.

6. Undermining how much it takes to be a DJ

The general public sees the glory and the fame that comes along with DJing. What they don’t see are the countless hours of work in the bedroom trying different transitions, editing a song 100 times, practicing scratching techniques, digging for music, and organizing it all. Nothing is more annoying than someone assuming that getting there was easy — by all means, try it and let us know how it goes.

7. Celebrity DJs

DJing has become so popular that celebrities are starting to hop on the trend. From Kim K to Paris to Brody, every celeb to put on a pair of headphones for a photo opp makes us cringe so hard.

8. “Can you do it for free?”

“It will give you A LOT of exposure” “We’ll give you free dinner/drinks”

Man, if I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard this… I’d at least have $5. This ties in with #6: people just don’t understand how much effort it takes to do a gig.

9. Club DJ equipment

Nightclubs (besides the super nice fancy ones) have the worst reputation of having really beat up, torn down, semi-kind-of functional gear. We can’t tell you how many times we’ve showed up to a nightclub that had no knobs on their mixers, tonearm weights missing, buttons not working, and faders bleeding.

It’s seriously has become a science to Macgyver your way to DJ without messing up because of the poor equipment.

10. Getting double booked

Nothing’s worse than showing up to a club or a gig to find out another DJ has been booked for the same gig/time slot and there was a miscommunication between promoters/bookers. To invest all that time to promoting, preparing, and traveling to your gig to just get blue balled? THAT’S ANNOYING.