Sitting in front of his amplifiers, mixing board and two specially designed Denon anti-shock dual CD players, the Wedding DJ begins playing "Theme From The Pink Panther." It's 7:15 p.m., and about half of the 150 guests attending Kirn Saegert's and Ken Darlington's big day at the Berkeley Church, a spacious event facility, have arrived. The bride has asked that The Wedding DJ set the mood for the early part of the evening by playing cool, contemporary jazz and retro cocktail music, along with the occasional standard by the likes of Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. The Wedding DJ puts on his headphones to cue the next number. The CD players automatically start each track at the beginning, but The Wedding DJ wants to fade in the song once it's started to make the transition from song to song - in this case into Sinatra singing "I've Got You Under My Skin" - more seamless.
"The reception is not the time to rock out," explains Scott MacMillan as he scans the crowd, judging the mood, looking for signs of distraction or irritation. "That's for the dancing later. Right now, you don't want it so loud they can't talk, but you want it loud enough to fril the room and mask the clatter of the caterers preparing dinner."
To outsiders, a career as a wedding DJ might not seem particularly rewarding or remunerative. Aside from long hours, late nights, lost weekends and the suspicion among friends that you never quite grew up and got a real job, the likelihood of even modest wealth seems elusive. After all, there are up to 15,000 DJs in Canada and besides, why hire a pro when your brother-in-law's music-loving best friend insists he can do it just as well for half the price, no GST? But despite the competition, MacMillan and his wife, Cheryl, have turned Mississauga, Ont.-based MacMillan & Wife Music Services Inc. into a diversified $1.5-million-a-year business that is the leader in the Canadian industry.
We've all attended weddings and been aware of DJs, both good and bad, yet few of us know anything about the business behind the individuals who, says Modern Bride, are substantially responsible for a reception's success or failure. While retailers live or die by the cash register's ring, MacMillan's gauge is the tapping foot, nodding head, crowded dance floor. He's become such an expert at knowing what crowds want that he's put himself in a strong position to withstand a new challenge: a U.S. venture called Complete Music Inc., which has DJ franchises in 153 cities in 46 states and has tentatively moved into
Canada with small operations in Toronto and Kingston, Ont. When asked about Complete Music, MacMillan, who has survived in the industry for over three decades, dryly says: "I can see it being a threat to DJs who aren't in the business of being in business."
ARMED WITH NEARLY 20,000 SONGS, MacMillan can fulfill almost any request. Still, he always asks the bride and groom to supply him with a list of favourites, and provide him with CDs from their own collection on the rare occasions he doesn't have them. Tonight, with dinner at the downtown Toronto venue about to begin, he's trying to squeeze in as many of Saegert's and Darlington's requests as possible. Playing now is Air's "Sexy Boy." "It's not a [song] that turns me on," remarks the 52-year-old MacMillan of Air's Prozac-flavoured spin on '70s disco. His own tastes run to the classic rock of his youth, and he actively dislikes twangy country music and opera. But if its country and opera the bride and groom want, he is happy to to oblige. If MacMillan were a musician, he'd be a film composer, an artist whose creative energies are subordinate to the client. I believe in playing to the crowd, giving them the music they like," he says. "I don't believe it's the job of DJs to play music they like."
MacMillan didn't have to prove his value to Saegen. As a consultant with Media Profile, the PR firm run by former Pierre Trudeau press secretary Patrick Gossage, she's booked MacMillan for two years in a row to handle the company's infamous, celebrity-filled Christmas parties. Before that, when she was director of special events for Livent Inc., she hired him to DJ cast parties for The Phantom of the Opera, Ragtime and Show Boat.
On this night, MacMillan is wearing a black suit, white shirt and burgundy tie. With his greying, neatly trimmed hair, small moustache and tidy manner, he could be mistaken for an accountant. That's why, later in the evening, its surprising when a pair of 12-year-old boys approach him to request "My Way" and he instantly knows they mean the track on rap-rock band Limp Bizkit's CD Chocolate Starfish 6- the Hot Dog Flavoured Water, not Sinatra's cover of the Paul Anka anthem.
Saegert acknowledges that MacMillan doesn't look the part of the underground DJ, but she appreciates that. "Lots of DJs don't bother with their appearance. But there are all ages at a wedding. And if it's a corporate event, I don't want someone saying to me, 'Who's that raggedy guy in the corner?'"
Like all clients, Saegert and Darlington filled out one of the elaborate forms provided by MacMillan & Wife to establish the rhythm of the evening. What is the age range of the guests? (In Saegerts and Darlington's case: 5 under 20; 10 in their 20s; 50 in their 30s; 5 in their 40s; 10 in their 50s; 20 60-plus.) Should MacMillan play music when the newlyweds arrive? (No. Saegert's uncle will herald their arrival on bagpipes.) Will there be a receiving line? (Yes.) Centrepiece giveaway? (No.) Speeches? (Yes) Telegrams? (No.) First dance? (Yes.) Bouquet toss? (Yes.) Garter toss? (No.) Cake-cutting? (Yes.) There's also a "Do Not Play" list - Saegert's and Darlington's includes any New Country - to which MacMillan firmly adheres, even if a well-fortified member of the wedding party approaches him and demands he play one of the banned songs.
Handling weddings is more complex than it looks, but MacMillan has had his share of experience. He began DJing as a teenager during the '60s in Chatham, Ont., spinning vinyl from his own collection at school dances and summer resorts. An early sign of his ability to stay ahead of the competition was a decision to make weekly trips to Detroit to pick up the latest hit songs that weren't for sale yet in Canada but were being played on local radio stations. Although at first he was so nervous his hands would shake when he tried to put the needle on a record, MacMillan gradually learned how to pace an evening. Even then, what separated MacMillan from other itinerant young DJs was that he always treated the job seriously.
Still, even MacMillan thought he had to get a real job. Moving to Mississauga, he trained as an automobile painter but by the mid-'70s, when he was paint shop manager at a Ford dealership, he noticed that there were paint flecks all over his contact lenses and that when he sneezed, a rainbow of colours would spew out. Concerned about his health and about a downturn in the auto industry, he decided to turn his hobby into a business.
Today, a major part of the business is MacMillan & Wife's roster of 20 DJs. With the exception of MacMillan and his son, Tim, all are sub-contractors, with one always on emergency standby. MacMillan & Wife also offers consultation services to help brides and grooms with their entertainment plans, including invitations and other accessories. In addition to weddings, the company supplies music for everything from school proms and awards banquets to corporate parties, conventions and fundraisers through a dvision operating under the name MacMillan Entertainment Group. Weddings tend to be recession-proof, so they represent three-quarters of the DJ business, but the DJ business itself accounts for only one-third of the company's revenues.
Another division, MacMillan Group Sound & Lighting, a dealer of professional DJ equipment for sales, accounts for another third. Along with high-end speakers and amplifiers, MacMillan's Mississauga showroom has on display an array of lighting effects, ranging from programmable lasers, orbiters, sundancers, strobes and something called an "aqua splash," to mirror balls, haze, smoke, bubble and karaoke machines, and a four-foot water column that lights up.
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Most profitable is the music licensing business. During the '80s, when MacMillan was active with the Canadian Disc Jockey Association, his lobbying resulted in an agreement with the major record companies to allow firms to produce music compilation libraries and lease them to DJs. With the Audio-Video
Licensing Agency (AVLA) in place, MacMillan co-founded Entertainment Resources Group (ERG) in 1990. For $100 a month, ERG offers subscribing DJs releases of contemporary hits in six formats. Among them: Nu Music Traxx, Nu Dance Traxx, Nu Urban Traxx, Nu Rock Traxx and Nu Country Traxx. There is also a 200-disc collection called Knockout Hits, featuring essential pop songs and standards from the past seven decades, available for $1,500.
ERG is one of the three main Canadian players in that industry sector. What's in it for the record companies? MacMillan says it helps expose their music to a broader audience. He then adds that Canada's upwards of 15,000 "mobile DJs" provide grassroots exposure of everything from the latest hits to older catalogue material. ERG also provides copies to record label representatives, which, it says, helps them keep in touch with all new releases, not just their own. Try running that one past Brian Robertson, president of the Canadian Recording Industry Association, which runs AVLA. "It's all about controlling copyright," he says, disputing MacMillan's rationale. "AVLA is set up to protect the rights of the record companies and other copyright owners. DJs are for-profit entrepreneurs who are in the business of exploiting recorded music. If the promotional element is a factor at all, it's negligible.
A few years ago, MacMillan sold his 50% of ERG for what he describes as an "extremely healthy profit" on his $1,250 initial investment.
Now, as ERG'S director of programming for Canada, he receives from the record companies a steady supply of new releases, which he listens to for an hour or two a day to select the tracks he'll include on the compilations. ERG has been good to MacMillan. Between selling his investment and the income he's earned as a programmer, he estimates that since 1990 he's cleared a million dollars.
AFTER DINNER, AS THE SPEECHES draw to a close, MacMillan cues up "Walk the Same Line," a song by slick British pop duo Everything But the Girl that Saegert requested for the cake-cutting. Later, he watches closely for the moment when Saegert and Darlington move to the centre of the dance floor. When they do, he announces the first dance and plays the couple's choice, "You're the Best Thing" by Style Council. Saegert had written on the MacMillan & Wife form that next she wanted "something to get the crowd going, in particular the '50s-to-'60s set without actually playing something from the '50s." That's the kind of challenge that excites a DJ, and MacMillan is sure he's found just the thing. It's a medley of early rock 'n roll hits like "Rock Around the Clock," "Shake, Rattle and Roll" and "Hound Dog," but performed by Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers, a creation of two British producers who had huge success on club dance floors in the '90s. Indeed, the dance floor is instantly crowded.
His skill as a DJ is obvious. Less obvious is his business acumen. MacMillan was wise to diversify, because the small, owner-operator ("mom and pop") DJ service may soon be threatened. The DJ industry in North America has traditionally been loosely organized and semi-professional. There is, however, a gradual transformation underway, driven pri-
marily by Complete Music, a slick, US$7.9 million franchise operation based in Omaha, Neb. Eric Maas, the director of franchise operations, describes Canada as "virgin territory," which the company will start moving into in a much bigger way two or three years from now.
With Complete Music, potential franchisees are recruited for their business, not their entertainment, abilities, and the company provides all the training, equipment and music in return for an ongoing franchise fee (ranging from US$5,500 to US$26,500, depending upon the size of the territory). With an emphasis on customer service and maximizing sales potential. Complete Music believes that it makes more sense to teach skilled business-people how to run a DJ business than to try to make business-people out of DJs - many of whom are small-time entrepreneurs who know more about playing music and entertaining a crowd than torquing profit-and-loss reports.
MacMillan successfully straddles both camps. Working hand in hand with his son, Tim, who is being groomed to take over the business, his strategy for growth can best be described as slow-but-steady. "If you grow too fast, you can lose control and your business can go down a lot faster than it went up,"
maintains MacMillan. "I've seen it happen." As for franchising, he adds: "I thought about it from time to time, but I have too many things on too many burners. Maybe Tim will think more about it in the future, when he's running the company."
Right now, MacMillan isn't thinking about business. It's 1:45 a.m., and only a sweaty hard core is left on the dance floor. The Berkeley Church staff have put away most of the tables and chairs, although one dancer holds a chair above his head to make sure it's there when the music finally stops. MacMillan, who has removed his suit jacket, has just played Bon Jovis "Living on a Prayer" and now he manages to rouse a fresh roar of approval and even more frantic dancing with The Jackson 5's "ABC," which carries seamlessly into Tone Loc's "Wild Thing." Half an hour later, he cues up Tom Waits' "Grapefruit Moon" and announces that it's the last song.
Earlier in the evening, during dinner, a member of the catering team, a woman in her late 20s wearing a stylish cap, took a breather from serving vegetables and looked up at the stage. "He's playing some great stuff up there," she says. "I'm surprised." When asked why, she replied: "I work a lot of weddings, and the music's usually terrible. He's playing some really cool tracks. And look at him. He doesn't look like anyone's idea of a funky DJ."
WHO GETS WHAT
A breakdown of a $20,000-plus wedding Music, at about 4, is one of the smaller cost components of any full-scale wedding. Still, that hasn't stopped Scott MacMillan from pulling in millions of dollars in revenue from his DJ'ing and related marriage-entertainment businesses over the course of 43-plus years. Below: a chart that shows how the cost of a wedding gets divvied up
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