If your company is forty people and the holiday party is dinner in a private room, you may be wondering whether hiring a DJ is sensible or just expensive. It is a fair question, and the answer is not always yes. We turn down a few of these every December because the room does not need us. Here is how to tell which kind of party you have.
The short answer
A playlist is probably right if all of the following are true: the party is in one room, there is no program beyond a toast, nobody is planning to dance, and the venue has a decent house system you are allowed to use. That describes a lot of small-company parties, and they are good parties. Save the money or spend it on the food.
A DJ earns the fee in a small room when at least one of these is true: someone is going to speak to the whole room and it matters that they are heard, the party has a shape that goes from eating to dancing, the room spans more than one generation, or this is the one night of the year the company spends money on itself and you want it to feel like that. Under fifty people does not mean under-serious. Some of the best parties we play are thirty-five people who have worked together for a decade.
When a playlist is the right call, and how to do it properly
The playlist party fails for reasons that have nothing to do with the music choice, so if you go this route, do it well.
- Use a real speaker, not a phone on a table. A portable Bluetooth speaker meant for a kitchen cannot fill a room with forty people talking in it. Ask the venue whether you can play through its system, and find out how: an aux cable at the bar, a Bluetooth pairing with the manager's tablet, or a request to email a link in advance.
- One person owns the phone, and they cannot leave. The playlist stops when that phone takes a call, when it drifts out of Bluetooth range, when it locks and the streaming app pauses, or when the person goes outside. Put it on do-not-disturb, plug it in, and leave it in one place.
- Turn off crossfade gaps and shuffle surprises. The three seconds of silence between tracks is the moment the room notices the music. So is the explicit version of a song you thought was the radio edit, playing while the CEO's spouse is at the table. Build the playlist yourself, listen through it once, and make it two hours longer than the party.
- Decide who handles the toast. Someone has to pause the music, and there is no microphone. In a room of forty with the music off, a strong voice carries. In a room of forty with a curtain to a busy restaurant, it may not.
If you read that list and thought "we can manage that," you can, and you should. If you read it and thought "who is going to do all of that," that is the actual reason people hire a DJ for a small room. It is less about mixing and more about there being one person whose whole job is the sound, so that nobody else has to think about it.
When a DJ still earns it in a small room
The microphone. This is the single biggest reason. Someone is going to thank the room, announce the bonus, or read out a year's highlights, and doing it into a wireless microphone through a proper speaker, with the music brought down under them and lifted back the moment they finish, is a different experience from shouting over a paused phone. Light mic work is included in every package, and in a small room it is the part of the job people remember.
The shift. A party that goes from arrival to dinner to a floor needs someone to move the room through it. A playlist plays at one energy level from start to finish. It cannot see that dessert has been cleared, that the tables in the corner have been pushed back, or that the three people who always dance are already on their feet. A DJ can, and in a room of forty the shift happens fast, because a small room only needs a handful of people to move before it is a floor.
The mixed room. Forty people from twenty-six to sixty-one is a harder set to build than four hundred people of any age, because there is nowhere to hide a miss. Building for a mixed-age office in a small room means moving between eras every few songs so nobody sits through twenty minutes of music they do not recognize.
The requests. In a small room the DJ is part of the party. People walk up. The request that would be lost in a ballroom becomes the song that turns the room. That only works if someone is there to take it and knows whether to play it now or in twenty minutes.
What a DJ setup looks like for thirty-five people
Small. A controller and laptop on a two-top with a cloth, one or two speakers on stands, one wireless microphone, a single power run to a wall outlet. The footprint is a table for four in a corner, and the whole thing goes in and out in about ninety minutes each way. There is no light show unless you ask for one, and in a bright restaurant room we would suggest you do not.
The thing that is different about a small room, from the booth, is that the DJ can hear exactly what the guests hear. In a ballroom the booth is the loudest place in the room and the far table is a guess. In a private room of forty, the far wall is twenty feet away and the level is right or wrong in a way nobody can miss. That makes dinner easier to get right. It also means the DJ is in the conversation, which is why we keep the microphone work short and the music doing the work.
If the venue requires its house system, we patch into it. Ceiling speakers are fine for dinner and a toast; if the plan includes a floor, we would rather put one speaker at floor level in the corner where the tables get cleared, and we settle that with the manager before the night. More on how a restaurant private room changes the setup.
The cost, plainly
A party of this size is the Corporate Mixer, $2,500. It covers up to four hours, music prepared for your room, the microphone, and setup and breakdown. Lighting is a separate add-on and most small rooms do not need it. The full list is on the pricing page.
For forty people, that is a meaningful line in the budget, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise. If the party is a long lunch with a toast, spend the money on the lunch. If it has a program, a floor, or a room full of people who deserve one good night, the difference between a playlist and a person is the difference people talk about in January.
If you want a plain answer for your specific party, send the date, the venue, the headcount, and one sentence about what the evening looks like. We will tell you which kind of party it is, including if the answer is that you do not need us. Use the contact page or call (201) 705-3139. We reply within 24 hours.