The DJ problem:
We wanted someone to play music after dinner was over (dancing during dinner, between courses, is ridiculous – and yes, I speak from experience). Having no desire to relive the puberty years, we did not want bar-mitzvah-esque emcee-ing, and we wanted control over the music that would be played. Given our guests’ tastes, the best hits of the 50s, 60s, and 70s would not go over well (though some judiciously picked 90s and 00s most certainly would), and there are some substitutions that we wanted to be able to make instead.
That said, we did not want to make an iPod playlist and let it go. We did not want songs that last 6 minutes, we did not want a dancing crowd to suddenly be forced to mellow out, and we did not want dance music pumping over an empty floor. And yet, we did not want to rope any of our guests into babysitting the iPod – we wanted to hire someone else to do that, preferably for not too much money.
Is that so much to ask?
Well…
We ran across many great-looking DJ companies which failed to meet our criteria, mostly by providing (and charging for) way more services than we wanted, and not allowing us to add songs to their libraries. But finally, this too was solved! Let me introduce:
For anyone looking for something between a full-on DJ and an abandoned iPod, this is a great-looking alternative. They also promised to follow directions such as “watch the dancefloor – if they’re having fun, play a fast song, and if people wander off, play something mellow,” which can currently only be properly evaluated by humans (though as two computer scientists, we wholeheartedly encourage research into robot DJs).
Time to make playlists!