Justin Bieber’s DJ Tay James: The Secret of My Success

Whoever said the music industry is dead, obviously hasn’t met 24-year old DJ Tay James, who serves as pop star Justin Bieber‘s personal DJ. Aside from having over five million channel views on his YouTube page and 200,000 Twitter followers, James’ rise to success in an era where the music scene reports of consistent decline, is the quintessentially American dream. “My life is something that I’ve watched on a TV screen before, it’s a come-up story,” says the 2009 Hampton University Business School graduate. “I really wasn’t expecting to DJ for Bieber, while I was watching him on YouTube. I never thought that my life was going to take that change and it did.”

James’ breakthrough arrived in 2009 when he received a call from Atlanta’s own DJ Boogie, who asked the young turntablist if he was interested in touring with a new singer named Justin Bieber. “The Bieber job came out of nowhere and it came at the perfect time because I was at that stage when my parents were getting on me like, ‘What are you going to do? You can’t really be a DJ for the rest of your life,’” he recalls. “I guess they considered my being a DJ a hobby, but I just kept on at it. I just kept doing what I was doing.”

To date, James has released over 77 mixtapes, resulting in more than 150,000 copies distributed in the mid-Atlantic region alone, and he has his own popular web portal WeKnowTheDJ.com.  Not bad for a kid out of Baltimore who learned that setting himself apart from his competition to become a top-earner was simply a matter of fine-tuning his spinning/blending/mixing skills and mastering the art of effective branding. Currently on the Latin America leg of Bieber’s My World tour, DJ Tay James lends his advice to those looking to break bank in the music industry with his top six money-making solutions for new jocks.

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Raise Your Skill Level: Learn from the Masters while Playing your Position

“When you’re young coming up in the DJ world, like the people you look up to, you never feel like you’re going to be in the same game as them. But recently, it’s been kind of weird because everyone I was looking up to, I’m now actually playing in the same game [with],” says James, who explains that a very big part of being a DJ is making sure your skill levels are up to par.

He cites DC’s DJ Alizay, the DJ that helped put rapper Wale on the hip-hop map, as his mentor and the one who continues to help him raise the bar. “He’s probably one of the best DJs I’ve ever heard mix in my life,” says James. “And every time I hear him mix, it’s like inspiration. To this day, I still go over his house and practice with him.”

James also credits Atlanta’s DJ Drama of Gangsta Grillz mixtape series fame (the two met four years

ago while studying at Hampton) with offering him the best advice he’s heard ever. “He told me that after I took over the school, take over the city. After you take over the city, takeover the state. And those are the words that I live by since I met Drama.” James continues, “It made me have a goal to strive for.”

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Branding: Know Your Audience and Deliver What they Want

As far as the business side goes, James says Hampton U’s Business School prepared him well. “When it comes to DJing, it’s all about how your brand yourself. What I learned in school was how to take a product and how to market that product to its demographic,” he says.

James explains how he caters to his 8-40-year old demographic that he’s acquired since working with Bieber. “You fill everyone’s needs. You give them mixtapes that hit all aspects: a Top 40 mixtape that has Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Pink on there, and Bieber and Justin Timberlake; then you do a classic mixtape with Bun B, to hit the classic hip-hop side so everyone is happy.”

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Touring: See the World While Building a Global Fan Base

When asked how much money he makes per tour, DJ Tay James says jokingly, “Am I allowed to talk about that?” While he isn’t as forthcoming with the exact figures he made last year, he explains that touring is definitely a major part of the equation for any successful jock.

“DJs can get paid per tour date or they can get paid weekly, salary-based,” he says. And for someone like James, who’s a personal tour DJ for a major star like Bieber that often travels the world over (often twice in one tour), he can easily spend four-five months out of the year on the road (or more accurately plane). “DJs can also be contracted to be with an artist all year, meaning that you can be placed on retainer, like we may not have a show, but he’s working on shows so we don’t want you to do anything else or work with any other artist.”

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Social Networking: Leverage Your Reach by Being Innovative

“Video is definitely another avenue. One thing that I’ve been doing with my We Know the DJ is I film everything. So I get a lot of hits on YouTube and I’ve been trying to use that to my advantage too,” James says about using social networking sites to build his economic portfolio.

“I started doing a We Know the DJ series, which just showcases what a DJ does on tour. Like a lot of my friends and family won’t even know what I saw, what foods I was eating or what people that I was meeting. So instead of taking pictures, I just started documenting everything and I started getting a lot [more] hits on YouTube. [Now,] I have over five million views on my page.”

But it’s not just about the attention he’s garnered from fans around the globe that keeps James going. Having five million views on his YouTube channel has sparked the interest of brands wanting to advertise on his page to attract his steady flow of content consumers, whom they hope will happily convert into buyers of their products. Whether they do or not is of no concern to James, who gets paid either way. “I’m just trying to get it all ways,” he says. “This is what I learned. I learned all of this in school, honestly.”

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Endorsements: Make Big Bucks Using Your Name or Likeness

These days, endorsements are everything and may very well be one of the top avenues to earn money as a DJ outside of performance gigs. Whether it be aligning your brand with an innovative electronics company like Monster Cable (the makers of the Beats headphones series) or pushing a car brand as famed MTV and NYC’s Hot 97 DJ, Funkmaster Flex has done over the years through his partnership with Ford Motors, the opportunities are endless for a DJ that has amassed a large following.

For James, who’s nabbed endorsements with Rocksmith Clothing, Boomphones and Vestax among others, the ball just started to roll. “Some endorsements can be monetary, some can just be product placement. Like, ‘We’ll just give you this product and you just wear it here, you Tweet it there, or you take a picture with it on,’” he explains. “There’s a bunch of ways to go down the endorsement route.”

He continues, “If you ever seen Kim Kardashian on Twitter and she mentions G-Shock, it’s probably because she’s getting paid to say something about them… Honestly, I can say that it’s now easier to make money then it was before. There are so many different ways that you can reach people [and get paid for it] and so many different niches you can have.”

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Radio, Clubs & Special Events: Gigging it All the Way to the Bank

“You definitely make your money off the clubs, advertising and endorsements you get off of DJing. Right now I’m on the radio 95.5 [WPGC in DC] but I can’t do a lot more on the radio right now because of touring [with Bieber]. Hopefully and most likely when I get back, I’ll being doing more on the radio, which leaves me to do a lot more in DC as far as gigs-wise.”

For most DJs, regardless of experience level or area of expertise, this is where they make the bulk of their money. And while it isn’t easy booking birthday parties for celebrities like Bow Wow or Chris Brown, or rocking the official party for Kanye West‘s Glow in the Dark tour, James, who’s done all of the above and more, says it’s a step-by-step process. Take the last thing you did to get you your next big gig. “It took me being on Justin Bieber’s tour, taking that name and what comes behind that, and using it to my advantage [to get this far].”