Great move by the German Court!
I see this as a relief for the struggling scene, and not a nod of music approval.
Strange and difficult times are here, and cutting taxes in half surely helps.
While you can’t learn to play an instrument well in a day, you could become a gooddj in a couple of hours. (tested irl)
Years and years of experience don’t really mean that much anymore, so this is bringing the whole craft down.
Will refrain from calling djs musicians unless they are really exceptional at it.
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Discos should pay more taxes than concert venues pay because making live music usually costs more. And: it’s not the same for every DJ and for every musician, but DJs usually are not musicians.
Great!
Now let‘s see how eager (Berlin) club owners are to give their staff and artists a respectful and fair salary…
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I don’t see any problem with lower taxes for both types of venues. All kinds of music wins that way. This change to the law in no way affects concert venues, so why not?
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What do you mean by anymore? That’s always been the case as far as I could see, when I started djing almost 20 years ago it was already like that, experience don’t matter because what 80% of the public wants to see if just some “boom boom” and they couldn’t care less if the dj can’t even sync 2 tracks. And for those of us interested in a little more than just the kick drum, you can still feel the years of experience in the exceptional ones, e.g. Laurent Garnier for 2 hours in a place with proper sound, yeah, you can feel his experience alright 
TECHNO IST MUZIK
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every time when someone claims that DJing is not music:
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That’s the good old-school way 
I guess some people (not me) have a problem with the modern beat-syncing aids at people’s disposal nowadays. Most audiences don’t care tho!
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That‘s the same people who never use timestretching / MIDi events / automations during their jawless damns 
?
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It’s about techno right? Music that mostly is made with some kind of sequencers. Music that in some kinds don’t even use much Harmony at all. In a time, where every beginner is able to write good sounding harmonies, because every second tool comes with scale- and chordmodes.
If we call DJs non-musicians, because we break down their skill into beatmatching, then a lot of electronic music producing artists are no musicians too, because all they do is click some predefined stuff together and create melodies by using random patterns. 
The thing is: no one in the audience cares if you are able to play the keys, if you did come up with the chordprogression yourself and if you build that kick sound from pure analoge circuit magic. They don’t care, that so many people are not able to stay on beat and use quantization and grids all the time, not talk about hardware step sequencer. And let’s not talk sampling … What they care is a good song to vibe too.
And it’s the same with beatmatch. Sure, it’s a handcraft matching 2 LPs Exactly together, but who the f### cares besides the musician-/DJ-police if the DJ did it by hand or pressed the button to help?
Tones of club-related techno-tracks are plain boring, if you play them from start to finish. They are built to be mixed. The whole purpose is to be mangled by a DJ.
It is a little bit like discussing orchestral musicians, because they neither write their own music nor do they come up with everything else but
Playing what the conductor wants.
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That just reminded me of that person who takes over spotify, but who can’t listen to more than 30s of a song and keeps switching to something else.
The guy has skills, but I honsetly don’t get the appeal of that at all, but I guess everyone’s tastes are different.
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Very well put! It’s just jealously and/or snobbishness. The amount of times, in all different arts (not just music), that I hear people criticise something with ‘I could do that easy’. My stock response now is just: ‘go on then!’
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As a German myself, I can verify without hesitation: This can only happen in Germany. facepalm.
I am
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Totally agree: It depends on your taste.
But back then this was revolutionary: Turntables were only meant for LP playback and there was interruptions between every record change. It was also very uncommon to use two turntables simultaneously.
Most of these techniques are a natural and expected part of any modern DAW btw
So at the end of the day it also depends on the historic value and time.
Todays equivalent to that would be drone- and ambient-artists who perform microchanges in 5h sets…
Also for hip hop where a drum break might only appear during a small section of a song, so using two of the same vinyl could extend the break endlessly by beat juggling. Love it!
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I’m not a big fan of courts made up of people who have no attachment to music. Did they just decide this for financial reasons or did they have key witnesesses, ,musicians per se. I very much doubt it.
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Dunno. But the result is positive. Taxes have been reduced for techno venues. What’s not to like?
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I guess because the music comes first before money.
It‘s funny though when you look at the history of techno, coming originally from Detroit and started by people who actually had a musical background in blues, jazz and gospel. Best and most famous proof is Underground Resistance:
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I mean: give me a month and WHOEVER you want and the “Lauren Garnier experience” will be matched by at least 90%
Is the 10% enough to justify the 10000euros price difference? For me, that’s a nope.
Techno is music, but most djs just ain’t musicians.
We can talk about the time invested in honing their skills, which is replicated and aided by technology, the playlists and their availability makes everyone able to find great music, while dj rig you can easily get for ~100 bucks.
The best part of that for me is now that everyone and their dog has tried djing the live scene gains more momentum.
So, a win win 
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The courts did not say that DJs are of equal worth as musicians or indeed that they are musicians. It merely ruled that a DJ performing at a club should be understood in the same way as a musician performing at a concert (as in, the DJ is the main reason that people are there) and taxed accordingly.
In this sense, the headline is a little disingenuous.
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