Mobile disc jockey

Mobile disc jockeys (also known as mobile DJs or mobile discos) are disc jockeys that tour with portable sound, lighting, and video systems. They play music for a targeted audience from a collection of pre-recorded music using vinyl records, cassettes, CDs, or digital music formats such as USB flash drives or laptop computers.

Mobile DJs perform at a variety of events including wedding receptions, Bar and Bat Mitzvah receptions, company parties, school dances, anniversaries, and birthday parties. They also perform in public at taverns, nightclubs, and block parties.

Business models for mobile disc jockeys include full-time, part-time, multi-operator, and single-operator companies.

The first entertainment company (in the world) to invent the term, "Mobile Discotheque" was based in the United Kingdom and it was launched by a young man called Roger Squire. The word "discotheque" is a modification of the French word "bibliotheque" which means (in French), library of books. A club in Paris in the 1950s with twin turntables playing only records modified this word converting it to "discotheque" (then meaning library of records).

It was not until the mid 1960s that one or two London based clubs discovered and borrowed the term "discotheque" to describe their music format. By early 1966, Roger Squire saw a big marketing opportunity to add the word "mobile" before the word "discotheque" in order to launch a new style DJ based mobile entertainment service. He was the first person in the world to launch such a service using the banner Roger Squire's Mobile Discotheques. His new service was launched in London in June 1966 and it quickly became hugely successful.

Within two years, Squire had fifteen mobile discothèques performing approximately sixty functions every week. He performed at events attended by celebrities and royalty, at countless college dances, wedding receptions, and all kinds of social events. Over the next few years, many copycat "Mobile Discos" started to emulate his successful formula. During this period, London got it Swinging London reputation. Squire later set up a disco equipment supply service called Squire Light & Sound that sold disco sound and lighting systems to budding DJs, both in the United Kingdom and abroad.

The Squire's Company became the biggest name in UK DJ entertainment in the 60s, 70s and 80s before Roger retired from the business 1988. Roger later took up writing DJ advice articles in DJ magazines and the magazine Pro Mobile, later awarded Roger Squire a Lifetime Achievement Award in March 2015.

In the 1980s and 1990s, mobile DJs began to form associations and create professional business networks that evolved into annual trade shows and internet discussion forums. The early 1990s saw the emergence of organized professional trade shows such as the "Mobile Beat Show" in Las Vegas, Nevada, and the "DJ Times Expo" in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Seminars by numerous respected DJs such as John Rozz, Ray "Ray Mar" Martinez, Stacy Zemon, Mark Ferrell, Peter Merry, Randy Bartlett, and Steve Moody^{[citation needed]} have helped DJs to better understand their profession, how to be more professional and to treat being a DJ as a business operation.