Back on July 29th, I wrote about how 51st State Festival had changed their minds over their own entrance policy. They initially demanded either a negative Covid test no more than 48 hours old or proof of vaccination in order to gain entry – and although they were asked for comment on my story that a DJ rebellion could have been responsible for the change of heart, they never did bother to reply.

Since then, I’ve asked a number of different venues which have policies asking for tests or vaccine status at the door whether their policy also applies to DJs. And every single time, the answer has either been complete silence, or simply a “no comment”. So what’s going on here?

Whenever I have problems finding out the answer to these questions, I go to my industry insider. He’s someone who’s been around since the rave days and has worked in a number of prominent positions. Other than that, I’m saying nothing else about who he is – but he speaks to me about these matters with a frankness many simply do not.

So I asked him about this and he said “It’s a bit of a complicated area. Some DJs qualify as employees, particularly if they’re residents of a club. Enforcing this rule on this category of person could prove difficult and leave clubs prone to legal challenges. Seeing most of them are on their knees thanks to Covid, expensive battles in court which they don’t know they’ll win is a risk best avoided.”.

And what about his guest DJs? He said “This one’s even less clear. Legally, DJs are a bit like contractors. They’re like builders. They’re asked to come in, do a specific job and they leave. Clubs can theoretically ask them to get tests done beforehand, but the DJs will probably add it on to their fee. Depending on the type of test and the country, it can get expensive. It’s all basically coming down to money”.

One final question for now – if the government goes ahead and introduces vaccine passports for nightclubs across England, would the double jabbed rule apply to the DJs as well? His reply to this one was “How the f*** should I know? No one does. No one from the government has said a f***ing word about it. We’ve got absolutely no idea what they’re thinking.”.

I’m going to ask some of my sources across in the USA about this to see if their responses are any different…