DJs, on the face of it, seem like easy people to buy gifts for when Christmas rolls around. We’re music lovers with extra steps; what could possibly be difficult about that? But, as you’ll no doubt have found by virtue of coming to this Christmas gifts for DJs guide, a lot could be difficult about that.
DJs are phenomenally difficult to buy for, for the simple fact that DJing can be such an esoteric hobby/passion/career-of-a-lifetime. Vinyl’s more or less out, for starters; we’re professionally picky people, with abstract tastes that can be difficult to discern without a leading clue of some sort. Many self-described ‘DJ accessories’ online are also out, by virtue of not actually being useful DJing accoutrements.
As such, it’s easy to default to the DJ-adjacent decorative item, the loosely-affiliated gag gift. Here, then, a direct plea from a DJ to you: please don’t get a set of coasters that look like records. Please. Same goes for mugs with ‘world’s best DJ’ printed on them, posters that say “last night a DJ saved my life” and old 12”s that have been melted into the vague form of a bowl. It’s the thought that counts, now and always, but such gifts don’t quite achieve what you want them to achieve.
If all of that’s out of the question, then what’s in? Well, socks. Socks are always in, even if they say “last night a DJ saved my life” on them. But what else? This guide has the answers to the best Christmas gifts for DJs, from practical stocking-filler accessories to Big Presents that the DJ in your life will love, appreciate, and actually want to use. A few probing questions here and there, and you’ll be able to narrow down the items on this list to a few that your favourite disc-spinner might actually want - whether storage for their USB storage, spare adapters for their headphones, or a dub siren for funsies.
For more DJ gift ideas and major savings, keep an eye on our Black Friday music deals page.
This might seem like a pretty low-key gift, but it’s actually the perfect DJ stocking filler. Because at some point in their career, every DJ will eventually find themselves about to start a gig having forgotten that they removed their headphone adapter a few hours ago, and they are therefore unable to plug their headphones in. Carrying a couple of these headphone adapters in your DJ bag is always a good idea, as they have the potential to save your set or make you a DJ hero for the DJ after you who has forgotten their adapter!
For the vinyl DJ in your life, rotary mixer company Mastersounds produces a range of gorgeous, high-quality vinyl-related products, including these turntable weights. They are placed directly onto the vinyl record when playing to control skips and jumps, and reduce unwanted turntable resonance, which Mastersounds reports results in “improved bass response, tighter mids, and controlled highs.” They come in a variety of colours and designs are not only functional but they look beautiful too: crafted from a single piece of high-grade aluminium with a silky smooth, expertly anodised exterior and elegant matted satin finish, they make a classy original gift for a vinyl DJ.
This is a unique little DJ gift, kind of like Lego for DJs. It’s a tiny but powerful analog filter that you build at home - no soldering, there’s just a few pieces to assemble - that you can then attach to any sound source or your DJ mixer to instantly create that classic filter-house sound. It’s modelled on the Korg MS20 filter, is switchable between high and low pass filter, and of course has those two vital cut off and resonance (Krischer call it ‘Peak’) controls, and the potential to self-resonate if you turn the peak up high enough, creating a massive, speaker-shredding oscillator!
This is a nice little entry noise level meter. It’s a small, versatile, handheld, battery-powered unit, ideal for working DJs and promoters to check the volume levels in the booth or the dancefloor, and for monitoring long-term exposure to amplified sound. It comes with a small back-lit display for working in dark environments, has a measurement range up to 130 dB, which should be enough for the average club / venue environment, and also features an automatic shutdown feature for when you forget to turn it off. The UT353 is equipped with Bluetooth and USB interface for connection to a device, but also functions perfectly well as a standalone unit.
DJs that use CDJs are always updating their USB sticks with new crates, cuts and playlists - but most of the latest and best laptops for DJs have said goodbye to the trusty USB-A format, instead going all-in on USB-C ports. This is Not Good when most CDJs out there only accept USB-A drives or SD cards (though, in truth, barely anyone actually uses SD cards for their digital DJing). A USB-C expander hub can be a godsend, then, not only for allowing the fuss-free updating of conventional USBs but also for allowing the updating of multiple USBs at once. It’s a quality-of-life improvement the DJ in your life will be hugely grateful to receive!
Digital DJs have (or at least, ought to have) a menagerie of USBs to hand for playing and playing out; having multiple identically-updated drives dramatically reduces the risk of a set being cut unceremoniously short by a corrupted USB, as does having a few older backups to avoid compatibility issues with unfamiliar equipment. Having somewhere safe to put these USBs - and to keep a bunch of adjacent accessories like USB data cables, a spare SSD and so forth - is a great idea, and one of these computer accessory travel bags is ideal for the purpose.
Ideally, DJ torches need to be light and portable, powerful enough to help locate a dropped USB key in the booth or reconnect mixer cables, but not so bright that the beam breaks the atmosphere in the club. There are lots of torches on the market, many of them are suitable for DJs, but we like this one from Lighthouse for its combination of size and features. It has three output settings, including white dimmable and red, which is ideal for illuminating a DJ booth without killing the vibe. It’s also really light at 37 grams, has a strong magnet and a clip so you can easily fix it to things, and charges via USB.
Traditionally found in reggae and dub sound systems, hip-hop, freestyle, and radio DJs have also made dub sirens a part of their sound, and Benidub, a company that describes itself as dedicated to the art and science of dub, has a range of hand-built 100 percent analog dub DJ FX boxes. The DS01 is their entry-level siren unit, which produces a suite of fat, smooth electronic blips, whoops, swoops, and bleeps, emulating classic dub reggae soundsystem sirens. It comes with individual controls for waveform shape and modulation rate and has lots of scope for manual sound manipulation via a pair of chunky buttons. It has a power connection and a single quarter-inch output for instant plug-and-play action: rewind!
The DJ book market has blossomed over the last few years, with memoirs from scene OG’s, genre histories, photographic collections, and practical DJing guides all jostling for space in your local bookshop or online retailer. In this crowded market, there are a few titles that remain firmly popular and highly recommended, and of these, Last Night A DJ Saved My Life by authors and DJs Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton remains the definitive history of DJs and DJ culture. The latest edition of the book has been updated, including new sections on women in DJ culture and a dedicated jazz funk chapter. A fascinating and essential DJ read.
Among the many affordable and portable DJ FX units, Korg’s Monotron Delay is definitely worth a look. This cute little unit is actually a fully analog, battery powered little synth that comes with an onboard filter, LFO and space delay, and if a DJ were to place it, via its 1/8" (3.5mm) stereo connection, either directly between their sound source and mixer, or put it on an insert or send and return on a mixer, they could use it as a portable analog filter and delay unit! And at under fifty pounds, it's a highly affordable DJ gift option.
If you’re buying a gift for someone who DJs with vinyl, you may already have heard various moanings and groanings from them about back pain or some other faffery relating to both records and travel. It’s no secret that vinyl weighs a tonne, and no secret that many vinyl DJs are too stubborn to do themselves a favour accordingly. Enter the UDG Ultimate Trolley vinyl bag - wheely for ease of transport, big enough to support the average all-vinyl set, and small enough not to entirely blow your big-gift budget in the process. This could well be the most thoughtful gift for DJs on the list.
In a certain light, buying a DJ a set of musician-friendly earplugs could well be read as an off-handed insult of sorts. Counterintuitive as it seems, giving such a gift to someone who feels strongly about music and the hearing of it, ear protection is serious business. And Alpine’s MusicSafe Pro earplugs are serious about it. These earplugs are as industry-standard as budget earplugs get, with gradations of noise attenuation and a handy case for keeping them close. It’s easy to forget how loud the booth can be, even for a gigging DJ; these earplugs are a perfect reminder, and a great gift to boot. What greater gift could you give than a few more decades of hearing-loss-free DJing?
Every DJ relies heavily on their headphones - and if they’re out at venues a lot, the headphones travel just as hard as them and their records. It's a shame, then, that many of even the best headphones come with sub-par soft cases, ill-equipped for the rigours of the road (even if it is just a crammed bus into town). So if the DJ in your life has headphones worth protecting, they'll need some kind of protection for them. UDG’s headphone hard case is a great shout for this, sized to fit most cans and with space for accessories to boot; you'll still need to make sure that the headphones you are buying for will fit, of course! And if the DJ in your life doesn’t have any headphones worth protecting… Well, read on a bit.
Whatever the kind of DJ, digital is sort-of inevitable - and whether your DJ giftee is a pro CDJ whizz or flirting with digital DJing, they’re bound to get something out of the Numark Mixtrack Go. This is a micro-format DJ controller for pretty much any device that can handle DJ software; it’s a familiar two-deck format, with some surprising on-board features that are deeply friendly to the modern DJ (including dedicated buttons for stem separation). It unlocks free access to Algoriddim djay and Serato DJ Lite for the beginners, and it’ll work with just about anything else that takes MIDI. It’s a great learning platform, a fun controller for on-the-go mixing and production, and generally a fun thing to have around for the pros. Bonus points for being cheap!
We're in three-figure price territory now, but these DJ headphones have become a classic of the genre. DJ cans need to deliver good levels in noisy environments plus, ideally, a rotatable capsule for single-ear listening. These have both and some lovely other touches. The isolation – the ability to hear the music and not so much of the crowd/club – is excellent, they are light in weight and have a fantastic and rugged modular design, where all parts (including ear pads, cable, clamp and headband padding) are replaceable. In short, there are many good reasons that these continue to be a number one DJ choice.
Buying advice
Buying the best Christmas gift for a DJ in your life means either knowing something about DJing, or knowing something about your DJ. Ginning up on DJing isn’t advised unless you’re actually interested in becoming one yourself (and you should be!), so it might be more worth your time to learn a few things about your giftee.
The first thing would be to find out what format they play the most. Most DJs are either vinyl DJs who play with physical records, or digital DJs who play off USBs or a laptop. If it’s vinyl, then there’s a whole world of record-related ephemera that they’ll love, from record weights to vinyl bags and beyond. If they’re purely a digital DJ, then USBs, DJ controllers and the like may spark more joy.
The type of music they tend to play will also be a major factor – insofar as some genres lean more heavily on certain accessories than others. If you’re planning on surprising the minimal techno DJ in your life with, for example, a dub siren, they may not have much use for it, as opposed to the freestyle, hip-hop or reggae DJ who will probably happily rinse it out.
All this said, Christmas is a time for giving surprise gifts, and in a world where buying tunes, funding decks and mixers, or putting on parties is an expensive pastime, it might be worth just surprising them with the kind of one-off DJ related treat that they wouldn’t get for themselves. Even if it doesn’t find daily use with them, it could be a lovely addition to their DJ set up, or a minor quality-of-life improver in some small way.
What to avoid
1. Branding
Just because something is branded as a DJ product, it doesn’t mean it is actually a DJ product. There are many low-budget, low-quality products on Amazon and AliExpress that don’t pass muster as real DJ accessories - most commonly, record cleaning kits and cheap headphones. Don’t be swayed by the attractive price and Photoshopped product images! Instead, start with the product type, then work towards finding a reputable brand.
2. The cheapest option
Low prices are often the biggest tell for low quality, and even recognisable brands can be guilty of selling sub-par stuff at a cheap price. This is true in any realm; the internet is full of highly specced, extremely cheap, slightly suspect versions of whatever it is you’re looking for. As with anything, you get what you pay for, and that’s never truer than with DJ gear – especially gear that is going to get used a lot. A general rule to follow is, if the price for something looks too good to be true, it probably is and is best avoided.
3. Impulse buying
If you’re going to surprise the DJ in your life with something massive like a new set of DJ decks, then it would be a bold gift-giver who didn’t check in with them first. There are so many options on the market, and all of them tend to cater more to a specific type of DJ. If you’re not familiar with the DJ software your loved one uses, or the kind of vinyl DJing they do, buying new gear is dangerous territory.
You could have a “If you could have any DJ set up you wanted” conversation and make a note of their response; alternatively, you could ask their mates for pointers on what they’re most likely to want or use. Even with this information, it’ll take a little research before you can comfortably land on something the DJ in your life would be able to make the most of.
If you’re in the dark about what’s out there for DJ gear, we’ve got some excellent buyer’s guides that could be the inspiration you need – everything from DJ controllers to DJ turntables. And they have their own advice sections, too!
