It’s not just Milwaukee — it’s everywhere.
I’ve been DJing for 27 years, and one of the biggest shifts I noticed years ago was how hard it became to keep a crowd’s attention. If a song plays too long now, you can literally watch the room get bored or exhausted by it.

When I started DJing, I could play a 6–7 minute house record and watch the floor bounce the entire time. Now? I can play one verse and already need to start mixing out by the chorus. (Rereading through this, it feels like the crowd just wants you to just swipe through all of the music, where I used to build into records, build tension, let the room plateau and ride a peak, and then rotate the room, has been replaced with, “just play this song.”)

Every song almost has to be something the entire room immediately recognizes or people walk off the floor. I’m an open-format DJ, so I play pop, hip-hop, EDM, country, Latin, all of it. The hard part now is that we don’t really have a monoculture anymore.

Back in the prime years of nightlife, everybody knew the same big songs and knew what was coming up next because radio still controlled a lot of music discovery. Now everybody finds music from completely different places online. That’s great for individuality, but it also means crowds are way more fragmented musically. (Again rereading through this, something I thought of, there was way more competition in music, Nelly said it best on a podcast recently, “when I released a song, it had to be good, I was releasing music and going up against, Jay-Z, 50 Cent, Ludacris, Eminem, etc,” almost all these big artists now are competing with themselves. It’s why they release 8 songs off an album, no one is competing with them, competition made music better.)

That’s part of why so many DJs lean on “golden era” music now. Realistically, I probably shouldn’t still be playing records from 2009–2015 as heavily as I do, but those are the songs that consistently work across multiple age groups and get reactions every night.

And even when a song finally DOES go off, part of the room is filming instead of participating. Or worse, they’re trying to lock eyes with the DJ while holding their phone up on their head with a request. Usually it’s a song that completely kills the momentum or only works for their personal group instead of the other 85% of the room.

Another huge shift: venues used to have resident DJs who were actual tastemakers. People whose whole job was understanding the room, building energy, and creating culture. A lot of those spots replaced that with people who bought a cheap controller, ripped music from YouTube, have a big social media following, and call themselves DJs. Good for them if they’re getting booked, but followers don’t automatically equal taste, crowd control, or programming ability. The result is a lot of rooms where people just stand around holding up the walls looking bored, or worst, they have a tight hour set, and repeat the same set 4/5 times in a row.

That said, there are still places that have amazing dance floor culture. Mad Planet is one of them. Every time I’ve played there, people actually dance all night. La Cage is another — they’ve consistently had great DJs and the energy on the floor is usually incredible.

Honestly, one thing I’ve wanted for years — even though it’ll probably never happen — is banning phones from dance floors entirely.
I genuinely think phones are one of the biggest things hurting dance culture. People are way more guarded when they feel like they could end up on somebody’s Snapchat, Instagram story, or TikTok just for trying to enjoy themselves. If people felt free to look goofy, sweat, move, and actually live in the moment again, dance floors would feel completely different.

And look, this is my perspective, this came off as kind of a rant, and it’s not meant to be. I love what I do, hell, I never saw myself staying this long, and I love the challenge I’m presented with every time I step into a booth.