Written by Callum Gracie
In early March 2020, my calendar was full. Two weeks later, every booking had vanished.
Back then I played trumpet and saxophone for a living. Work came from weddings, corporate nights, and band gigs around Canberra. Then the phone started ringing with cancellations instead of enquiries.
The timeline still sticks with me. On 13 March, the Prime Minister advised against organised gatherings over 500 people. Five days after that, indoor gatherings dropped to a cap of 100. By 23 March, pubs, clubs and entertainment venues had shut their doors completely.
So my entire industry went dark in about ten days.
The numbers behind the silence
Everyone in music felt it, and the data backed up the feeling.
Within weeks of the shutdown, the I Lost My Gig campaign had tallied more than $325 million in lost income across Australian events. Around 65,000 job opportunities disappeared. Over 380,000 people copped some kind of financial hit.
PwC later put hard figures on the year. Australia’s total music market shrank from $1.8 billion in 2019 to $1.1 billion in 2020. Meanwhile the live sector, which was my whole income, lost as much as 90 per cent of its revenue.
Then came the part that stung most. Support never reached the majority of us. Only about one in three performing artists qualified for JobKeeper, because freelancers on short contracts fell outside the rules. Plenty of my peers landed on JobSeeker instead, roughly $400 a fortnight worse off.
So I sat with it for about a week. After that, I made a decision.
Why I picked up decks instead of a horn
I had studied jazz performance at ANU and spent years playing in ensembles. Music was the only trade I knew properly.
But a band needs a stage, a crowd, and five other people who all need paying. One person with a laptop and a speaker needs far less than that. The difference felt like the whole point.
So I taught myself to DJ from scratch during lockdown. Nobody was booking anything yet, which handed me months to get good before the market reopened.
Then I did something most musicians skip. Rather than only learning the craft, I learned how to sell it.
The skill that accidentally built a second business
I started reading about search engine optimisation, because I had noticed something about how couples plan weddings. Nearly all of it happens online. Research puts around 80 per cent of wedding planning on the internet, and one 2024 study found 78 per cent of high-end couples hired at least one supplier they discovered through Google.
So I built my DJ website and set about ranking it. No ads. No budget. Just weeks of reading and tweaking.
Eventually the site hit number one in Canberra for wedding DJ searches. Bookings followed, and they kept coming without a cent spent on advertising.
That result changed my career twice over. First it filled my calendar. Then it showed me a business I could build for other people, which became Otto Media.
Timing I cannot take credit for
The wedding market did something extraordinary while I was learning.
Australian marriages collapsed to 78,989 in 2020, according to the ABS. That was the biggest annual drop ever recorded and the lowest count since 1961. Canberra held up better than anywhere else, falling 12.7 per cent while Victoria dropped nearly 42 per cent.
Then everyone who postponed came back at once. In 2022, Australia registered 127,161 marriages, the highest number in our history.
So I walked into a boom with a website already ranking and a skill I had spent two years sharpening. Luck played a real part. Preparation decided what I could do with it.
Today I perform at 35 to 45 events a year, with five or six a month through peak season. My average package sits around $2,000, which lands almost exactly on the national average for wedding music.
The part that surprises people
Here is the odd bit. My side hustle out-earns what I pay myself from my main business.
DJing is on track for about $80,000 this year. Otto Media brings in roughly $20,000 a month in recurring retainers, plus project work on top. Yet my own salary sits at $40,000 plus super, because every spare dollar goes back into the agency.
For context, the average full-time Australian earns about $106,657 a year. Here in the ACT, that figure climbs closer to $116,948. So I pay myself roughly a third of what my neighbours make.
Meanwhile the DJ income does something the salary cannot. It covers the gaps.
Plenty of Australians juggle two incomes now, so I am hardly unusual. ABS figures show 986,400 people hold more than one job, up about 25 per cent in four years.
What the second income really bought
Canberra is expensive. Median house prices sit near a million dollars, and house rents run around $700 a week.
So the DJ money has never been fun money. It has been a buffer. Because of it, I could grow Otto Media slowly and properly instead of chasing every client who waved a cheque.
That buffer also let me sleep at night. My family stayed fine while I reinvested, and my team got paid on time every month.
What I would tell anyone starting over
Two things stand out when I look back.
First, the skill you already own is worth more than you think, provided you will reshape it. My ear for a room came from years on stage. DJing simply gave me a new way to use it.
Second, learn to market whatever you build. Creative work pays badly for people who cannot sell it. The average Australian artist earns just $23,200 a year from their creative practice, which sits near half the minimum wage.
One more thing deserves saying. Businesses born in bad years tend to last. Research into the Great Recession found startups launched during the downturn were 12.1 per cent more likely to reach their seventh birthday. Only 48 per cent of new Australian businesses reach year three at all.
So March 2020 was the worst month of my working life. Looking back now, it was also the month that made everything after it possible.
Author Bio:
I’m a multi-instrumentalist DJ and MC based in Canberra, performing high-energy DJ sets with live saxophone and trumpet for weddings and corporate events across the ACT, Sydney, and surrounding regions. I hold a Bachelor of Music from the Australian National University and spent over 20 years honing my craft on stage before going solo. My background managing 30+ creatives for Baker Boys Band and launching their Queensland operation taught me how to read a room and build an experience from the ground up. I bring premium sound equipment from EV, Shure, and Pioneer to every event and also offer photo booth hire and audio guest book services. My work has been recognised by ABIA, Brides Choice Awards, Wedding Diaries Editor’s Choice, Easy Weddings, and Equally Wed. When I’m not on the decks, I run Otto Media, a Canberra SEO agency helping service businesses grow online.
