Turnin’ the Tables: DJ K Yung on Building a DJ Career From the Ground Up (Episode 44)

Make Music Your Business.

DJ K Yung's story opens like a movie. Born in Seoul, South Korea, she was abandoned after birth and left on the doorstep of a police station with no note, no name and no birthday. The orphanage gave her a name, and the "Kyung" in it became the K Yung she still DJs under. Months later she was adopted, flown to Minneapolis and named Rachel Hagen by her new parents, into a family full of church singers, music teachers and classically trained players.

In Episode 44 of The Career Musician, Nomad and his special guest co-host, the Lovely Lola, sit down with DJ K Yung to talk about building a DJ career from the ground up, why the turntable is a real instrument, and how one radio mix turned into a monthly show.

The coalition

K Yung belongs to two DJ coalitions. You don't apply to one. One of the founders watched what she was doing on social media for about a year and a half before he reached out.

In the music business, she says, people guard contacts like their social security number. A coalition is a safe haven where DJs share ideas, information and networks with people who won't take them and exploit them. There is no written code of ethics. It is understood that the coalition is your family. Other DJs have handed members high-profile gigs, and that is how she got some of her start on radio: someone gave her one slot on air, and it grew.

The catch is you have to be a genuinely good person. You can't just take, take, take. Nomad loved it. He talked about musicians acting like crabs in a bucket, climbing over each other to get out, when they could be building a ladder together instead. Work begets work, and it moves fastest through people who trust each other.

The turntable is an instrument

Some people argue DJs aren't musicians. K Yung started violin at three, then played cello and French horn and dabbled in organ and piano.

"I understand what being a musician is... but I feel a turntable is my violin. That's my instrument."

DJ K Yung, 15:13

She learns the way players do. She watches other DJs, breaks down how they transition into the next song or where they cut a record to get that sound, then tries to make it her own. Nomad compared it to his teenage years copying Eddie Van Halen.

Technology made her job easier. A controller, a hard drive and a laptop replace crates of vinyl she could barely carry at five feet tall. But the buttons only help if you understand the basic art underneath. There is still no substitute for putting in the hours.

She became a DJ on purpose

Her origin is pure hustle. A friend and soccer teammate tried out for an MTV band show and asked K Yung to help manage her career. K Yung didn't know the business, but she had common sense, so they learned it together.

The problem was getting DJs to play her artist's music. A manager is one of ten thousand people asking. A fellow DJ gets listened to. So she made a conscious decision to become DJ K Yung, and promised herself she couldn't fake it, because getting called out would hurt her artist too. She invested in about ten thousand dollars of equipment, microphones and speakers, so they could put on their own shows at the drop of a dime. When she and the artist later parted ways, she figured if she could promote them, she could promote herself even better. She ate a lot of ramen for a long time.

That is Make Music Your Business: see the gap, invest in yourself, and hold yourself accountable for showing up.

Scratching wins battles, mixing pays the bills

Her first mentor was a battle DJ from St. Louis, and all they practiced was scratching and battle tricks. Then another mentor heard her play a club and told her the truth. Her BPMs didn't match, her transitions weren't smooth, and dancers had to stop and change how they were moving.

"He was like, yeah, the scratching is great, but do you want to be a career musician?... You have to learn how to mix."

DJ K Yung, 1:12:11

That mentor is the one she credits with making her a career musician, because battle DJs don't get paid. Smooth blending gets you booked in clubs and on radio. Flash is fun. Reliability beats virtuosity.

Lola added the live side. A set list is a template you will never stick to. When the dance floor is full, you play to the room for the next 90 minutes.

Your value is not the gig

K Yung once sat on a music panel full of accolades and told the artists in the audience she wished they could scroll through her email. All the nos. All the no replies. All the "we went a different direction." Lola remembered riding bikes to a lunch meeting that felt like a sure thing, then hearing crickets.

"I would love for you to go through my email one day and look at how many nos I got, or how many no replies I got."

DJ K Yung, 51:43

As the table put it, your value isn't determined by the gig you're doing right now. That gig is temporary. Your value comes from your own sense of self and what you tell yourself.

She also got honest about lifestyle. The DJ life is synonymous with the party, and early in 2020 she quit drinking, cleaned up her diet and started hitting the gym with Lola on the road. She wants to keep doing this for a long time, not burn out in the clubs.

Capitalize on one thing

Through a coalition member, K Yung made her debut with a mix on a SiriusXM show. Because she wasn't in New York, more live slots didn't follow right away. So she used that one mix as a calling card to put out feelers. A friend tried to get her onto another station. That fell through, but she got friendly with the program director, and it trickled down into guest mixes and eventually a monthly one-hour mix show on Shade 45. She was invited to DJ on Sway in the Morning after meeting the team at the station.

Nomad's words: opportunity begets opportunity. Everything you do is an audition, including one mix on somebody else's show and a casual hang at the station.

Two more things she swears by. She still gets in the car and meets people face to face, because social media is only the first hello. And living in the Quad Cities instead of LA or New York turned out to be an edge: she can fly anywhere, and at home she has no competition but herself.

The takeaway

Her final word was consistency. You are not at a level to take a break, so don't. Find your people, learn the skill that actually pays, and turn every small opening into the next one. If you are building toward your next booking, start with the free Get the Gig guide, and find DJ K Yung at djkyung.com.

Get the gig. Keep the gig. Build the career.

Watch on YouTube or find every episode on the TCM Podcast page.