Pioneer Perspective – Karl Detken and Davey Dave

An mp3 of the Interview is available lower in this text and via ITunes.  Full text is below and selected portions are published in Mobile Beat Magazine – to subscribe go to https://members.mobilebeat.com.

If you are a regular attendee at the Mobile Beat conferences, you no doubt have seen or even met Karl Detken and Davey Dave, the faces of Pioneer Pro DJ on the tradeshow floor. Karl, who has been with the company for
16 years, is Director of Product Planning and Artist Relations for Pioneer Pro DJ, while Dave came to Pioneer three years ago, after stints with a number of other DJ gear manufacturers, to fill the position of Senior Manager for Marketing. Mobile Beat publisher Ryan Burger sat down with these two product specialists-to talk about how Pioneer fits into the big picture of the mobile DJ world and how the company continues to lead in producing high-end equipment for discerning DJs, among other things…

Ryan Burger: This is Ryan Burger, the publisher of Mobile Beat magazine. We’re here with the faces of Pioneer, the guys that everybody sees at the mobile DJ conventions, be them the Mobile Beat Las Vegas show or one of the other conventions.

Dave and Karl, introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about how you got into this whole business.

Karl Detken: My name is Karl Detken. I’ve been with Pioneer for 16 years and I’m the director of product planning and artist relations.

Davey Dave: This is Davey Dave. I’ve been with Pioneer for three years. I’m the senior manager for marketing.

Ryan Burger: How did you both get into this business? From what I remember and what you’ve told me before, you guys were both DJs before you got in, so it’s not like you came through an electronics background or something like that. You guys are DJs.

Karl Detken: Yeah, that information is completely wrong, Ryan. I was actually not a DJ –

Ryan Burger: Were not. Okay. Sorry.

Karl Detken: — when I came to Pioneer in 1992.

Davey Dave: I was a scuba instructor as well.

Ryan Burger: Scuba instructor. Okay.

Karl Detken: He was a Jello scuba instructor, which was a specialized field.

Anyway, I was in music in a touring kind of original band, and discovered about Pioneer’s open position for, at that time, their karaoke products division, and they needed somebody that would be licensing music and programming their music and getting it pressed — at that time, on laserdisc — and since I came from a musical background, I took the job and have been here since.

Ryan Burger: Wow.

Karl Detken: He was kidding about the scuba instructor.

Davey Dave: So, I started out with Pioneer three years ago. Before that I’ve been DJing since 1983. I discovered Pioneer when I first saw the CDJ-700 players and DJ-500 back in 1998, I think it was. Since then, I knew I wanted to work for this company because I knew they were the best, but I didn’t know how to get to them. So I basically hounded and harassed and stalked Karl at every show from about 1999 up until three years ago and begged him for a job. And I’m not even joking about that.

I always knew Pioneer was the leader and I wanted to work with them. I worked for previous companies in the electronic industry, and finally three years got to hook up with Pioneer.

Ryan Burger: Back on you, Karl. I originally met you when you were “Karaoke Karl.” Was that kind of a thing they put you into for you to learn the industry? I had just assumed you had come from within and then moved into Pioneer, but it seems like obviously I’ve got it backwards.

Karl Detken: Yeah, a little bit backwards. First of all, I’ll tell you how the name came about. But I started with Pioneer in ’92, worked on the karaoke product; about ’95, ’96, my then Japanese boss said, please go do karaoke and learn about the industry better, and I thought that was a great idea.

So I went and I found a local bar and I said, hey, I’ll do your karaoke for $50 a night. And at that time, I thought, wow, that’s great; pay for my beer and have a good time singing. And after a while I just got to loving the industry and the product. And it also helped me in the development of our songs and selection of our songs.

The “Karaoke Karl” name came about somewhere about 1997, ’98. Pioneer — at that time, I had been involved in product placement in a lot of movies; My Best Friend’s Wedding, Frasier — TV and movies that would use our karaoke for a certain karaoke scene. There was a movie being done by Sony Pictures at the time with Gwyneth Paltrow and Brad Pitt [sic] called “Duets”, and they had called me in to do a script reading and make sure it was accurate and realistic, which I did. They found out I was doing karaoke at the time at a local club every Thursday night. They came down, unbeknownst to me, the producers; one of them being Bruce Paltrow, who is Gwyneth’s father, and Kevin Jones. They came down and said, how would you like to be in the movie? We’d actually like to add realistic guys that are doing. I said, well, let me check my schedule; Gwyneth who? Of course I said yes. And that’s how the name came, because that was my name in the particular film; Karaoke Karl.

Ryan Burger: And Davey, yourself I know you’re still very active. I know you disappear for overseas gigs all the time. You’re very active still in the club/DJ community.

Davey Dave: Yeah, I’m still an active DJ. I play in a two-man group called UberZone, and we pretty much tour around the world. We hit various countries throughout the year; Australia, a couple times of year, various places in Europe, Japan, Korea, all over. So I’m still very active in the club scene, definitely.

Ryan Burger: Okay. We’ve heard how each of you guys got there. How about Pioneer? Karl, you’ve been around for the [inaudible]; I’m sure Davey knows the whole story. But I mean, Karl, tell us a little bit more about you — Pioneer made the move from karaoke players, those big laserdiscs and all the stuff like that, into what is now the top professional gear that everybody’s loving?

Karl Detken: Well, Pioneer has actually been around since 1938. They started off as a speaker company in Japan, and moved into hi-fi and car audio products in the ’60s and ’70s; probably became a world brand somewhere around that time as well.

They introduced the first car CD player, the first car cassette player, and a bunch of firsts; plasmas and all these different things. But like you said, we were in karaoke. We actually brought karaoke to the United States, which we apologize to everyone publicly right now for bringing that craziness. In ’88 we brought it. About 1993 or so, we started — one of the things that we noticed is that many wedding DJs were using our karaoke for their weddings and bar things, and so we started looking at the DJ industry a little bit closer and seeing what products we could evolve into that might lend themselves to being strong in a DJ marketplace.

We decided to develop a DJ CD player, kind of a tabletop. A lot of people think it was the first tabletop ever released, but it actually wasn’t, because 10 or 15 years prior, Technics had made an ill attempt to release a tabletop CD player, but it didn’t have very good pitch and instant start wasn’t available back then, so it didn’t do very well. We were actually the second guys to actually develop this tabletop CD player with a large jog dial on the top, kind of emulating a turntable. It was the first looping player with seamless loop. There were many looping players that had a little bit of a delay, but it was the first seamless looping player. First player with something called Master Tempo, which kept the key of the music while the speed went up and down.

So it had a lot of firsts, and we entered that market in 1995 — January of 1995 at the NAMM show, we introduced that product. We did fairly well with it because it was a new technology. And at that time it was funny because we were still kind of committed to karaoke, this particular DJ tabletop CD player also had a karaoke output. So it would play CD-G discs as well. And after that we discontinued the CD-G because we started focusing just primarily on DJs and club DJs and mobile DJs.

And basically that was the first five years of releasing mixers and different CDJ. About 2000, 2001, I think we revolutionized the world by introducing the CDJ-1000, which was the first realistic scratch-emulating CD player. It has become the standard in the world. We sold our millionth CDJ last December, and it’s quite an accomplishment for Pioneer that we’re very proud of. And our mixers are also very much a standard in the nightclub and a lot of the mobile DJ industry.

So that’s kind of the history and kind of a brief short version.

Ryan Burger: Okay. Well, Pioneer’s known for being patient; engineering the product the perfect way. You may not be the first on the market to have something, like for instance, the CMX rack-mount CD players, the DVJ-1000s, obviously, and your new MEP unit out; there’s been video mixers but nothing like this. Does Pioneer plan — is it kind like a corporate philosophy that they plan it that way to do research? I guess I want to understand things and let everybody else understand a little bit where Pioneer places itself.

Karl Detken: Yeah. Pioneer has always been very — one of the values is always to have quality product, and that’s come down from our car electronics, home electronics, our plasma electronics things — everything we do goes into much R&D. Usually for DJ products it’s two to three years of development from the time of idea and inception to the time it actually hits the market. In that also is one period of testing, both at the factory — they have some incredible testing rooms where they put them through 150-degree heat, below freezing room temperature, dust testing rooms — and all of that goes through months and months, often six months of just some heavy testing before it goes out to market.

And one of the reasons is not just because of the philosophy of having quality product that is going to withstand everything out there, but also because from a DJ standpoint — Ryan, as a DJ, you know as well — there is no chance of turning back the hands of time to redo that first dance of the bride and groom if your CD starts skipping. And I’ve seen over the last 10 to 15 years the demise of many, many [inaudible] has been because they come to market too quickly and they haven’t tested long enough. So what happens is it gets out there, it fails, and it fails at the most inopportune time. And it’s embarrassing to the DJ. You lose their loyalty.

So it’s kind of the reason that we are always a little bit behind the curve of technology. Some people always wonder why are you taking a year longer than everybody else to release whatever video or mp3 or whatever. It’s because we want the product to work flawlessly as much as it can. That’s kind of the reason why.

Davey Dave: Yeah. It’s very interesting that not only in our market but other markets as well, other industries, that everybody’s trying to be first to market with new technologies and things. Pioneer’s not the first, but they do have the best, and that’s something I’m very proud of as well, to represent that philosophy.

Ryan Burger: That’s obviously you were hounding Karl versus someone else out there; because you knew you wanted to be involved with a product that was the tops.

Davey Dave: Exactly.

Karl Detken: Now, mostly all of our products have been successful, with the exception of — and even these products — the VJM-700 and the DMP, first mp3 player to hit the market — those were the only things that were discontinued very quickly.

Davey Dave: Oddly enough, the DMP was the first to have that technology, so they should have wasted.

Karl Detken: Yeah. It was a little bit ahead of its time, but I think that part of the reason of our success on any product is the fact that when people buy it, they know they’re buying quality product that they can rely on.

Ryan Burger: Gotcha. Where do you see things going in the next couple years? Is the average mobile disc jockey going to be going into video content? Are they going — where is it going?

Karl Detken: Well, for us there’s really kind of three markets that we’re always looking at. There’s the club market, which Pioneer dominates with probably 90 percent of market share. There’s the mobile DJ market. And then there’s the hip-hop market. And I think for us our philosophy and our goals still remain the same, which is that we are still pursing video. We think video’s the future. How it plays out into the mobile DJ industry, we are continuing to look at that. The club industry is a little bit easier to kind of visualize and see how that does work for that.

So we’re looking at things like controllers, or products that control software, and not just our software that’s out there, but a universal controller for all softwares. So we’re developing products like that and also still pursuing the video market.

Ryan Burger: Gotcha. Well, where are things going in the next couple months? What are we all going to be looking forward to seeing with the Pioneer nameplate on it? Have you got something in the pipeline you can tease us on a little bit?

Karl Detken: We can’t share anything that’s too far down the road by 2009, but there are some really, really cool things coming out in 2009 that the market has been asking for and wanting that will again set Pioneer as the pioneer in the industry. But probably close to the time that this podcast airs, we will have released our new headphones, the HDJ-2000. They will be our highest-end headphones that come to market, with better fidelity, better audio quality; new materials that are being used, alloy metals that are just virtually indestructible; new foam padding similar to the memory foam that’s used on mattresses that you spend $3,000 for. We’re developing products with that. It’s a better sounding, more comfortable, lighter type of headphones that we’re hoping is going to be something that the market wants.

Davey Dave: And Ryan, you were talking about the different markets that we target. This is actually a product that’s going to expand our market share because it’s not only going to be perfect for the professional DJ but also for studio use as well, for like monitoring your mixes in the studio via headphones. So it’s the perfect headphones — high-end headphones for studio use and professional DJ use as well.

Ryan Burger: So, yeah, that hits across your three marketplaces you mentioned earlier, plus adds the studio side to things. Understandably, yes.

Okay. Last thing I really have for you guys is where do you want Pioneer to be known? I guess Dave, it’s more in your area because you’re the man that gets the word out about the great things that are developed. How do you want Pioneer known in the DJ marketplace?

Davey Dave: I want to maintain — well, Pioneer wants to maintain its high-end brand image. We’re viewed as the Lexus, the Mercedes of the DJ world, and we want to maintain that image and show that we justify our price range with quality and reliability and durability and unique feature set. We just want to maintain that high brand image in all product categories?

Karl, you want to add to that?

Karl Detken: Yeah. I think we’ve already kind of made our mark in the DJ history, or the DJ world by introducing the CDJ-1000 in 2000, which — a million CD players is quite a lot. I don’t think any manufacturer can even come close to that, and that says a lot. I think Pioneer is what you would call, back in the ’80s and ’90s, the Technics 1200 and even now the Technics 1200 is the standard turntable for a nightclub DJ, and that I think is where we’ll be in the annals of history for DJ products. The CDJ-1000 will be what revolutionized DJs to go from hardcore vinyl to that medium, and it’s still being used and probably will be used for several years to come.

Ryan Burger: Absolutely fantastic. And in general, if anybody that’s listening to this wants to catch and meet Karl or Davey, the best place to see them will be the upcoming Mobile Beat Las Vegas show. Check out MobileBeat.com for more information on that.

Thanks, guys.

Karl Detken: Thank you.

Davey Dave: Thanks. I’ve got to go back to my scuba lessons now.