The History of Pioneer DJ

It is hard to believe Pioneer DJ started out over 20 years ago in 1994 with the world exclusive CDJ-500 (top loading CD player for DJs).  As a brand, it is apparent Pioneer DJ strives to produce top-quality equipment, further world and industry firsts along with holding on to its reputation as the industry standard brand.  As Pioneer has become such an established brand within both the DJ and Production industry, we thought it worthy of writing this article in its honour.

Pioneer DJ Milestones

A year after the CDJ-500, Pioneer DJ released the DJM-500, known as the world’s first DJ mixer for pro-DJs with Beat Effect.  2001 saw the CDJ-1000 the world’s original DJ player with real-time scratch.  It then wasn’t until 2009 when Pioneer released the CDJ-2000 which was the first CDJ to support Pioneer’s Rekordbox software.  In 2011, the DJM-900NXS became the 4-channel, club standard mixer followed in 2012 by the club standard CDJ, Pioneer CDJ-2000NXS.  At the end of 2012 the now ever popular DDJ-SX was released followed a year and a half later by its larger and superior brother the Pioneer DDJ-SZ, both designed for use with Serato DJ software.  Finally, coming later this year, the eagerly anticipated DDJ-RX and DDJ-RZ are due for release from Pioneer DJ, November and December respectively.  Both DJ controllers have been designed for use with Pioneer’s new Rekordbox DJ software which is due for release in October 2015. 

Professional Audio Equipment Business

Not only do Pioneer DJ excel in DJ and Studio equipment they have also proved to have extensive knowledge of the professional audio equipment business.  So much so, that since 2013, the GS-WAVE Series floor stacks and XY Series PA/monitor speakers have been installed in numerous locations throughout the world.  

20  Year Turntable

You can’t miss the path that the music industry has taken from vinyl to CD’s to music files (e.g. MP3’s) and now the future looks set to be amongst the clouds therefore it was justifiable to think the iconic turntable was considered a thing of the past, retro even.  That was until 2014 when Pioneer DJ released the PLX-1000 the next generation analogue turntable marking their 20^th year in the industry. 

Overall

No matter what new industry change is presented to Pioneer DJ they never fail to face it head on and produced high quality, innovative and industry standard equipment as a result.  Bring on the next 20 years; it will be very interesting to see what the future entails.