Education initiative FutureDJs first managed to get DJ decks recognised as an instrument for GCSE assessment. Last week they went a big step further - London College of Music Examiners published a syllabus that offers grade certifications on CDJs (decks for manipulating music from CDs or digital files). This puts them on a par with classical and jazz instruments, and provides detailed criteria for teachers assessing GCSE-level pupils who work with CDJs. Guardian reports on the big move forward.

Many DJs juggle nocturnal activities with full-time or part-time work - Mix Magazine says in its article about the new generation of electronic DJs who continue to work at their 5-to-9 jobs and manage to DJ at night. Mix analyzes a few essentials: How can jobs help and hinder success? Is everyone suited to DJing and making music full-time? And if you had the chance to give up the day job, would you?

"It’s only a matter of time when going to a party will mean just putting on Virtual Reality (V.R.) goggles and headphones at home and you’ll be at the event with people from all over the world, chatting in real-time with someone who could be present in their natural looks, retouched, as a cartoon, avatar… the possibilities are endless" - DJ UMEK told Attack magazine about what he thinks DJing will look like in ten years. DJ Heather has a philosophical perspective: "We are living in the future past present. The next ten years will be straddling the world of the analogue and digital. Reflecting a desire f the deejay, producer, club-goer, raver to connect on a tactile level while being able to maintain the convenience of having world access in the palm of their hand".

Let’s say that streaming becomes the de facto method of music delivery/consumption for the DJ community – what might this mean? - Attack Magazine asks theoretically (although it might just end up that way). It means that digital mixers and players will be able to collect and collate information from DJs about what they play, by whom and for how long. Digital mixers will be able to harvest every single piece of information from their actual front panel controls, which opens the door to DJ ghosts. Does it even signal the end of DJing? Probably not, it might simply be that in the future everyone, even A.I.s, can be a DJ.

DJing from a USB stick changed the game completely in the last 10 years - faster and more reliable USB technology opened the gates of DJing to bedroom hobbyists and newbies who could carry their whole record collections in a pocket. That also made DJing much cheaper, and certain skills much easier - most obviously, beatmatching. Through certain fresh innovations - hot cues, wide pitch, and the controversial sync button among them - the art of DJing has been blown wide open, offering new opportunities for experimentation which, in turn, have led young producers to create genuinely new sounds and styles.