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Meet 3LAU, The DJ That Turned Down Wall Street

This article is more than 8 years old.

Justin Blau remembers the exact moment he chose his career. It was the spring of his junior year in college and he had received a call from a  BlackRock recruiter who was offering an internship to fast track him into a lucrative position on Wall Street. As a full-scholarship finance major at Washington University in St. Louis and the son of a former hedge fund manager, Blau had been waiting for this opportunity his whole life.

He made the decision immediately.

"I'm not going to be able to work with you this summer," he told the recruiter. "I'm kind of making dance music."

Those words carried plenty of risk, but for the artist known as "3LAU" (pronounced "Blau"), it's certainly paid off. The 24-year-old has become a billboard act in his hometown of Las Vegas and gone from DJing college fraternity formals to playing the largest music festivals in the nation. That's all happened in the span of three years following his decision to turn down BlackRock and drop out of school following his third year.

While Blau didn't crack FORBES' rankings of the world's highest-paid DJs, he earned more than enough to justify his decision to leave Wall Street behind. In the 12 months preceding June 1, 2015, FORBES estimates that he pulled in about $2 million in pre-tax earnings, a respectable amount for an artist who said he's applying what he learned in school to his fledgling career.

"I think there's a really big misconception of what DJs actually do," he said during a day I spent with him in Las Vegas. "They're business owners."

With a direct say in everything from his music publishing to touring schedules, Blau oversees a lean operation comprised mainly of his manager, tour manager and agent, all of whom are focused on building up his brand and popularity. His father also helps to manage his money, though it took time for Blau to convince his parents on the benefits of the music industry in the first place.

Blau's path to DJ stardom began in his college dorm room, where he first made a name for himself as a mash-up artist. Inspired by the club music he had encountered on a trip to Sweden during his freshman year, he started combining popular Top-40 hits with melodic electronic beats and posting them online. Those songs traveled far, and by the next year he was hosting events on his home campus for $100 to $500 a show.

"All of a sudden, things kind of blew up on the internet," Blau recalled. "I was like, 'This is insane. I'm making over any salary [in] college over a period of six months.'"

When he started his junior year he had tour dates lined up for the year and played 52 dates from January to May in 2012. Blau mainly worked on the weekends, traveling to university campuses around the nation, while he struggled to juggle classes during the week. His grades started to slip, and the student with a 3.87 grade point average entering that school year, eventually ended spring semester with two C's.

By that time however, Blau had already made the call to drop out of school, a decision made easier by the nudging of his freshman microeconomics professor, Glenn MacDonald. A faculty member in Washington University's Olin School of Business, MacDonald was also a music nut, who dabbled in his own dance music production and bonded with his student over a mutual appreciation for Skrillex during office hours. He was one of the first person Blau turned to for advice as his touring career began to take off.

"I told him, 'If you don’t try this there won't be one day in your life where you don’t think about what could have happened,'" MacDonald remembered after taking a look at Blau's income numbers and attending several shows. "He actually had a chance. This was not someone just sitting in their bedroom. He was on bills attracting several thousands of people."

The professor also put in a call to Blau's parents, who were dead against their son leaving school, and provided a voice of reason: "His parents thought it was just some hobby that he had, and I was telling them he should drop out. For a university professor, this is a very strange activity."

With his professor and parents on board, Blau has been able to convince his doubters that he belongs in the music business (even the BlackRock recruiter asked for links to download his music.) In the last three years, he's been able to transition from a pure mash-up artist to a remixer to a musician with original material. A classically trained pianist, Blau said he eventually wants to move beyond the DJing and be known for composing music or scoring movie soundtracks, not pushing buttons.

"Most of the stuff I'm releasing is not necessarily what I love or what I want to make," he said, referring to past material. "It's kind of what's working. All of the future stuff now... is all so different. It's the first time I'm actually proud of what I [made.]"

"For me it's always about doing more unique things," he added.

 

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