Yup. Beat mixing is the easier part. I've heard plenty of DJ's who could mix but had shite song selection and/or had no idea how to read and motivate a crowd.

You can teach a monkey to beat match. You can't teach a monkey to be a DJ.

One downside of using laptops is that it can create a barrier between dj and crowd, I've seen lots of people who only learned djing on a laptop not mastering their performance anxiety and instead burying their face in the screen as much as possible. I always enjoyed when djs made an effort to be 'with the crowd' and always tried to do so myself - not having a screen around for every gig can help learning not to play like a turtle.

Fair point. I usually moved the screen off the side and used an apc40 to control it so I looked at the screen very little, other than to check which songs were mapped to which buttons. Certainly no more time away from the crowd than djs digging through record bags.

FWIW, it's just as easy to spend all your time looking at your turntables when you're mixing, especially when you aren't very good at beatmatching. When I was first getting started, it often took me like 2-3 minutes to get the beatmatching right, and spent almost all of that time looking at the turntables and not the crowd. Of course when I sucked at beatmatching, "the crowd" i was playing for was 5 or 10 people, half of which came with me.

I've heard this argument made a thousand times and I still don't believe it because there are plenty of vinyl DJs who don't interact and lots of laptop DJs who are pulling all sorts of stunts on stage to entertain the crowds.

What matters more than the medium is the individual who's playing from them.

I've performed a lot, both from a laptop and from vinyl (and a fair few times with both too) and anecdotally I can say using a laptop has never defined how much of a spectacle I choose to make of myself. The amount I've slept beforehand or whisky I've drank has a much bigger effect ;)