FWIW, it’s cause I’ve been planning this exact concept since 2002 lol. Finally worked up the courage to make it happen. I remember the days of using Winamp and running the entire thing off your own PC. We’ve come quite a long way.
Speaking of which, there is a way to request tunes from the database when no DJ is connected. it’s kind of hidden, but if you scroll down to the bottom of the webpage, you’ll see a “send an Auto DJ request” link just below the live DJ request form.
For now the current plans are to use Discord due to its robust bot support. But it wouldn’t be a bad idea to use something less-corporate like IRC. No promises yet.