DJ With Apple Music launches to enable subscribers to mix their own sets
musicweek.com
musicweek.com
I especially admire the team that makes it. The CEO records demo videos that are so filled with enthusiasm and accessible expertise that you can't help but appreciate the product more each time you watch them, and the COO sends out email announcements that are actually useful and not spammy.
It's a niche product, but they fill that niche well.
There is a feature request for supporting streaming services and the hurdle is legal more than anything. https://bugs.launchpad.net/mixxx/+bug/938180
I really liked that linked article btw.
Besides this whole ‘get it from the streaming app’ business is indeed best suited for bedroom deejays. Everybody who cares about their craft as a professionL cuts VIP versions and dubplate loops that don’t get released on these platforms at all.
The real recent (~10 years) breakthrough in this area was/is that mixer producing companies (hardware vendors) would start implementing two CUE channels so that people can work better in a back2back session. A real game changer.
Or wedding / event DJs who handle requests. I would not delete the local files, but having a streaming service with popular music would certainly help.
> Everybody who cares about their craft as a professionL cuts VIP versions and dubplate loops
If that is the case, I don't know a single DJs who cares about their craft. Makes you think.
Yea when that sentence started I was ready to agree until they made a point which seems more relevant to producers than DJs
Wedding deejays can play whatever nonsense they like, cause nobody really cares about them - people came for the wedding and bride, not to listen music. They came to see relatives, so yeah - perhaps this works for them to download random tracks. You may be right it works for them, but that’s not what a respected club artist (above the 500£ booking fee) would even dare doing on stage.
Deejaying is a lot about selection and sparsity of certain records. If I’m to play the same thing everyone else does - well why not leave AIs do it then and scratch the deejays entirely. Sounds like a nice plan for some corporate audio weirdo in Japan, but would be met with laughter in proper clubs.
No, that is definitely not true.
While you can find DJs that play obscure or ~vinyl only~ releases, there are also a ton of DJs who play popular music.
I love a lot of jam bands, but dont always want to listen to the uhhh lengthy preambles and wandering postludes, just want the gravy. Would love to mix together some highlights along with other non jam songs. Also think my wife and daughter would appreciate Phish more if it wasnt just so. much. phish.
Or is this different?
These software are designed for "live" mixes, not like a DAW where you can build it up one by one and "render" it.
Technically you don't need hardware for DJ software, but I would say is frustrating without. Here is a free example software (without apple music integration) https://dj.app/
However, for your use case, if you're already using Apple Music, you can set start and end points on individual tracks (Get Info on the track, Options). This is nondestructive, but not specific to the playlist so you'd have to turn it off again to hear the full track, and your export options are limited to burning to CDs.
You can listen to the playlist offline just fine. I just mean you can't export a playlist of trimmed tracks as audio (e.g. "My Mixtape.m4a") from within Apple Music. If you sometimes want to hear the full track and sometimes want to hear the trimmed tracks as a mixtape, then it's not a good solution. But if you just want to cut a 5 minute intro or 20 minutes of "hidden track" silence then it's there.
It seems...fine, on par with other similar integrations (Tidal, Beatport), but it's unclear which audio quality it's using to stream the tracks. I'd say it's using 256kbps/aac files? Bit of distortion while timestretching heavily compared to the lossless version of the same song. Also, no offline storage option?
It would be awesome so that you can use Apple Music alongside normal USB sticks / Rekordbox libraries on the Pioneer XDJ line of equipment.
They called out AlphaTheta, so here's hoping that it is. That would make my decision to move off of Spotify for personal streaming even easier
“”“ The popular DJing app djay by Algoriddim already offered Apple Music integration since last year, and additional platforms that are now supported include AlphaTheta, Serato, and inMusic's Engine DJ, Denon DJ, Numark, and RANE DJ. For example, you can now access the entire Apple Music catalog in AlphaTheta's rekordbox app for iPhone and iPad.
"Apple Music support has finally arrived," says the release notes for today's rekordbox update.”””
There is a compatability chart with their various gear.
Note that this isn't anything particularly groundbreaking, most DJ software already supports multiple streaming services (Soundcloud, Tidal, Beatport, Beatsource, I'm probably missing a couple). This is just another integration you can choose from.
Also, Algoriddim's Djay (otherwise not a particulary important player in the market) had Apple Music support for some years now, so I'm guessing the real story here is some sort of an exclusivity contract has expired.
In most countries you need special licensing for public reproduction of copyrighted music anyway. That use case is not covered by your private streaming subscription. It´s just a means to get the media.
tl;dr this is great for playing with sequencing, but a lot of modern djays will want to be able to do stem separation even when exploring, and live use was always a tough sell with a no-internet kill switch.
0: https://support.serato.com/hc/en-us/articles/12188545880719-...
Real bummer, I still have to pipe stuff through Ableton, record it, then import it..
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Licensing indeed. For a time VirtualDJ allowed stems for Tidal streamed tracks but were required to disable it.
https://www.virtualdj.com/forums/254722/VirtualDJ_Technical_...
Yeah Virtual DJ integration was great, I got frustrated with their beat gridding (I come from Ableton where it’s always been magic and the Traktor where auto grid was really good) but they’ve been pushing everything else forward for a while.
It's like the next "big thing", very few DJ controllers on the market right now have dedicated buttons for it, but that's about to change.
"next big thing" heh
So "realtime" and "streaming" don't really apply, because the files download and process fast enough.
I also use open source, preferring demucs over spleeter.
In my experience spleeter requires huge amounts of memory, my DJ laptop only has 16GB of RAM, and I need to close the browser to be able to successfully stem a 5 minutes song.
Demucs takes a bit longer, but it uses just 2GB of RAM. And the sound quality of the stems separation is much better with demucs, which is a more important factor than the runtime, IMO.
Also, does this mean the tracks are licensed for public performance? So I can get paid $500 a gig and put on these tracks and not need to be at an ASCAP paying venue or liable for the rights?
These things matter, especially in such a bullshit “you only bought a license” music world where often they don’t tell you about the license itself (not the consumer’s fault, only really interests musicians and copyright geeks like me).
"sculpt your sets directly from Apple Music before you perform ... for DJs at any level ..."
That can only realistically mean that you're paying for something to perform with. Otherwise it would be an incitement to copyright infringement...
Does Beatport say "Tracks for you to perform with as a DJ"? If not, I can't really see how the comparison works.
Apple Music even existing relied on trademark infringement so I guess expecting them to care about IPR is too much!?
https://music.apple.com/us/curator/dj-with-apple-music/17982...
I agree Apple (and other services DJ software is integrating) are misleading people.
- Some of my best playlists were created using the mobile app, and AM seems to have a hard schism between its mobile and desktop versions (the playlists aren't there and would take a long time to recreate / multiple errors when trying to rebuild them).
- The features I want to use (recording, real-time acapella) aren't available for licensing reasons (understandable but kneecap what I want to actually do).
Makes really nice bedroom/portable setup.
You can use sync, but I don't think it's that widespread.
Put any sync button DJ in front of a proper CDJ setup, give them a couple of hours to practice and they will be able to pull off a set.
Most importantly: it is the least important part of the job. Nobody in the crowd gives a shit about whether or not you're using the sync button, it makes no difference to them. They're not there to stare at you, most of the time they can't even see what you're doing.
Please observe Grimes at Cochella: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E01QyNHBpcc
(yes, she reacted suboptimally, just don't think it's fair to use here)
Grimes is a performance artist who dabbled in music. She’s not a musician. Imogen Heap is a musician.
Mixing vinyl well is definitely an impressive skill but I (and I suspect the vast majority of people) don't care at all about how people are mixing tracks (until it's to the detriment of the music). Most people care about what makes them dance and/or feel something.
I have seen some unbelievable performances by matching wizards who added a whole other level to the performance with their skills.
The set itself was different because there would not have been a way to slice and dice the set together without those skills.
Really no different than a virtuoso performance on any other instrument.
I mean, there clearly is if you ever try teaching a beginner to beatmix (whether vinyl or digital). I don't disagree with your other points.
At home i use mopidy + speaker system.
Other times I use DAC + IEM.
I just make my own remixes for gym and home use. Other times I listen to youtube podcasts while running.
The fun part is paying ASCAP and BMI doesn’t guarantee you have the rights to play any song, just most songs. So you’d have to look up if the song you want to play is in the ASCAP library before you play every song. And if they don’t have the song you must contact the artist/label and get permission before playing it. Obviously this isn’t practical. But it illustrates just how difficult it is to be compliant with copyright law.
They don't.
Your money goes into a pot of money that also includes every radio, every TV channel, every song used in an ad etc. Every month (or year), your local music association (there's one in every country) sums up the play counts and redistributes the pot accordingly.
This is all to say that the only people that actually get paid from this pot of money are either gonna be domestic musicians or global top 40. Even if your tracks are super famous in clubs and every DJ that plays it accurately reports that, it's still very unlikely you're gonna make the payment cut. Even a relatively minor hit on the radio is valued more than a super-popular song in clubs because it is guaranteed to have a higher play count.
Well that just seems broken.
Apple owns the rights to the music catalog. Apple controls the access, and can limit or remove access to the music catalog.
Apple owns the rights to the tools and any subset of tools or virtual devices. Apple controls the access, and can limit or remove access to the tools and any subset of tools or virtual devices.
What was it Agent Smith said? "Me, me, me..."
This model doesn't seem long on the long-term for users or content creators.
However, for me, the benefits of what Apple introduced here outweigh the costs: I don't have to purchase all of the songs I want to mix. As a beginner, this is huge. I can experiment with making mixes with nothing but my laptop, my Apple Music subscription and a copy of some free software like Serato Lite. I'm far from being at the stage where I know which songs will make a good mix just by listening to them, so being able to experiment for "free" sounds great.
People concerned about the issues you raised are always free to buy the music they want to mix, either physical copies, or WAV/MP3 downloads. Additionally, I'd like to point out that other streaming platform(s) such as Tidal already integrate with DJ software like Serato.
I'll add that I frequently buy LPs or CDs from my favourite artists. Just because I subscribe to a streaming service doesn't meant I don't believe artists deserve fair pay for their work. I've actually found dozens of new artists I like thanks to Apple Music (and bought hard copies of their music and/or attended their concerts.) Though, I think fewer and fewer people are buying physical copies of their music, which is a trend I don't like at all.
It’s not intended as a replacement to a curated collection of white labels, bootlegs and edits which you build up and over years.
I no longer subscribe to Apple Music, but I have 169.5 days of purchased music that I can stream anywhere. Tracks that exactly match an entry in their catalog are presumably just represented as a pointer, and tracks which aren't available in Apple Music are uploaded.
It was half-baked when they shipped it and it still has the same launch bugs. Still, it's better than spotify.