Music Streaming services & DJ App's

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scotta
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Joined: Wed Apr 11, 2018 4:28 pm

Music Streaming services & DJ App's

Post by scotta »

An interesting one this.

Ive been happily using spotify for years. I've got the family subscription so we can all use it ad free and we can use the connect functionality to the Sonos, The Echo's and my Denon amp.

I found out this week however that after June they will be turning off functionality to support third party apps - namely DJ controller apps.

Ive got a Numark Mixtrack Platinum that i use for a hobby with Algoriddim DJAY pro. Djay pro has a spotify streaming interface that allows you to mix spotify tracks as long as you have an internet connection. Not fantastic for club DJ's but perfect for me playing in the house and for when on the rare occasion we have folk round.

Spotify turning off the integration is a bit of a disappointment so its got me looking at alternatives.

Algoriddm have offered a 3 month TIDAL subscription as they have now developed a new version to include TIDAL. Their new version is £58

Serato Offer a licence for their DJ lite software which also does TIDAL integration with my Numark kit. Downloaded that for a look yesterday. Didnt like it. The low frequency fader seems to cut too low - on full cut you can still hear bass which means that you cant do bass cuts when mixing easily. The offer a 14 day trial of the pro version so in the hope that there was some adjustability on the tone fader frequency i downloaded that. There wasnt. It does also seem to take ages to load a track and wont show the BMP until its analysed the full track. You cant batch analyse stream music either where as on DJAY pro it would show you the bpm of the track before loading it.

So it looks like if i want to still have stream functionality the upgrade to Algoriddm is the way to go.

TIDAL - Mixed thoughts on this. I like the Master Quality feature but if im being honest i cant really tell the difference. The tracks just take longer to load. As Jay-Z has a big shareholding in it R&B and Hip-Hop feature largely. However as im using it there seems to be more relevant suggestions appearing. This might be harsh criticism as i only signed up for it yesterday versus Spotify having years worth of my listening data. The big miss is the connectivity directly from the app. If i want to use it on my sonos i need to use the sonos app to get it to stream directly from TIDAL. The only way i can use it directly on the Denon is to use Airplay as my amp is one generation too old to have HEOS integration but does have Spotify connect. Even using the sonos app directly i found that some tracks actually buffered when playing. Car wise the 240 has integrated spotify apps but not TIDAL. Im sure if i spent on the carplay upgrade that would resolve that issue but its around £250 the last time i looked and it needs a wifi booster installed behind the dash.

There are some apps that allow you to transfer playlists from spotify to tidal. Did this yesterday and surprisingly id say around 99% of my tracks migrated.

It's looking likely though that the streaming solution will probably involve an additional TIDAL sub rather than a full migration to the service from spotify. Which is annoying.

Will update this as i dig deeper.

Article from DJWorx on the above - https://djworx.com/how-to-migrate-from- ... -a-choice/
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