I try to keep my collection specific to things that suit being played at gigs.
I have a lot of music that was bought for my own pleasure, but much of that is not on my hard drive simply because the chances of me playing it at a gig (or anyone asking for it) are virtually non existent.
It’s a surefire bet though that if you start trimming “dead wood” then at your next gig someone will ask for a track you deleted.
My M.O. is - if someone has asked for a track at a gig (even once) it stays on my drive. Anything I’ve never been asked for over many decades can stay at home.
It would be good to see one or all of the major streaming services take control of the “not for professional” use problem.
The situation as it stands is very fragile, open to abuse and could be removed at any given moment.
Newcomers and part timers face a tough choice to either employ a streaming service and break the rules or spend a small fortune to get some tracks, some of which will end up as never being used. There aren’t really many other options.
The Dj add on/extension not for professional use should be cheap with no stems, reduced sound quality and limited funcionality, enough for beginners and casual players but not enough to exploit commercially.
On top of that should be a pro option/suite where you pay for the right play commercially and get rewarded with stems, high quality audio, download cache, stability and reliability etc.
It wouldn’t be cheap but “going pro” never is.
I’d just like a feature in Tidal that is available to other DJ software, to also be available in this one. Especially when I’m paying a premium for the privilege.
I’m not a professional DJ, nor do I wish to be. I DJ at parties, for my friends, on a phone. Being able to turn my WiFi & mobile data off would save me battery, which means I can play for longer.
I second this, as someone who’s also not a professional DJ (did one wedding for a family member though and this would have been nice!). I want Tidal offline locker for when I go to festivals and am playing for friends. Or when km out in the woods after a bike ride hanging out. That plus being able to actually use Neural Mix (currently use Apple Music) would make the price of Tidals DJ tier more than worth it to me as an amateur.
Just downloaded VDJ and RB and logged into Tidal on both.
The offline storage works with no subscription or effort on either and just appears as standard.
That does suggest it is up to the dj software company to decide if they wish to provide the option or not.
Is this going to be another head scratcher from algoriddim where something so beneficial and useful to djs is omitted?
Yes I have.
I wouldn’t expect it to happen for nothing, that’s not how commerce works.
Having tried the beatport and beatsource free trials where they offer the same service and now having seen tidal do it on other platforms it has already become and will become even more a prefered way for many djs to operate in the future.
Just couple of things as software architechture point of view.
In earlier days of Spotify, the files was named with dummy names.
It was possible to rename the file to .mp3 and voila, you were able to have any song what you wanted.
Quite soon it was changed that the files were encrypted with so that only when song were played, the app needed to unencrpt the file so that song would be playable.
So the app architechture requires that the key to unencrypt the file is either stored in servers or stored in the app itself. In normal case it could be stored in cloud and when you start to play, the app sends a request to servers to get the key.
But when we change to offline mode, things get little bit problematic.
How do we store the key to unencryp the file secure enough?
The tidal/spotify owns their own app, so that they can change the architechture/ keys when ever they want and need how the local offline storage works.
But to create good enough achitechutre with 3rd party apps, is not so trivial.
So Tidal would most probably want to have non disclosure agreements how these kind of thing works.
And most probably threre is sanctions, if the agreement is broken.
It is not so easy to store and handle encryption/unecryption keys, so eventually Tidal most probably wants to have quite deep knowlede how the 3rd party app is working and how the keys are handled.
If the app is not able to handle those keys and data in secure way, the tidal won’t open up the offline locker to 3rd party app.
That’s some great insight @dj_romy_fi .Thanks.
We will never know exactly what occurs and what is being discussed behind closed doors but I truly believe that streaming with offline storage will become the dominant player in the next few years so whatever they need to iron out
between themselves will become a top priority if it isn’t so already.
Spotify is coming back to the DJ streaming game soon, with that new “mixing” agreement, and Tidal will be obsolete. Tidal is a clueless company that doesn’t realize competition is out there. They had a 5 year exclusive reign and didn’t capitalize on it.
Really, really think that Algoriddim need to be pushing Tidal for offline locker integration. And/or offer Spotify as an alternative streaming service and/or offer Deezer as an alternative streaming service. Because as it is, Djay is being left seriously behind in the streaming game … which seems to me to be very bad for a piece of software whose biggest selling point is the strength of it’s software on phone/tablet.
When you say its getting left behind, what do you mean? It seems to me that others are just catching up. Granted tidal offline could be implemented. Spotify wont be down to algoriddim as it was spotify who originally pulled out.
What Spotify wants to introduce as mixing is not what many apparently understand it to be. It’s not about Spotify allowing access by third-party software again in the future, but about an AI feature that represents a kind of automix, as we know it from Algoriddim DJay, for example. In this respect, I don’t see that this will make Tidal obsolete or otherwise affect the topic under discussion here.
