Atomix seemed to be quite serious when they told me that they would only release VirtualDJ 8 when it was really ready, and not before. So while we continue to wait to see if it lives up to expectations, VirtualDJ 7.4 is here, made Windows 8 friendly, but more importantly getting an immense cloud based library of audio, video and karaoke files called ContentUnlimited.
First the words, which have finally been official released:
Atomix Productions Inc Releases VirtualDJ 7.4
VirtualDJ 7.4 adds new Professional DJ subscriptions options for HD Music Videos and Karaoke. Windows 8 Optimization including new multi touch interface support, and much more.
Atomix Produtions Inc, (http://www.virtualdj.com) announced the release of Virtual DJ 7.4 ©, the latest incarnation of its blockbuster software package for Disc Jockeys. Virtual DJ 7.4 allows DJ’s to professionally mix Audio, Music Videos, Karaoke files, and much, much more. Virtual DJ is currently the 8th most downloaded software application of all software available at CNET’s © Download.com with over 68 Million downloads.
While continuing the non stop development on its next generation VirtualDJ 8, as promised, Atomix Productions has continued to release fresh and exciting improvements to its existing platform. Brand new in version 7.4 is the all new ContentUnlimited. Users now have a choice of unlimited cloud based Audio, Video, and Karaoke content, powered by industry partners Grooveshark, VJ-Pro.com, and MegaHits (formerly ChartBusters), respectively.
“We’re very excited”, said the company’s COO Andrew Van Almen; “For the first time ever, professional DJ’s now have all of the cloud based content they could ever desire, available instantly within the application.”
Version 7.4 also refined the former MusicGroups service into two new features called LiveFeedback and MySets. The LiveFeedback feature is a real time recommendation engine that now makes much more accurate suggestions of what to mix next, based on data from millions of DJ’s around the world. The MySets feature is now a webpage where users can see their set logs, with an option to publish to their profile on virtualdj.com or Facebook.
Version 7.4 is also optimized for the new Windows 8 operating system including Multi Touch Interface Support. New tablets and laptops with touch screen interfaces now give the end user the ability to utilize VirtualDJ in ways not possible before. By offering the unique ability to manipulate various areas on the screen simultaneously with one or two hands. The company has also added direct and enhanced support for various hardware controllers from our partners such as Pioneer Pro DJ, Denon DJ, Hercules, Numark, American Audio, and more.
So how does this work? Dubbed as “Netflix for DJs”, it’s controlled from within the VDJ application, where you subscribe monthly to the particular service you want, be it audio ($9.99), karaoke ($19.99) or video ($49.99). Right now, video is limited to the USA (although I had access for testing), which is most probably a licensing thing more than anything I expect.
Once subscribed, you’ll get a ContentUnlimited tab in the your library, where you can search for anything you want. Once you’ve found what you want and loaded it into a deck, it starts to load the content in and after a few seconds can be played before the track is fully loaded. The file isn’t downloaded to your drive as such, and is freshly streamed each time you load it in. As it loads, it does the analysis and you can see VDJ slowly stabilise the BPM and build the waveform. It does seem possible to download the files to a local cache to speed up loading next time, but this keeps a local but unplayable outside of VDJ copy.
I’ve played with it for 30 minutes but so far it’s been working really well. Obviously, most DJs playing out will already have a large collection to choose from, but this does seem to be up to date, as well as being able to pull out a few obscure videos too. It’s never going to have everything, but for the top 40 DJs, it’s likely to offer good coverage.
The update is free, the subscription however is not, and is detailed right here.
I can’t detect anything else changing on-screen, but some extra scripting actions have been added, as well as adding to the growing list of supported controllers.