After some minor hoopla back in October, the previously announced partnership between Serato and streaming platform Pulselocker has finally hit the streets courtesy of Serato DJ public beta 1.9.
It’s a pretty seamless process — sign up for the two week trial, make playlists, and log in via Serato DJ and your playlists will appear. Tracks can be streamed or stored locally in encrypted files. They’re analysed once and the relevant data is stored locally, so at least that’s a one-time thing. So other than some setup, Pulselocker appears to work just like any other streaming service. Pulselocker will offer two tiers — $10/month for streaming, and $20/month for stream and offline play. Serato will offer support for the latter only at launch.
I haven’t played with the beta and Pulselocker for long, and this is very much of a first impressions piece. But outside of my initial “this works as expected” findings, I have a few comments to make, but I balance this by stating that this is the very first beta and definitely not ready for primetime:
- My Pulselocker playlists only update when I quit and open Serato DJ again. So while you can search in Pulselocker for that urgent request, you’ll have to quit and restart Serato to make it appear. I hope that’s a bug because for me that makes the whole thing a non-starter.
- Pulselocker plays music on their site with Flash, you know the old deprecated technology with viable more up to date alternatives. Considering it’s a website, can we have HTML5 players please. At least I have a nifty Chrome extension that converts Flash to HTML5 that works. Shame I use Safari.
- In my brief testing, I downloaded Rob Base’s “It Takes Two”, only to be confronted with some godawful rerecorded version, without any indication that it was anything other than the original. The issue here is the lack of onscreen detail in the track search results — title, artist, BPM (at this point empty) and label aren’t enough. Had the album shown next to it, I would have known that it was from “101 ’80s hits” and avoided it. I guess it’s my fault for not installing Flash to preview.
- I searched for Marshall Jefferson, saw “Move Your Body” and added it to a list from a Trax LP playlist. The problem was that the track was actually “Too Far Gone” by Adonis. Again, I probably should have previewed it. Should Pulselocker care to look, it’s this release, and it’s a tagging mess.
My issue right now isn’t with Serato DJ. The integration works well, bar it being all in Pulselocker and needing to be online to make changes. I do however have immediate concerns about the quality of the alleged 44 million strong Pulselocker library, and my ability to find what I need quickly. And with one third of the tracks I pulled down being poorly or incorrectly tagged, I worry about the other 43,999,994 tracks I have yet to try out. And for the record, out of the 35 results from the Rob Base search, 22 were the same version, so I’m guessing that doesn’t mean 44 million unique tracks.
Again, I have to underline that this is the first time that Pulselocker and Serato DJ have walked out in the public domain, so there’s likely to be a significant amount of people like me who need it to work better. Let’s hope they sort out the wrinkles quickly.
For those of you wanting to try it out, join the Serato beta program today. The Pulselocker beta sign-up happens inside of the Serato DJ beta software, is limited to 750 people, and is only accessible to the UK, USA, and Canada for now.
So Pulselocker’s still pretty dreadful…
You appear to have had exactly the same experience I had when I tried it some months ago (when it first opened as a beta). What have they been doing in the meantime?
Their CPO has been quoted as saying the search would be “much improved” by the 2nd week of Feb. So much for that then.
I really don’t get this streaming for dj’s thing and t.b.h. I think this integration is a total waste of Serato’s resources. $19,99 / month to rent mp3s? I’d rather spend that money on 8 lossless files that I’ll own for the rest of my life.
Maybe it’s geared towards request or wedding djs.
It does help with request having access to a variety of tracks you might not normally have.
But it also help you as a DJ find new tracks you might not know exist or can’t afford at that time but still want to play.
I still buy tracks I want to own. Streaming media has doubled my want to buy list. People should totally support artist they like.
Agreed. Plus, I don’t like the idea of unsubscribing to Pulselocker and losing a bunch of tracks. I’d prefer to just buy the tracks knowing that they’re mine to keep.
I’ve been using DJay Pro with Spotify for a little over a year now and since day 1 I was impressed and as time has passed its only got better. Sure the DJay pro software has some minor issues like lack of total eq kills. But overall for the price of the software and the Spotify service it’s been totally worth it. I use it with my DDJ-sx2 also. Now that being said… Why didn’t Serato team up with a already established service that works? I personally prefer to use Serato DJ over DJay pro and switch between both depending on what doing. Serato DJ is a more detailed DJ application when it comes to performance.
Seems like Serato didn’t mind implementing a Spotify option in their pyro app but totally dropped the ball of adding it to Serato DJ.
The cool part of using Spotify is being able to create a playlist on my phone and opening my DJay pro software and that playlist being there. I rather have that option over offline playability.
Sounds like both Serato and pioneer are going wish they both would have have went with Spotify down the road.
Totally agree. You are 100% right, 0% wrong.
It might have to do with licensing. I don’t think you’re officially allowed to use Spotify’s content for professional use. Pyro is a consumer app.
This.
Spotify doesn’t carry the licencing to use out in a venue. Fine for mixing at home or parties but that’s not good enough when you want to play in a club.
Pulselocker has the law covered so until others get their act together, this is the only legal streaming option.
Pulselocker is terrible compared to Spotify!
so strange how they made their mobile app Pyro with Spotify integration but their Serato DJ software with Pulselocker…I really do prefer the Spotify, much more organized and vast.
Totally agree
Not “strange” at all. Pyro is a consumer app. Spotify is for personal use only.
Serato DJ is for pro use. Pulselocker is for pro use.
this copyright thing and not suppose to use it for public performance or whatever makes no sense.
Just because you buy a cd or MP3 doesn’t give you the ownership to use it in public for profit. The venue is suppose to pay a fee so they can allow people to come and play music made by other people. So tell me why it matters if that music is streamed or on a physical piece of media?
If anything it benifits the artist or record label if the media is streamed through a service that is already paying for that song plus the venue paying the performance fee. Right?
purchasing a track one time and playing it 100 times befits who exactly? The label or artist gets paid 1 time for that sale and you get paid 99 times, do the math.
I could see that in the future of djing that DJs might be required to be accountable for everything they play if they want to collect payment for what they do.
Another thing I want to add about the Pulselocker UI – the waveform displayed in the player is the same for every track. We’ve pretty much got used to Soundcloud et all showing actual waveforms.
It feels like I’m putting the boot in a little, but I’m just offering constructive criticism.
My first experience was with Pulselocker several years ago. They dropped off for a while but now that they’re back they still seem to suffer from the same issues with their catalogue. It is a not a diverse catalogue and wouldn’t be a replacement for a record pool like DJ City or DMS.
My biggest complaint with their catalogue is that they basically have covers of tracks (as mentioned above). These covers are laughable and could never pass a a replacement for the original.
I downloaded it, thought in principal, it was a great idea. I randomly selected some old school tunes and OMG. Horrendous, re recorded version with some of the most out of key vocals I have ever heard.(TTF – Real love if you want to experience this) A bit drastic but I bought Rekordbox DJ instead and I’ve now thrown Serato and Traktor pro to the recycle bin. Now looking forward to Pioneer DJ doing some exciting stuff.(Should hope so as the software, that I didn’t really need was $140)
Summary: great idea however Pulselocker Is the wrong company to go in this venture with.
You know Pioneer are also adding Pulselocker to Rekordbox DJ very soon?
Wrong company? I don’t know of any other legal streaming company (with downloads) that could be offered as an alternative? Spotify isn’t for commercial use and either is the other streaming companies, it’s for private non-commercial use. Until another legal streaming service starts up we have the option of one… Pulselocker.
See here: https://www.pulselocker.com/info
The really need to add BPM so you can add the track directly into the correct playlist of the bat, otherwise you have to go into Serato DJ run the Track Analyze, make sure its correct then toggle between Serato and the Pulselocker to add it to the correct playlist. Then you have to reboot serato for it to pick it up in the playlist. Very dumb.
Wrong wrong wrong! If you search for a Pulslocker song in Serato to stream…..you do not need to restart Serato to play it. The song will load in about 5 seconds then you play it ! However, if you login to pulselockers website and download your music there, then you will have to restart Serato for new songs to update.The only thing I would suggest is that you listen to the song in cue before playing it as there are many cover songs so you do have to pay attention to the artist. Overall I think this is headed in the right direction. I love pulselocker personally.
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