Streaming tracks Beatport Spotify beatsource tidal

STREAMING SERVICES: Do you? Don’t you? Will you? Tell us

I find myself with a tiny bit of space between projects and figured it was time for a cheeky editorial. But what to write about that will ruffle a few feathers? How vinyl is superior? Why the sync button is OK? The five somethings that something? Hell no — all been done to death. 

Oooh, I know — streaming services. That’s some low hanging fruit ripe for picking and wrapping up with some of my acerbic verbiage. Not the likes of Twitch you understand — I’m talking Spotify, Beatport, Tidal etc.

So off I set imparting my old school pre-internet media-loving sensibilities contrasted with all that is glorious about having literally all the music in the world in my pocket while sitting on the loo. Yes — I span both extremes. I usually do. 

But then I realised something rather important. Streaming services, while relatively old school from a consumer perspective is still quite new for DJs. And we haven’t published anywhere near enough words to gauge the opinion of our brilliant community. 

OVER TO YOU

I honestly have no idea of what the prevailing feeling about streaming is with you lot. So rather than brainwash guide you with my own opinions, I’ll ask a few questions and gather some much-needed community knowledge and start a conversation.

But first, a simplistic data-driven poll that I’d be very grateful if you’d all fill in. This will give us a very quick baseline for where the DJWORX community is where streaming is concerned:

[poll id=”5″]

And for those that wish to express a more detailed opinion:

  • So you subscribe to any streaming services? 
  • Is it for listening? For DJing? Or both?
  • If you use streaming to DJ, how do you use it? To complement music you own? Requests only? Or is it your whole workflow?
  • Has it ever let you down? 
  • If you don’t stream, why not? Reliability? Prefer to have the files? You only play vinyl? To support artists directly? Is it practicality or principle? 
  • If you don’t stream now, do you see a point when you might? Did you say no to CD, DVS, and controllers too?

Answer however you like – each bullet in turn or as a stream (geddit?) of consciousness. But please do feedback where you are with streaming.

MAKE A DIFFERENCE

I love writing these kinds of articles and reading the comments. It’s important to get inside the heads of the people who buy and use all this glorious technology, and equally understand the thinking of those who don’t. 

It’s the only way the industry will make the gear we want to buy, and not just use sales figures as a baseline. After all, you can only buy what’s available. And we have a platform to tell them what we want.

So tell us what you think. Get involved. Make a difference. 

The Old Owner
  1. From 1990 until 2009 I did a mobile show about 7 times a month. I collected lots of vinyl and cd’s overtime, but stopped collecting also in 2009. When I started using VTT and later Virtual dj, I converted all to wav files. After 2009 I did some gigs a year mainly for fun and ‘back to the …’ parties.

    When Djay introduced Spotify in their software I was very glad. I could use all my files and use newer and missing music from Spotify. Made sure all the time to have a proper internet connection and phone for backup. I have a router with me having a backup internet connection using a usb stick with a phone card in. So when my internet connection drops out, the backup will take over. My macbook doesn’t even notice while switching. Djay loads the song completely in memory, so If you see that it is loaded, you won’t have interruptions when playing the track.

    When Djay announced that they would stop with Spotify, I was not happy about it. Tried to switch to Tidal, but is misses lots of tracks especially the local tracks from the Netherlands. Glad that Spotify still works, but for how long?

    I’m still hoping Apple would buy Algoriddm and add Apple music. It could be added as an addition to an Apple music account. I would directly switch from Spotify. In my point of view it was also ok if Apple bought PioneerDJ. Then the could have created a new Player which combines an improved CDJ2000nxs2, Ipad and Algoriddm software. It would result in a player with a proper screen, nice player functions and good software with streaming and music splitting (stems). But I keep on dreaming ;-)

  2. From the comments, it sounds like streaming services need a “buyout” “option to buy” and you could periodically put the songs you like in a folder and buy/dl them and own them. It would be a paid preview. Pay to have streamed access, and the potential drawbacks that come with that, or pay differently to dl/own.

    1. Being able to buy bundles of playlisted tracks would be such a great feature. As arkaei said, discovery on sites like Spotify works really well. Maybe there are retail download sites that allow people to compile playlists, but AFAIK they don’t work that way. Usually, you have to know what you’re looking for.

    1. When streaming matures, I’m sure that you’ll be able to access all the material you need at a label and artist level. It just needs some sort of standard protocol developing so that you can log in to more niche servers so that they can not depend on the micropayment from the major streaming platforms and get money directly. I wrote about it here.

  3. If only right holders could stop being greedy about that and allow reasonable experience for DJs (offline mixing audio/video/lyrics) for a reasonable price.

    That would allow a new era of augmented DJing with sharing/discovery capabilities brought back to the industry and end listeners.

    And prevent the industry from a new era of the Napster times, where we would end up ripping the tracks with stream recording tools, not for the sake of pirating as we typically at least pay subscriptions for listening to this music, but just to do our job of delivering a mix to our audience in a convenient way.

  4. If I was still doing mobile parties, I would certainly be using a streaming service for gigs. I mostly just DJ for fun these days and I am not taking requests.

    That being said, I use Serato and if I need it, I would certainly use Tidal integration. I don’t care that it is not as popular as spotify or apple music. 2 reasons. It is higher quality audio and royalties are higher for artists.

    I do have some channels saved on the free tier of Pandora for when I am cooking or cleaning house, but no subscriptions that I pay for. Other than that, I am listening to my own collection of music I already own.

  5. I use it to complement my collection for requests for music which I don’t have. The Denon Prime 4 (and 2) can use Tidal without a computer (it is basically a Linux PC itself) which is a godsend.
    I would never rely on a streaming platform alone because internet can always be spotty or non-existent in the sometimes dark cellars we call our workplace. Also the streaming platforms don’t have bootlegs/mashups which I rely on a great deal.

  6. I use Spotify, for a couple of reasons. One is that it’s the most popular service, so it’s more likely that a potential client would be using it too (Spotify has collaborative playlists). Two is that (for personal use) it works with my Amazon Echo Show.

    I’ve not done a gig yet where I’ve had to stream a track, but at a pinch I could do so from my phone (albeit against their T&Cs).

    My new Prime 4 has Tidal, but I’m not going to sub to that on top of Spotify. It’s not as well known as Spotify, and it doesn’t work with my Echo Show either. If I really had to, I could always subscribe just to cover the date booked for a gig.

    When I get a booking I always ask the client for a list of tracks in advance, so I can get an idea of what’s required and purchase anything not already in my collection.

    I’d much rather purchase than rely on a streamed playlist, as I don’t want to discover on the day of the gig that tracks they asked for have been removed from the service.

  7. I’ve been screwing around with Tidal and Djay on my iPad for several months, I’m strictly a hobbyist but being able to think of a song (most of the time, a lot of older hip hop and dance music is absent because of licensing problems) and 10 seconds later just start messing around with it is the most fun I’ve had DJing in years. I have a decent music collection but also having access to literally millions more songs, along with not having the distractions of a computer I have to sit and work at all day, has spurred my creativity. I have no dreams of playing out though, it’s just for my own satisfaction.

  8. It devalues current DJ’s who have been purchasing music for decades.

    if you are getting ready to retire or sell your business/collection – it’s now worthless. You can argue some content may still hold it’s value, but why buy music when you can just pay $20 and have access to 95% of what you need?

    You can get current, classics, pretty much any remix and just buy a controller and you are now a DJ.

    Why stop there? Why not have pre-defined streams where a wedding party could just pick a stream and play it – you could even have a fake DJ with some drops in there….

    I don’t believe in it either way. There’s no DJ talking about the content, no interaction with guests, no local content. it seemed like a good idea at the time, but in reality it’s just not that great, even the artists agree.

    When you cancel it – that’s it -you have nothing / own nothing, it’s basically disposable music.

    Then there is the other factor, what if they close up shop? You have nothing.

  9. Streaming services are great for discovery, which is arguably what a good DJ has to focus on to grow a nice library – but we all know how terrible Spotify is towards artists, and that’s why I don’t use it on general principle. Spotify doesn’t do lossless, even downloaded tracks are locked to the app, and unless I migrate to some of the “convenient” DJ tools out there which don’t do a fraction of the things I need from DJ software in 2020, I can’t use these songs (setting aside the fact that calling it a “legal grey area” for DJing is an understatement) and if I cancel my subscription, my library is GONE. Using anything like Spotify or Apple Music is simply not an option for me – I need to own the tracks in ultra high quality and not be tied to a platform, period.

    That’s why I like Bandcamp so much. They’re very fair to artists, especially during COVID where they’ve pledged to forfeit all their sales fees once per month until the end of the year (for now). All this awesomeness, and they offer FLAC downloads as well. I don’t understand why so many labels are still missing from this platform.

  10. Personally, I switched my main platform for music procurement to Bandcamp a while back (SFX filing Chapter 11). I came to the realization that I’d rather pay artists instead of quarterly dividends.

  11. A double edged sword for me. While I don´t oppose the idea of streaming music in general I think it will just devalue the music even more than it has already happened over the last 10-20 years. If you can “have” it anytime and anywhere you want how much appreciation will you show for it in the end especially when there are millions of other songs just a click/tap away?

    The only streaming service I would use is the one that gives the creators the biggest share of the revenue instead of generating shareholder value from the money earned. Since I´m not aware that a service like that exists I´ll keep buying my music on Bandcamp.

    For DJing I´m just too “conservative” and don´t want to use it because the fascination of DJing to me has always been the curator part where you dig for new music (new also including music I just haven´t heard before even if it´s 50 years old) and decide where to take a gig sonically. It´s a risk since you can clear a dancefloor with your selection (speaking of experience here) but to me that is still more attractive than playing requests all or most of the time. It all depends on the crowd obviously, while I always enjoyed playing some deep tunes for an open minded crowd and always had good feedback I would probably ruin every wedding simply because I can´t hide the fact that I don´t enjoy myself doing it. But that is the perspective of me always doing it for fun and only doing gigs where I could play whatever I want and not depending on it financially. No intention of shitting on people who enjoy these kind of events, it´s just not for me.

    And for the “vinyl is better” part this video is pretty interesting. Not just from a technical point but also highlighting an additional environmental issue with vinyl I haven´t even thought of: releasing toxins over time. I wonder what us scratchnerds are exposed to handling the vinyl pretty excessively :(

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZ2czFuIYmQ

  12. I would have zero issues with streaming. Every other digital aspect / entertainment in my life comes from some sort of magnificent cloud somewhere. Only thing that holds me back is my chosen / preferred genre (Garridge….!) which doesn’t have much of a presence in a streaming world currently.

  13. For me, it’s about reliability and sound quality. Artist royalties are also a concern.
    I’m a bit of an audiophile so source all of my music in FLAC format where available, otherwise on CD (or WAV/AIFF if I have to) which I then rip/convert to FLAC. :) This way my source material is as clean/pristine as it can be, which matters on big, high-quality club speaker systems.

    On the reliability side, as others have mentioned, if I lose my network connection mid-gig and I’m streaming-only, I have until the end of the currently-buffered track to get it working again or I’m screwed. (Or at least limited to whatever local backup tracks I have with me.)

    Now, if I could buy & download high-quality tracks on the fly from within my DJ software of choice (Mixxx,) that would interest me, as I then have the quality and reliability of a local library while still being able to augment it/fill in its holes/service requests from a much bigger library mid-gig. But that’s not streaming in the conventional sense.

  14. I have not subscribed to any streaming service. When it comes to listening to music, i am kind of picky. I see the benefits for example when you hang out with friends playing music from a phone to a bluetooth-box and everybody is requesting songs to play. But personally, the extreme availability of data/music does not reflect my listening “method”. I tend to get lost in the neverending list of recommendations, autoplay-functions and whatever. I learned that from Youtube. To be honest I don´t even know if it actually is like this with audio-streaming services, too. I only used Spotify on some friends phone once. For myself, I make a selection in advance, put the music on my phone or an usb stick, plug in headphones or put it in the car and that´s it. This way i might actually listen to “that one album i always wanted to listen to” instead of skipping to the next song in the recommendations list. For me it is better to have limitations if you wanna put it that way. It feels like choosing a couple of books for your holiday and when you are sitting on the beach you will actually read them or at least take a real look at them because you have no other options. And if i absolutely need to listen to something specific i can always look it up on Youtube and play it from there. For me it works out like that.

    Using streaming services for DJing is something else though. I can absolutely not imagine using a streaming service at a party. Reliability is the main thing here. I have to say i live in germany and the situation with mobile connectivity is just not good compared to other countries. Mobile data in general and especially flatrates are very expensive plus the network coverage is simply not good enough. Relying on that when playing a wedding in a barn in the fields? Not even in my wildest dreams. Using wireless lan could work in some locations but why would I setup my music on an infrastructure i can not control? (Quote: “Yes, we have wireless lan but the password is printed on the router and that is in a room which is locked.”). For some very special requests sometimes I hook up phones from guests or look something up on Youtube. For those situations it can be helpful but it´s not a must-have. I am also absolutely convinced that availability does not automatically enhance your performance. I believe it is not about singular tracks but about the picture you draw with the tracks. Plus as a DJ who is dealing with requests all the time it can also be comforting to say “no, i don´t have internet and i can not play that since i don´t have that” – Period.

    And there are some things I just don´t understand yet due to my slight aversion against streaming: Is it possible to edit or set cue points on tracks i stream? Is it possible to actually download some of the tracks or are the tracks stored in a temp-folder? What happens if you loose connection while playing? Will it buffer in advance? Are explicit tracks available? ..and so on.. I don´t want to appear grumpy but those are just some of the questions i would definitely want solved before i would use streaming services for DJing. And there are simply just not enough benefits for me to put in the work to solve all those “what ifs”.

    I can imagine taking a closer look at streaming for DJing once mobile connectivity is working like a charm in germany. But i am not sure i will still be around when that happens. I did not say no to CD or DVS. I play 90 percent DVS with vinyl and sometimes real vinyl. Depending on what equipment is available in a club, sometimes i switch to media players or CDJ´s just for fun or a live test.

  15. Wasn’t sure I commented but yeah, I do Tidal. Initially it was a month free and I got it because of Dr. Dre’s “Compton” plus all Jay-Z albums being exclusive to it. Ended up buying Compton anyways and since I had made playlists I kept it.

    I felt like Tidal really supported artists better than Spotify did back then. Now it’s almost neck and neck, but I’m pretty sure I”m right on that one and not just in terms of royalties. To me they also had better curated playlists. The interface would drive me crazy to no end but they’ve made good changes and now you can even search an artist’s complete artistic output in terms of what they wrote, produced, and sang on which isn’t something Spotify has as far as I know. For instance, if I looked up “The Neptunes” Spotify would always give me their albums only.

    Today I use it because it does what I need and for $15 I can share with my cousin, sister, and mom. The weird thing I’ve found with Tidal (and streaming in general) is that when I binge too hard on hip-hop I get tired of it and go off to some genres I didn’t think I’d be interested in. Now I just put on a k-pop playlist because I don’t have time to sit and listen to music recently so hearing catchy melodies with no regard to what they’re saying is great background music. I’d recommend it because I know it’s struggling but iPhone owners aren’t about to leave Apple Music and Spotify users aren’t about to leave their playlists. I wonder if anyone has figured out how to do that, get a person from one streaming platform to another. Oh yeah, Serato support is kind of nice, too.