It would be fair to say that the DJ community is universally pissed off at the industry for their approach to DJ software music libraries. Like casinos, they trap you inside their windowless world and give you no glimpse of the outside for fear of being distracted. So enterprising people like Damien Sirkis at Next Audio felt compelled to knock holes in the walls and allow you to transport your libraries in more or less any direction you pleased via his Rekord Buddy software.
At first, it was a paid app. Then, as is becoming standard, it became a subscription-based service. But now after a huge amount of soul searching, Damien is releasing it into the open-source realm. Yes, that means it’s free. From today. On Mac and Windows.
A press release follows, but in reality, is more like a statement:
The restrictive walled garden approach to library management benefits only the industry. It’s nothing more than a way to tie paying customers to their respective products, and offers no real feature advantage, nor does it encourage the innovation our industry badly needs.
I find this approach to be unacceptable, which is why I made Rekord Buddy.
This has been a labour of love over many years. It was the first to market and enjoyed enough success that I could make it my full time gig.
But recently I’ve been struggling with something, and that’s how my beliefs conflict with my actions. By selling Record Buddy as a product and then as a service, I’m profiting from the poor practices of the DJ industry, albeit in a bid to provide a solution to this bad practice.
That ends today.
As of October 9th 2020 Rekord Buddy is a free app and will become open source software, free for anyone to use and modify as they wish, before the end of the year. Without revenue, I’ll continue to support and develop it more as a labour of love, but user support will minimal and sporadic.
Rekord Buddy did what it set out to do. What happens next is up to you. Join me and let’s make it fulfill its motto and stay the one and only “by DJs, for DJs” app out there.
The complete and evolving statement and thread can be found on the Rekord Buddy forum.
TAKING A STAND
Seems that Damien is pretty clear about his intentions. He just echoes what we all think, but actually has some power to do something about it. It might be a small stand, but now he’s made his industry-leading software free, the barriers to library migration have come tumbling down.
Now you should be able to at least transfer your libraries around the assorted DJ apps with relative ease. I say relative, because thanks to the way each does their own proprietary thing, there’s always going to be something that doesn’t quite work or needs a gentle nudge in the right direction.
But as Damien says, now that Rekord Buddy is open source, it can be improved and enhanced by the community, especially those with code skills. This is still very much Damien’s at heart, but he’s handed it over to you lot to run with and adapt to whatever the industry decides
SALUTE!
Giving up a solid lump of income for the greater good of the DJ scene is a noble thing to do. Let’s hope it sends a clear message to the DJ industry to stop building walls and make life easier for the DJs that they aim to serve.
One last thing
Apologies for the headline. Now DJWORX is in wind-down mode, I feel the need to have a little fun. Or is that wind-up mode?