Looking at the Audials web site, they go to great lengths to try and justify the existence of their tools - but at the very bottom of the page:
"When subscribing to commercial music and video streaming services, you may have agreed to terms and conditions, which restrict your rights to record music or videos. Please make sure you carefully check such terms and conditions, before using Audials software to record such media.Audials shall not be liable if you violate such regulations which you have agreed to."
I highly doubt this too. Copyright law is more or less the same in most western countries. You rent your music instead of buying it, so saving is not an option with most streaming services. If it is an option you probably have to deal with a DRM protection. And removing a DRM protection is clearly illegal, even for home use. Even if you bought the song instead of streamed it, there are still limitations on how you use your music collection…
Then regarding the home use: indeed, there are a few exceptions to general copyright law for home (fair) use. But as soon as you play music in front of an audience the rules change, and it clearly isn’t home use anymore.
Admitedly, this makes for some laughable situation. Buy a CD, and make a copy (MP3) of it for home use. This is legal.
Suppose I go DJing a gig with the CD, and my wife is listening the MP3 at home, this is still legal.
Suppose I go DJing a gig with the copied MP3, and my wife is listening the CD at home, this is illegal, unless I buy an additional license.
In theory, even mixtapes are illegal, even in the fair use context: you altered the original
Not trying to bash you: we all have been there in our beginners years, collecting music in the cheapest possible way, so i am not judging. But DJing is about collection building, and having to throw away an illegal collection at one point or another in your career is still painful, due to the time you still invested in sorting this music. So I’m completely with @STU-C : for what legal music costs these days (1 or 1,3 euro at iTunes store), start building a legal collection as soon as possible in your career.
In general find it sad, how grown up people can’t focus on a problem and prefer to give random lectures, propably not even knowing about § 53 UrhG or what GEMA is and does in germany. If you cant resist the urge to judge, at least do it under a matching topic. There you can insult each other as thieves and “bad looking” till the cows come home.
So the problem seems to be, that Engine DJ can’t use 8Channel FLAC for Stems (while Virtual DJ can).
My solution was indeed to convert the files to 2 Channel, now the stems get prepared.
For the conversion I used “Mediapurge”, which has options to leave other parameters alone and just reduce it to 2 channels.
Audacity might be useful in this situation too but I didn’t have to try that out. Thank you @AndyC nevertheless and thanks to @parysatis, @djliquidice and @Reese - you helped me find a solution for my Problem.
And to these who just wanted to be visible: see you.
(1) you may not circumvent DRM or use illegal tools
(2) Actually a little further it states you can only make analog copies.
(5) this does not apply on electronic databases
Basicly this the same fair use clause that’s present in most western copyright law. The Belgian version is a little more clear that you need to own the original carrier, but I think the German version hints at this in 2.2…. Here you encounter the generic but unclear term “werkstuk” or “workpiece”… Law at its best
Finally, don’t forget that any contract, for example between you and a streaming service, can always be more strict than what general law dictates. Essentially, most streaming services exclude this fair use in their “end user agreement”. Otherwise it would not be a streaming service where you “rent” music…
Seems you interpreted parts of copyright law in your advantage, and ignored the rest.
