It was really another time, prices have increased a lot these days
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I think we, as a user, are not careful enough when it comes to cloud based and subscription based solutions. For Netflix and other recreative content providers this is all fine and dandy, but for productions environments where your income depends on this software, you have a big problem when the company offering this subscription based solution stops their business.
A recent example from the general aviation world is āSkymanā, which was a web based solution to run the administration of small airfields and their flight schools. It became the most popular package in Western Europe for this goal, until this year Skyman was sold to another company, and they decided to stop this offering. The problem here is that airfields and flight schools have to keep their administration for at least 5 years (for inspection by the authorities), but Skyman offers no way to export the data inside it (much like Rekordbox tried), and their support is unwilling. Conclusion: every Western Europe airfield and flight school has a big problem.
Cloud based bookkeeping software is becoming more and more popular too. Of course, with forever changing financial legislation this was always software which needed to be updated monthly, but at least you had your data and software on your own server. Which is nice, because you need to keep your financial records for 5 years too. Should your bookkeeping software stop updates, you simple keep the latest copy of this software on an old computer so you can access old data, and start over in your new software. But today with cloud based solutions, the question is how you are going to access your old data if this solutions quits?
Also note that there are a lot of factories (like car manufacturers) still running Windows 95 or even MSDOS on a few production machines, and spending heavy dollars to keep this software running on new retrofit hardware when old hardware dies. Thats simply because updating their machinery is even more expensive to replace! A subscription based service stopping their business would ruin such a factory.
That all may sound like far away for us DJs. But take TIDAL and other subscription based music providers: which guarantee do you have that your sacred playlists can be migrated to another platform in the future? none! Ok, you donāt have this with Engine or Traktor either (although for now itās data is quite accessible on disk), but there you are free to use older hardware or software. When Tidal quits, itās game over. You could lose all of your Tidal playlists in the next few minutes, if thatās what Tidal decides!
This also counts for activation servers: I once bought a small audio editing software package called āSound Studio 2ā. Worked fine and dandy until those guys decided to sell their business, and the buyer pulled the plug on the activation server of Sound Studio 2 when version 3 came outā¦ My license is now worthlessā¦ Oh, and if Native Instruments quits, all my Traktor and Komplete software is rendered useless too, due to the activation server going downā¦ In that regard, Iām good with Engine DJ: no subscription, and data on my own storage in an accessible format like SQLā¦
Businesses come and go, they go bankrupt, they get sold, they quit by themselves. And this also counts for software makers. But way to many people never think about this and only look into the short term. Last week I had this discussion with a software engineer doing top notch IT for big corporate businesses that you really donāt want to be hacked. He also happens to run the administration of a small airfield (flying is his hobby). Guess what, even he was caught off-guard in the āSkymanā debacleā¦
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Well no, not if itās already registered.
Hereās a tale: Someone posted on the NI forum a while ago, wanting to use an old product on Windows XP. The old system (Service Center) no longer operates.
After a little back and forth on the forum, he contacted NI and they ended up giving him a license to use the product offline.
He found a line in their EULA - " Should Native Instruments for whatever reasons no longer be able to fulfill its obligations to deliver the activation key, it will provide the Licensee with a key which ensures the continued use of the software independent of changes of the computer.
Thatās a hopeful story. But what if NI goes bankrupt? The curator will in that case only be interested in maximising the active side of their year balance, to be able to pay for as much debts as possible. Paying people to deliver you an offline license does not fit in that goalā¦
Thanks for taking the time to post, itās nice to see what UK Djās are using.
Itās 4th on the list, out of a list of a dozen and beat traktor, which has been around for quite a while in itself. The chart/poll does a rather excellent job of showing how well Engine has caught up in such a comparatively short space of time.
Interesting you mention that. Tidal initiated another round of layoffs in Oct. 2024. https://fortune.com/2024/10/30/jack-dorsey-layoffs-streaming-music-app-tidal-block-leaked-email/
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And this is why i refuse to depend on streaming my for my music.
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Hear hear @Johan and @djliquidice ā¦. Call me old skool but Iām not willing to play the streaming lottery.
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Oh how quickly people forget the Pulselocker debacle. The streaming crown jewel that was planted into a few DJ softwares (Serato DJ included).
Itās happened before and it will happen again. The technology got bought and incorporated into Beatport/Beatsource but everything was lost when it folded.
Anyway, issues like this can be negated if one of the many playlist sync services are used (they too can suffer the same issue but less likely).
Keep backups of your playlists and enjoy your streaming services (for now). Just have a plan to switch should you need to.
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I do know a few people who canāt be bothered maintaining their collection and just let streaming pick up the slack. Personally I do make sure Iāll have everything I need (unless itās a gig with music requested that Iāll never play again) but VDJ has a tidal cache so no need to worry about a signal on the night.
People have just got lazy and streaming is the easy option, until one day it just disappears like what happened with one of the VDJ services a few years ago that literally got disconnected overnight, although I canāt remember which one it was (maybe Pulselocker perhaps?)
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I think Spotify was one of the others withdrawn too, there have been several.
The problem with Pulselocker and its situation was that they went bust and ceased trading so everything just stopped and playlists disappeared.
Their technology was finally used for Beatport and their locker tier IIRC.
Yeah, it was PL that was in VDJ too. I remember subscribing for a bit and quite liked it. It just didnāt get the users it needed to sustain it which is a shame as it was the first that allowed downloads for offline use and the first within the bigger DJ apps (not counting Spotify in DJay).
ISTR that Pulselocker took a long time to get off the ground, and had a couple of false starts. I think it took three years before Serato incorporated it.
When their site opened, I tried it out and didnāt have a great experience. Big name artists were missing, there were cover versions listed as being by the original artistā¦
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I remember that. I think their defence was basically āthis is what the labels send usā.
I think you only need one original band member to be able to use the band name and itās how a lot of the CDs that were sold on the market happened to come about.
I remember buying tracks off iTunes back in 2010 and they were re-recorded by some of the original members. One was a Sweet track for a 70s gig. I even bought a track on iTunes that I have on vinyl as I didnāt have time to rip it before the gig and it was from a mix CD with another track mixing in and out.
I think theyāve upped their game a little now but it was rife about 10 years ago.
Vengaboys was another one that was a tribute as their catalogue was pulled from iTunes. It was a strange time back then.
When you were looking through CDs in the record store, you had to be careful for these things too. I have a few wrong buys on CD tooā¦ The only difference was that a few of the originals were not available in MP3 stores, and when you searched for them you got the knockoffs. But the record store around the corner could be out of stock as wellā¦
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Haha. Yeah, Iāve been victim to this a few times many years ago.