Since some days I am enjoying my 2 month free Beatport Link trial but for now I am not seeing me extending it after the 2 month. There are essential things missing for me and other things which are highly annoying.
There are 3 approaches to use it:
Browsing existing collections. (Top 100, …)
I would consider this the easiest way to find new songs but there are 2 problems with it.
I can not pre listen a song. To pre listen requires to download the complete song so I can load it directly in the deck.
If ever I like a song there is no way to organise it. I would like to add it to a playlist, to rate it or to write a comment.
Analysing a song on a device takes quite some time. I would have expected this to be faster.
Ad hoc search. This is probably the most usefull use case. If I know the name of a song (or someone is telling you a name) we can type it in the search field and get a list of songs.
To know which song to play I have to pre listen multiple songs ( see the problem I already described)
If I want to add a song to my library or organise it, again no way to do so.
Using prepared Playlists.
To prepare a playlist on Beatport is super annoying. It takes 4 steps to get a song in a playlist (click on menu, click on add to playlist, select the playlist, click on save) It could be open a menu and just select the playlist :-). If at a later point you decide to move the song to another playlist you will have the same complicated process + removing the song from the initial playlist.
- In Engine OS again no way to additional organise a song.
In any case I would currently need to write down the song name/version to organise it at a later time in Engine Desktop. All songs I have played will appear in my synced library so if ever I don’t want a song in my library I would need to manually remove it.
And yes, I could also use Beatport DJ to add songs to playlists on my Mac but this software is still full with bugs and I don’t see any sense to use a webapp if it works only with a certain browser (I don’t need MIDI in this case)
Beatport DJ on the iPad is not working at all.
I used also Soundcloud some time ago. The process to organise songs in playlist is much more comfortable but it s…ks when it comes so sound quality and song selection. For some songs you are getting only some kind of short version as a sneak peak. I also don’t like the idea that someone is ripping a song and make it available on Soundcloud even that he is not the owner or have any rights.
Tidal I did not try for now but I assume to get the same limitations.
Is there something I have overseen or is there something I am doing wrong ?
EDIT:
I found now the most efficient way to evaluate new songs.
In Safety, set Lock Playing Deck and Needle Lock to false
In the track browser, go to the song list you want to evaluate and load the first song.
Listen to the track.
If you like it go back to the browser and swipe the track title to the left ( its already selected )to add it to the Prepare list (there is nothing else you can do )
Use Track Skip to load the next track. (Works great because the previous track will continue playing until the next song is loaded and starts playing)
Now there is only one small problem. There is no way to convert the Prepare list in a regular Playlist. Also the Prepare list will not sync back to Engine DJ but maybe there is a solution …
Denon and streaming is pretty difficult, if not impossible to use depending on your workflow.
I use it as a backup, or just for fun.
I have a pro Link subscription and love to just ‘jam’ with the beaport collection on the fly.
Forget about prepping for gigs or anything like that, let alone actually playing live with streaming.
It can work, but its far from perfect and much less robust than downloading songs.
Get a subscription at that zip dj pool instead and just download your songs.
What you can do is preparing in Rekordbox, or on the Beatport dj web app, but this defeates the purpuse of the Denon standalone machines, right?
Im guessing they work hard to get this solved, but cant get it to work, or its feature nr 834 on their to-do list, i dont know, because its such an important thing for dj’s, specially starting ones.
I’m using the Beatport App for creating an managing my playlists. For now it’s iOS only but it works really well. Also, my workflow is the same as before link existed. So I’m basiclly just shopping and instead putting songs in carts, I put them in a playlist.
Thanks for your answer and confirming that there is currently no way around the existing limitations.
You are absolutely right. Instead of investing $30 per month for streaming it makes a lot more sense to go traditionally with buying songs or a DJ pool.
If Beatport would have kept up with their native desktop app they could have made it more superior.
I tried the iOS Beatport App as well. It’s this kind of non native iOS app you have to force me that I keep using it.
You are right that it could be an alternative. Finding songs and adding it to a playlist is some faster.
(3 Steps instead of 4 on the website)
But at the end it would be still too difficult to rearranging playlists to classify songs more in detail. But this is only Engine OS which could solve it
Streaming is ok at home, it is more precarious out in the field and I certainly would not be relying on streaming for gigs, tidal I feel is the worst example as it is not designed for DJs in mind and having to load songs to get BPM etc is annoying, hopefully this can be addressed but nothing as of yet has been announced to my knowledge.
I’ve tried a lot of music services along with dj programs. Beatport takes the last place among all other services.
The most convenient combinations, I found serato + tidal and virtual dj + tidal / dezeer. That’s because in these combinations of services we can do basic things like search for music, delete a playlist, create a playlist, copy tracks or transfer tracks from one playlist to another in dj program.
Therefore, I find streaming services inside dj programs very useful for myself, it’s just that not all music services are built into dj programs competently.
Make your own comparison and choose the best option for yourself
I see this as an essential step to make streaming services more usable on Denon hardware. That I can sync a streaming track back to my main library but not to be able to add it to a deck and play around with it (setting cues, pre listen ) is not an option for me.
All this is already possible in Traktor PRO and NI added streaming support just some month ago.
Unfortunately preparing tracks in Traktor PRO to import them in Engine DJ software also is not working.
Engine DJ is ignoring streaming tracks in the Traktor PRO library
Also the permanent refetching of playlists and the re downloading of tracks in Engine OS is super boring.
And yes, I have a super fast internet connection.
Same here. I doubt to use any streaming service in the future. Have tried with Tidal and it is fun at home. Maybe useful at a gig if somebody comes asking for a song that you don’t have in your collection. But I see this more for wedding DJs, not for me. So I canceled the tidal subscription with the end of the test period.
I have a Prime 4 set up in my bar with a Tidal subscription. It works reasonably well, Tidal is better on the Prime unit than on the iPad we use during the day! The account on the Prime unit I use on my phone so it is easy to set up playlists and the Tidal playlists aren’t bad either. For the mixed genre venue Tidal is perfect. I signed up with an offer, they currently have 3 months for £1 on a HiFi subscription and 3 months for £2 on a HiFi Plus subscription or you can get 30 days free here: https://tidal.com/partners/denondj
Personally I would pay for the HiFi plus for 3 months to give you more time to build playlists.
Just a side note: when searching on the hard drive it finds the Tidal tracks that I have played before which I find really useful. Especially when I am searching by BPM.
Thanks for your advice. I will give Tidal a try as well but I don’t think it will solve my general problems which I have with Engine OS (refetching, no possibility to classify/organise tracks)
Is Tidal offering the same club oriented catalog of tracks like Beatport Link does ? I assume its more like Apple Music where you are not getting all “club style” versions and availability of tracks can have some delay. Else I would not see any sense why there is such a price difference even for lower quality.
Tidal is not as good for “club style” tracks as Beatport but does have 99% of what I need. They tend to get most tracks on release. It’s worth using the trial period to decide if it has got everything you need.
Some days ago my 2 month Beatport trial expired. Do I miss it ? Yes and No.
Reoccurring downloading (even if you preview a song it will download it first 100% and then again if you load it in the deck), the missing possibility to rate a song or to organise it in playlist on the media player, and the pricing if you consider that you have to buy the songs as well once you decide to play them in front of publicity is definitely a big NO for me. Obviously most of it could be fixed from Denon DJ by improving the possibilities in Engine OS.
On the other side you are getting access to a great selection of tracks and it makes it really fun to decide on your new favourites.
What I was also recognising is that the quality of the songs did not remarkable change when I was switching form 256 to 128 for a test. To pay only $15 to have some fun and to find new tracks would bring it in a more affordable range.
I have also started to try Tidal and except of the much better song quality (up to FLAC) it is not my thing at all. The best aspect of Beatport, to have fun with new tracks is not applicable for Tidal. The songs are too mainstream and to find cool stuff is difficult. Without knowing which song and which version you are looking for it’s not working for me at all. The available genres are not covering my requirements.
So let us hope that the time will bring changes
UPDATE:
I have to revise my opinion about Tidal. With services like TuneMyMusic you are able to migrate songs from one platform to Tidal (or where ever you want) easily. What I did is to transfer my Beatport playlist into Tidal and only a very small amount of songs where missing.
This is great because no matter where you find some cool new songs you have the possibility to move it quickly to Tidal to give the songs a try. And as I said the quality is awesome.
Beatport DJ on the iPad is not working at all.
