DJ With Apple Music launches to enable subscribers to mix their own sets
135 comments
·March 27, 2025sowbug
lynx97
I used to do offline mixes with a (partly generated) shell script that calls several sox instances to do the mixing/tempo change/volume adjustments. As a CLI person, I liked that approach, although I would be happy for something a little more streamlined. I wonder if anyone knows an offline mixing tool in the spirit of KISS, without a GUI? I guess Csound would be a better backend then sox, but I lack the fluency in Csound to do that...
mikae1
https://mixxx.org for a FOSS (read: somewhat enshittification proof) alternative.
notpushkin
I think Mixxx is for live mixing only. Still a good piece of software though!
nsteel
Not sure about that.
There is a feature request for supporting streaming services and the hurdle is legal more than anything. https://bugs.launchpad.net/mixxx/+bug/938180
kennyloginz
It’s not for live mixing only.
amanaplanacanal
I love mixxx, but I bet this apple music thing will never support open source dj software. They are too afraid of folks pirating the music.
timeon
I guess someone using mixxx is not streaming the music (like me) so yes these are different target 'markets'.
belthesar
Interesting! This product looks to be the spiritual successor to MixMeister Fusion, another app that I used to use to make offline mixes back in the mid-late 2000’s.
mfro
The Apple Music integration in dj studio is currently completely nonfunctional for me on macOS. I get a listing of tracks in my library but I cannot use them even after downloading locally.
ThatMedicIsASpy
Looks interesting - only to see I have to convert my whole flac library
rconti
How do you know someone's into crossfit^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H FLAC? :D
sowbug
It works with FLAC; in fact, that's preferred, because you want to start with the best available quality.
butlike
TECHNICALLY flac is conceptually worse than wav. Flac truncates the 0 values in the PCM file, WAV preserves them. It's functionally the same, but wav reads the file while flac has to re-add the 0's then read the file, so there's technically one more processing step (which could go wrong).
crtasm
Could anyone comment on how its stems separation compares to VirtualDJ?
SSLy
"DJ.Studio supports many file formats from MP3, WAV, AIFF, FLAC and more."
ahilss
I’m the developer of Transitions DJ (https://dj.app/). If anyone can connect me with the team at Apple Music, I would be interested in doing an integration.
999900000999
This is the best thing I've seen on this website all week, what midi controllers do you suggest. I'm a very amateur musician and this feels perfect for making fun chopped up remixes of some of my music.
Shorel
I tested it with my Hercules Inpulse 500 and it works beautifully.
ChadNauseam
woah, insane domain name cop. and the app looks awesome, nice!
Lucasoato
That's so great, incredible how it can connect with everything basically!
Gigachad
Probably isn't huge for existing DJs who would need the reliability of having stuff on a USB in venues which might not have great internet access. But I can see this being good for the casual users at home since this is the first streaming integration which doesn't charge an additional DJ subscription on top of the standard subscription.
larodi
Indeed, you actually bring two as links don’t always work and flash drives tend to die in most unexpected ways.
Besides this whole ‘get it from the streaming app’ business is indeed best suited for bedroom deejays. Everybody who cares about their craft as a professionL cuts VIP versions and dubplate loops that don’t get released on these platforms at all.
The real recent (~10 years) breakthrough in this area was/is that mixer producing companies (hardware vendors) would start implementing two CUE channels so that people can work better in a back2back session. A real game changer.
Mashimo
> is indeed best suited for bedroom deejays.
Or wedding / event DJs who handle requests. I would not delete the local files, but having a streaming service with popular music would certainly help.
> Everybody who cares about their craft as a professionL cuts VIP versions and dubplate loops
If that is the case, I don't know a single DJs who cares about their craft. Makes you think.
shlant
> If that is the case, I don't know a single DJs who cares about their craft. Makes you think.
Yea when that sentence started I was ready to agree until they made a point which seems more relevant to producers than DJs
dzhiurgis
Yep, almost by definition most DJs play unreleased stuff that wouldn’t be on streaming services for years.
ethagknight
Im a little confused, if I wanted to create a mix with my favorite parts of songs, is this something I can do relatively easily from Apple Music? Or do I need to get additional hardware or buy some extra software?
I love a lot of jam bands, but dont always want to listen to the uhhh lengthy preambles and wandering postludes, just want the gravy. Would love to mix together some highlights along with other non jam songs. Also think my wife and daughter would appreciate Phish more if it wasnt just so. much. phish.
Or is this different?
dialup_sounds
This is different. This allows DJ software to utilize Apple Music as a library. You would still need DJ software to actually make a mix.
However, for your use case, if you're already using Apple Music, you can set start and end points on individual tracks (Get Info on the track, Options). This is nondestructive, but not specific to the playlist so you'd have to turn it off again to hear the full track, and your export options are limited to burning to CDs.
pbhjpbhj
Am I reading right, a new product has only 'burn to CD' as a way to listen offline? Haven't had a CD player in the house for a decade or more. Why not just cut a wax cylinder?
dialup_sounds
It's not a new product. The functionality I'm talking about dates from when Apple Music was iTunes.
You can listen to the playlist offline just fine. I just mean you can't export a playlist of trimmed tracks as audio (e.g. "My Mixtape.m4a") from within Apple Music. If you sometimes want to hear the full track and sometimes want to hear the trimmed tracks as a mixtape, then it's not a good solution. But if you just want to cut a 5 minute intro or 20 minutes of "hidden track" silence then it's there.
Mashimo
This is different. Apple just allows 3rd DJ software to use their streaming catalog.
These software are designed for "live" mixes, not like a DAW where you can build it up one by one and "render" it.
Technically you don't need hardware for DJ software, but I would say is frustrating without. Here is a free example software (without apple music integration) https://dj.app/
0_____0
I believe this is one thing Tidal is designed to achieve. I just jumped ship to it from Spotify after getting fed up with garbage getting floated up in sponsored recommendations. Supposedly you have access to stems for some of the library, and compatibility with a fair few DJ platforms e.g. Serato
m3kw9
This basically allows certain DJ apps to play 2 streams at the same time.
easyThrowaway
I've been testing this for a few days on the latest build of rekordbox.
It seems...fine, on par with other similar integrations (Tidal, Beatport), but it's unclear which audio quality it's using to stream the tracks. I'd say it's using 256kbps/aac files? Bit of distortion while timestretching heavily compared to the lossless version of the same song. Also, no offline storage option?
kcrwfrd_
Is there support for Rekordbox?
It would be awesome so that you can use Apple Music alongside normal USB sticks / Rekordbox libraries on the Pioneer XDJ line of equipment.
rajbot
Yes:
“”“ The popular DJing app djay by Algoriddim already offered Apple Music integration since last year, and additional platforms that are now supported include AlphaTheta, Serato, and inMusic's Engine DJ, Denon DJ, Numark, and RANE DJ. For example, you can now access the entire Apple Music catalog in AlphaTheta's rekordbox app for iPhone and iPad.
"Apple Music support has finally arrived," says the release notes for today's rekordbox update.”””
_bin_
That would be cool but I don't think this is going to help a ton until I can throw my own mix or something I got off soundcloud into my apple music library and actually have it work.
kakoni
See https://rekordbox.com/en/2025/03/apple-music-support/
There is a compatability chart with their various gear.
cadamsdotcom
Would be an absolute bumper feature for bedroom DJs. Good excuse to dust off the decks :)
eclark
> The feature is integrated with DJ software and hardware platforms AlphaTheta
They called out AlphaTheta, so here's hoping that it is. That would make my decision to move off of Spotify for personal streaming even easier
a2dam
Spotify used to have this, and it's very annoying that they removed the feature about a year ago.
input_sh
* Five years ago, Spotify got rid of this in 2020.
Note that this isn't anything particularly groundbreaking, most DJ software already supports multiple streaming services (Soundcloud, Tidal, Beatport, Beatsource, I'm probably missing a couple). This is just another integration you can choose from.
Also, Algoriddim's Djay (otherwise not a particulary important player in the market) had Apple Music support for some years now, so I'm guessing the real story here is some sort of an exclusivity contract has expired.
mxfh
Yeah someone at Apple Music must have looked into USP / market differentiator checkboxes, where Spotify skimped out of more permissive/expensive? licensing contracts that would allow for that home use DJ use case.
In most countries you need special licensing for public reproduction of copyrighted music anyway. That use case is not covered by your private streaming subscription. It´s just a means to get the media.
terhechte
Came here to say this. I've always been a happy Spotify customer, but this is something I really liked when it was available. Makes me question my subscription a bit.
sollewitt
Djay’s killer feature is algorithmic stem extraction. The streaming audio services that have integration (Tidal, now Apple Music) don’t allow this processing. It’s an arbitrary technical limitation that I suspect is rooted in a licensing agreement from the rights holders.
tl;dr this is great for playing with sequencing, but a lot of modern djays will want to be able to do stem separation even when exploring, and live use was always a tough sell with a no-internet kill switch.
crtasm
edit: I see there's a tier that does allow stems again now! https://tidal.com/DJs
--
Licensing indeed. For a time VirtualDJ allowed stems for Tidal streamed tracks but were required to disable it.
https://www.virtualdj.com/forums/254722/VirtualDJ_Technical_...
sollewitt
Oh neat, thanks!
Yeah Virtual DJ integration was great, I got frustrated with their beat gridding (I come from Ableton where it’s always been magic and the Traktor where auto grid was really good) but they’ve been pushing everything else forward for a while.
genewitch
Does it stem in real time? That is can you use it to do karaoke on an arbitrary song as it streams?
input_sh
When you import a track to your collection, it does the processing. So, not completely in real time, but it only takes like a minute of background processing before it's ready. Virtually all DJ software has this as a feature nowadays, but of course, results vary.
It's like the next "big thing", very few DJ controllers on the market right now have dedicated buttons for it, but that's about to change.
crtasm
With a GPU stems take seconds to generate, it happens on the fly when I load a file and the track can begin playing immediately while its running.
genewitch
i've been using "AI/ML" to stem songs for something like 7 years, i was wondering if the state of the art allowed streaming stems yet or not.
"next big thing" heh
Shorel
Stemming takes about 15 seconds for a 3 minute song. And most DJ software downloads the entire song in a few seconds, then generates the display waveforms, and so on, and then you can play the song.
So "realtime" and "streaming" don't really apply, because the files download and process fast enough.
genewitch
15 seconds for 3 minutes is quite slow, the open source thing i use, spleeter, says 100x speedup over realtime with a GPU, that would be 1.8 seconds for three minutes, which means that spleeter could, in fact, given all of the arguments of what i asked, do it "realtime".
te_chris
It works on serato
cyberpunk
I just tried it in Serato and it says stems are not available for streaming music. Their wiki says so also(0).
0: https://support.serato.com/hc/en-us/articles/12188545880719-...
Real bummer, I still have to pipe stuff through Ableton, record it, then import it..
te_chris
Rats. I DJ’d a wedding with tidal last year and it worked. It just needed analysis.
shreyshnaccount
I just want to be able to splice songs in a playlist
6stringmerc
Are these tracks high enough quality not to sound like shit on a club system? Legit question - it’s why I purchase 320 kbps mp3s via Beatport.
Also, does this mean the tracks are licensed for public performance? So I can get paid $500 a gig and put on these tracks and not need to be at an ASCAP paying venue or liable for the rights?
These things matter, especially in such a bullshit “you only bought a license” music world where often they don’t tell you about the license itself (not the consumer’s fault, only really interests musicians and copyright geeks like me).
crtasm
My understanding is none of the streaming services integrated into DJ software cover licences for public performance. Just as you don't get that when buying a track from beatport etc.
pbhjpbhj
It specifically says on the Apple page [1]
"sculpt your sets directly from Apple Music before you perform ... for DJs at any level ..."
That can only realistically mean that you're paying for something to perform with. Otherwise it would be an incitement to copyright infringement...
Does Beatport say "Tracks for you to perform with as a DJ"? If not, I can't really see how the comparison works.
Apple Music even existing relied on trademark infringement so I guess expecting them to care about IPR is too much!?
https://music.apple.com/us/curator/dj-with-apple-music/17982...
crtasm
It continues "Think of it as a sketch pad or a rehearsal space, a home for DJs of any level to master their craft and shape their future sets."
I agree Apple (and other services DJ software is integrating) are misleading people.
wahnfrieden
Will there be open APIs to create apps for this? I have stemDJ.com as a next gen successor to https://STEMPLAYER.com that I'd like to integrate this into
ceroxylon
Great to have my AM library accessible, but falls short for a couple big reasons:
- Some of my best playlists were created using the mobile app, and AM seems to have a hard schism between its mobile and desktop versions (the playlists aren't there and would take a long time to recreate / multiple errors when trying to rebuild them).
- The features I want to use (recording, real-time acapella) aren't available for licensing reasons (understandable but kneecap what I want to actually do).
stuart78
FWIW, I've never had an issue with playlists synching between mobile and desktop. I have had other issues in Apple Music, most annoyingly when tracks are randomly replaced by other versions of the song, but you might reach out to Apple support on this one if it happens regularly.
I steer clear of Apple products, but I've still had a lot of fun in this space thanks to DJ Studio (https://dj.studio/), a desktop app that helps make offline (rather than real-time) mixes. I use it to make a monthly personal mixtape, which is a nice way to remember what I used to listen to. They call it a "DAW for DJs," which is accurate.
I especially admire the team that makes it. The CEO records demo videos that are so filled with enthusiasm and accessible expertise that you can't help but appreciate the product more each time you watch them, and the COO sends out email announcements that are actually useful and not spammy.
It's a niche product, but they fill that niche well.