rekordbox 6.0 lets you line up your next tune from the cloud

Access Performace mode for free and replace your USB with your iPhone.

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Pioneer DJ has announced the latest version of rekordbox, with a revamp that brings a deck load of new features. rekordbox 6’s biggest haul is the integration with Dropbox, SoundCloud and Beatport to offer users a cloud-based library across different platforms. However, other notable features include free use of Performance Mode, display updates, Ableton Link support and a new subscription model.

On cloud six

The classic horror story of realising your USB sticks are lost or broken as you step up to the decks may be behind us. With rekordbox 6, users can upload their music library to Dropbox, so that when logging into your Pioneer DJ account on another device you can retrieve all your tracks, playlists, Hot Cues and more. This is ideal for creating backups of your library, or to sync your library from your main computer at home, or to your laptop, or iOS device. You’ll need to have a Creative plan subscription to make use of this new feature, though.

rekordbox 6
Image: rekordbox

With rekordbox 6, your iOS devices can be used to enhance your DJ sets, and not just by taking great Instagram Stories. Using the cloud, you can now prepare tracks, playlists, and advanced metadata like cue points straight from your iPhone. You can also sync your entire library to your iOS device by hooking it up to the same network as your computer, and any changes you make here are reflected across your entire account.

Inflyte and streaming services

Users of Inflyte, the digital music promotion service, can browse through their music in their Inflyte Promo Locker within rekordbox, then select which files to import into the library. There’s also an auto-sync feature, which imports all recently available tracks from Promo Locker into rekordbox.

rekordbox 6

Beyond your own library and Inflyte, you can stream music straight from Beatport LINK and SoundCloud Go+. All tracks get analysed by rekordbox as you import them, so you can view waveforms, set Hot Cues and add them to a playlist regardless of where they’re stored. The new Beatsource LINK platform, created by Beatport and DJCity, will be available with an update in late Spring. Beatsource LINK is geared towards open-platform DJs and could prove useful for those sets where song requests are inevitable.

New look

The team at rekordbox has been listening to the requests of its userbase, and as a result has now included a Light setting. This reverts the GUI skin colours to present a clearer, high-contrast view of the screen, which is particularly useful for daytime sets where the sun is reflecting on your screen.

The waveform display has also seen a neat update, giving you a clearer picture of how a track sounds before you even route it to your headphones. 3Band waveform uses different colours to indicate the volume of each frequency band (low, mids, high). The three frequency bands are either visually stacked (full waveform), or layered on top of the other (enlarged waveform). Blue indicates low frequencies, amber represents mids and white indicates high frequencies.

rekordbox 6

Linking up

Ableton Link gets support from the rekordbox 6, allowing you to sync the tempo of the master deck with other apps on your device, apps on external devices and other hardware compatible with Link. Back-to-back DJ sets can be streamlined with different performance applications, with samplers and instruments kept in time with your music and the ability to sync music with VJ and LJ software compatible with Ableton Link.

On the iOS side of things, rekordbox for iOS 3 includes the aforementioned library synchronisation, plus a few extras. You can now find, review and prepare tracks directly from your iPhone on selected CDJs and XDJs, so you won’t need to export them from your laptop or use a USB to load up music. So, if you’re sent a track from a friend during your set, you can analyse the file, set Hot Cues and more, and send it straight to the deck.

A new GUI for rekordbox for iOS offers a smoother workflow with Playlist Box, Quick Cue, Realtime Memory, Dual Control and independent A/B decks. The expanded features available to rekordbox for iOS offer a similar user experience to the Export mode on rekordbox 6, with Beat Jump, Manual Loop, edit track and My Tag information. WAV, FLAC and ALAC files are support now too, as well as MP3 and AAC files

Subscriptions.

rekordbox 6 comes in three different subscriptions.

rekordbox 6

For more info head to rekordbox.com

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