Is DJ Studio the perfect DAW for DJs?Lite: £199/$199 or £8/$8 per month, Pro: £499/$499 or £29/$29 per month, dj.studio
Recording a DJ mix is often as simple as performing and recording the master output in real-time, all in one take. It’s certainly a strong indicator of your DJing ability — but you’re limited if you want to get ultra-precise with your mix after it’s recorded, or pre-prepare something with voiceover for radio. You have very few streamlined choices.

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There have been solutions over the years — Native Instruments’ Traktor DJ software initially launched as Traktor Studio, with the ability to record movements as automation, allowing you to fix any wonky mixes in post-production. Then there’s Ableton Live, which, although not specifically for DJ mixes, can be used to edit tracks, warp tempos and launch tracks live. But, historically, there was no standard DJ mix software. In fact, one of the most celebrated DJ mixes of all time, the Too Many DJs series by Soulwax, was actually “mixed” using a turntable, recording parts then editing together in Pro Tools — Pro Tools!
The forgotten hero was my particular favourite, MixMeister’s Fusion software. MixMeister allowed for ultra-simple, drag-and-drop, semi-automated, offline mix creation. But it was left stranded without many updates after its acquisition by InMusic in 2007 and struggled to keep apace with OS updates, especially on macOS.
These OS struggles with MixMeister studio, led me to search for an alternative. “There must be loads of different solutions by now, surely?” I thought… Well, surprisingly there wasn’t. It was this same scenario that led DJ Studio founder, Siebrand Dijkstra to create his app.
DJ Studio playlist in carousel view. Image: MusicTech
Branded as the first full DAW for DJs, DJ Studio has been created specifically to solve the hassle of creating DJ mixes, radio shows and the like. It’s designed to appeal to both the pro market and playlist addicts looking to explore curating mixes.
Thankfully, DJ Studio sports a familiar layout to other major DAWs. Available in the browser or as an app (although the browser features are limited), the AI-powered automixing will import your playlists from Rekordbox and other major music library apps. This includes the import of grid data, BPM and cue points into DJ studio, and you can toggle the settings on which of your music libraries and views you want to use.
Undeniably a killer, genuinely innovative feature is the ability to communicate with YouTube and create legal, full mixes using YouTube video search, then output these with video mix, using a visualization. This is a mind-blowing feature for both mixtape curators and users who may not have actually become DJs in the traditional sense yet. Plus, for DJs, it’s a useful tool to test out mixes, create YouTube content and send demos without having to invest in downloaded, offline files.
The app is constantly being updated. Feedback from the community seems to be implemented rapidly and new features and bug fixes are swift. When using Automix, the results are, as you might expect, hit and miss — but it’s really the ability to easily dig in and edit the Automix suggestions that makes DJ Studio so powerful. The matching for key or energy is particularly cool.
DJ Studio YouTube integration. Image: MusicTech
Our biggest gripe with DJ Studio is some of the interface quirks, especially with the recent addition of sample lanes, where the resizing and collapsing of tracks is clunky. Zooming out the entire interface from the view menu is a huge help here. There’s also a question over the pricing — it’s expensive as a one-off option and costly for somebody just doing the odd mix to be paying a monthly subscription. It’s worth watching out for sales and offers here.
Another issue lies in manually creating complex automation. There needs to be a dropdown menu or a way to more easily focus on the automation you want to adjust, as lots of automation lanes overlap and it’s easy to accidentally move the filter, for example, when you are trying to adjust the volume. A simple dropdown on the left Deck menu by the EQs, or a selection tool to bring automation into focus could solve this. It would be better if the rotary controls for EQ and filter were animated to match the automation lines as the volume fader does. Hopefully, this is in a future update.
Possibly the most noticeable difficulty with the app is the challenge with mixing genres other than dance music. DJ Studio admits it launched as an EDM-focused product and is now updating beat detection and algorithms to make improvements to other genres. Tracks without robust tempo grids can be more complicated. Automatic beat detection and mixing options are more challenging with disco, funk, hip-hop and similar non-four-to-the-floor electronic styles. But, even in recent updates, this is always improving, and when you dig in manually to mix transitions, there’s no limit to what you can do. Plus, if your grids and info are accurately set in Rekordbox, for example, it makes the process much smoother.
If you’re creative, it’s possible to adjust grids, create loops and samples and make mixes work in any way you want. This is helped further by a recently added feature of two Sample Lanes. This is basically two extra track lanes in the DAW that lets you resample parts from other tracks, or add loops and more audio. This works particularly well with cutting loops out of a track and using these to create new extended layers. This also expands DJ studio’s remit as a pure DJ mix tool and allows the possibility of creating quick edits and mashups too.
DJ Studio. Image: MusicTech
Taking creativity even further, DJ Studio has one more amazing trick up its sleeve. It allows for the export of the mix you are working on as an editable Ableton Live project, complete with tempo automation, any filtering, EQ and even volume fades! This means even if you hit the creative limits of the DJ Studio app, you can easily continue in Ableton to add more tracks, record voice-overs, add extra effects or create more complicated edits.
This is still a young product that is constantly evolving and driven by passionate, skilful people. I’m confident that this will evolve into an industry-standard tool for DJs and radio show hosts and will become an entry point for music obsessives wanting to explore making their own mixes.​​
There’s long been a gap in the market for a product like DJ Studio and it’s by far the best software for creating DJ mixes that I’ve ever used.
Key Features

Integration with existing popular music libraries, grids, cues and more.
Ability to create mixes using YouTube
Export as an Ableton project
Integration with Beatport
Integration with Mixed In Key

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SKnote announce Etna-Q multi-channel dynamic EQ SKnote’s new Etna-Q hardware unit packs in eight stereo channels of dynamic EQ, and comes equipped with motorised pots and full recall ability.

66th Annual GRAMMY Awards Audio Team Collaborates for Live BroadcastPhotograph courtesy of The Recording Academy®/Getty Images. © 2024 Photograph by Kevin Winter.

Only minutes before the start of the 66th Annual GRAMMY Awards®, members of the 2024 audio team gathered for a photo at the foot of the stage at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. Held on Sun, Feb. 4, 2024, the 66th Annual GRAMMY Awards showcased an amazing collection of musical performances and tributes and utilized the latest in technology to provide television viewers worldwide with a cutting-edge, high-definition immersive sound.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - FEBRUARY 04: on February 04, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for The Recording Academy)

The GRAMMY Awards® technical staff consists of audio pioneers who continually strive to employ the latest in technology to enhance the show. Prominent members of the Recording Academy® Producers & Engineers Wing® were part of the audio team, including GRAMMY® Co-Broadcast Music Mixer Eric Schilling, GRAMMY Broadcast Production Mix Audio Advisor Mike Clink, GRAMMY Broadcast Music Mix Audio Advisor Glenn Lorbecki, GRAMMY Broadcast House Mix Audio Advisor Leslie Ann Jones, and several others.

RecordingAcademy.com

Car-sharing company Getaround cuts one-third of US workforceGetaround, a company that helps vehicle owners rent out their cars, trucks and SUVs to other peers, is cutting 30% of its North American workforce as part of a restructuring. The company said in a statement it will restructure its workforce and operations to reduce costs in hopes of extending its cash runway and accelerating […]
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Killer Mike – and a host of top execs – joined ‘Award Season’ Grammy Week party, hosted by Milk & Honey and ReservoirMBW co-sponsored event alongside Splice, SoundCloud, Mark Music + Media Law, BMI, UBS, and Endurance Artist Management.
Source

Killer Mike – and a host of top execs – joined ‘Award Season’ Grammy Week party, hosted by Milk & Honey and ReservoirMBW co-sponsored event alongside Splice, SoundCloud, Mark Music + Media Law, BMI, UBS, and Endurance Artist Management.
Source

Reservoir generated $35.5m in calendar Q4 2023, up 19% YoYThe company has raised its outlook for full-year revenue and adjusted EBITDA, in the wake of "strong revenue growth"
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Spotify paid the music industry $9 billion in 2023Apparently, passing 602 million monthly active users was not the only big stat Spotify wanted to share this week. Two days after a solid report to investors that sent its stock up 8%, Spotify announced it had paid more than $9 billion to musicians and the music industry last year, its highest payout ever...
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What Was AI Made For? AI’s Place in the Music IndustryJoseph Perla, the Founder & CEO of Hangout FM by Turntable Labs, cuts through the clutter to offer a music tech insider's look at the good and the bad of music AI...
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13 Social Media Tips for Musicians [Bobby Borg]If your social media efforts have yet to be the fruit you'd hoped for, these 13 tips from Bobby Borg are the perfect place to start...
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Music subscriber market shares 2023: New momentumWith UMG leading the charge to reshape the music industry into a more label-friendly form, 2023 may, with hindsight, go down as the year before everything changed. Whatever lies ahead though, new models will take time to deliver benefits. Music subscriptions are therefore going to remain the bedrock of music rightsholder revenues for the foreseeable future. So, it is a good thing that music subscriptions had such a good year in 2023.

As of Q3 2023, there were 713.4 million music subscribers globally, which was 90 million up on the 623.4 million one year earlier in Q3 2022. This matters for two reasons:

We are already nearly three quarters of the way to having one billion music subscribers globally. That is no small achievement. For context, as recently as five years ago, we had only just passed the quarter of a billion subscriber mark

The 90 million subscribers added in the 12 months to Q3 2023 was more, yes more(!), than the 83.5 million added one year earlier. In fact, the number added was nearly as many as those added in 2020. Not bad for a maturing category with key markets hitting near-saturation

However, there is a bit of a problem with looking at the global market: it is increasingly no longer a global market, but instead, one of two halves: the West and the Global South, with each region throwing off dramatically different metrics and growth narratives.

Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the market share rankings:

Spotify dominated the global music subscriber base in Q3 2023 with 31.7% market share. More than that, it actually increased its share from 0.4 points from Q3 2022. So, for all the flak Spotify has thrown at it, it outgrew the market in 2023. Newer, emerging market territories were central to this growth, but it was Spotify’s traditional heartland (North America and Europe) that drove the majority (59%) of its subscriber growth. Compare and contrast this with the all-DSP picture, where North America and Europe drove just 29% of subscriber growth, with Asia Pacific accounting for nearly two thirds of all non-Western subscriber growth

China, a market in which only Apple of the Western DSP operates, underpins this non-Western growth, and the clearest manifestation of this is Tencent Music Entertainment (TME). With 102.7 million subscribers in Q3 2023, TME represents 14.4% of all global subscribers, despite this being an effectively China-only number. NetEase Cloud Music (6.1% share and China-only) and Yandex (3.4% share and Russia-only), further represent the dynamic growth from regions where Western DSPs largely do not operate. This is the new, bifurcated nature of the global music subscriber market

Apple Music (12.6%), Amazon Music (11.1%) and YouTube Music (9.7%) represent the remainder of the leading Western DSP pack. Along with Spotify, these three DSPs represent 65% of the global market, but only 59% of 2023 growth. Western DSPs are still the core of the market, but they are collectively losing share. But, even within these four, there is a diverging picture, with YouTube Music and Spotify gaining share in 2023 while Amazon and Apple lost share. Between Q3 2022 and Q3 2023, Spotify added more subscribers than all three other leading Western DSPs combined

2023 was a strong year for music subscriptions, delivering more growth than perhaps had been expected in such challenging macro-economic and geo-political circumstances. Even North America and Europe grew slightly faster in 2023 than in 2022. But, as commendable as squeezing more growth out of otherwise mature markets is, the inescapable paradigm shift is the emergence of the Global South as the growth driver of tomorrow’s music subscriber base.

Want even more detail? Check out the full music subscriber market shares report and data set, with data for more than 20 DSPs across more than 40 territories, with data for every quarter from Q4 2015 to Q3 2023.

For more info email stephen@midiaresearch.com

Oneohtrix Point Never announces spatial audio remix of acclaimed Again albumOneohtrix Point Never has announced a limited deluxe edition of his acclaimed 2023 album Again, featuring a spatial audio mix.

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The immersive Dolby Atmos mix has been mixed by Mike Dean, Tommy Rush, and Sean Solymar, and will debut at private listening events in New York, Los Angeles, and London on 29 February. Although they’re mostly private affairs, some limited tickets for the public will be available once you automatically enter a draw upon pre-ordering the Blu-Ray from the OPN site.
Alongside the standard and Dolby Atmos mixes, the Blu-Ray includes visuals from the album, including the new music video On An Axis by Andrew Norman Wilson.

The deluxe edition’s packaging is a work of art, housed in a slipcase made from 3mm acrylic in two colour variants, containing a pulsing green LED light powered by 2 AAA batteries, developed specifically for this release.
Credit: Oneohtrix Point Never
Oneohtrix Point Never was also recently announced as part of the Coachella 2024 lineup, and has revealed that this will kick off the North American leg of his Again tour. The tour features a new live production with design, creative direction, and visuals by Freeka Tet and additional digital animations by Nate Boyce.
OPN is not the only artist working with spatial audio engineers to create immersive versions of their music. Dolby recently teamed up with Ed Sheeran to remix his recent track, Magical, to show how musicians can “push music to new boundaries”.
In an unexpected move, Apple Music recently revealed it would be rewarding musicians who mix their songs in Dolby Atmos format. In a statement it said it would “give added weighting” to streams of songs mixed in Dolby Atmos, giving those artists more chances to earn bigger royalty payments.
Not everyone’s on board with the Dolby Atmos for Apple Music, though. Kid Cudi took to Twitter, now X, in July 2023 to write, “Yo Apple Music, Dolby Atmos is ruining my artwork. This is a problem that fans can’t hear the music as intended. This is very bad. I am listening to multiple songs of mine that are completely full of errors. Drums drop out middle of verses, start off not on the one, all messed up. Artists should not have their music manipulated like this.”
Find out more about Oneohtrix Point Never’s – hopefully not ruined – spatial audio mix of Again via Point Never.
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DrumThrash releases FREE acoustic drum samples in WAV format
DrumThrash recently released a free acoustic drum pack in WAV format, which is universally compatible with any DAW or setup.  As the name DrumThrash suggests, the pack seems a natural fit for use with hard rock or metal, given the demos on the product page have names like Beat Blaster and Snare Slayer.  That said, [...]
View post: DrumThrash releases FREE acoustic drum samples in WAV format

Where You At – an app that allows you to accurately find your friends at music venues – rolls out in East LondonWhere You At (WYA), an app that helps you stay connected to your friends even offline, is rolling out at select East London venues including Colour Factory, Night Tales and EartH.

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Created by Tamzin Lent, WYA was developed following experiences of sexual assault on nights out, and is touted as the first app offering peer-to-peer safety features.
The app uses Bluetooth to allow friends to communicate with one another in a venue where signal might be poor. Not only is it able to pinpoint an individual’s location in case they get lost, WYA also offers a detailed map of each venue, including club facilities and other useful features within the premises. Simply search for your friend on the venue map provided and send them a PING as needed.
Where You At is currently operational in eight London venues, including E1, HERE, Outernet, The Lower Third, XOYO, and Drumsheds, a nightclub with a capacity of 15,000.
Night Time Industries Association (NTIA) Director Silvana Kill says [via Mixmag]: “We’re thrilled to see Where You At expanding its reach and enhancing the nightlife experience through exciting new NTIA member venue partnerships.”
“With the support of the Night Time Industries Association, the app continues to make nightlife safer and more enjoyable for everyone. It’s not just about finding friends; it’s about ensuring customers are creating unforgettable moments for all the right reasons!”
Vlad Bungianu, Night Tales Venue Manager, also adds: “The most I am looking forward to from this partnership is to make the party space safer and more enjoyable for everyone who comes through our doors. The WYA platform is a great addition, I am looking forward to seeing how the customers will benefit from using it.”
Where You At is now available for download on both Android and iOS.
Learn more at WYA.
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Brian Eno’s new £20,000 LED turntable has LEDs which change colour at randomAmbient legend and visual artist Brian Eno has launched the Turntable II, the second iteration of his signature colour-changing neon record player.

READ MORE: Skrillex says the next big music-sharing app after TikTok will be whatever’s “accessible to the kids”

As with the original release that debuted in 2021, Eno’s latest turntable is a collaboration with London’s Paul Stolper Gallery and is limited to just 150 units across the globe.
The record player, which comprises a round platter and base, is able to change colours “independently”, offering “seamless phasing” through a combination of “generative ‘colourscapes’”. In addition, the pattern of lights – the speed at which they change and how they change – are programmed to do so randomly and slowly. Bask in the mesmerising hues of pink, blue, orange, and green as the LED lights shine through the acrylic body of the device.
Image: Luke Walker/ Paul Stolper Gallery
“It’s the softness of these colours and the way they merge with each other that is so seductive,” Eno says in a statement [via Fad Magazine]. “When it doesn’t have to do anything in particular, like play a record, it is a sculpture.”
Specs wise, the Turntable II plays both 33 and 45rpm vinyl, and sports a white 8.6” Pro-Ject aluminium tonearm, Ortofon 2M cartridge, high precision stainless steel bearing block, and an electronic speed switch.
At $25,000/£20,000 (excluding VAT), the Turntable II is as swanky as they come. Each unit will also feature a signature from Eno and an edition number engraved into the side of its base.
The Turntable II is currently on display at Paul Stolper Gallery until 9 March 2024.
Learn more at the Paul Stolper website.
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