This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Business News Digital
New DJ app integrates Spotify
By Chris Cooke | Published on Tuesday 4 February 2014
A new DJ app is on the market that uses Spotify as its source of content, allowing people to iPad DJ to their heart’s content utilising the streaming platform’s catalogue of tip top tunes.
The new app, from a Swedish company called Pacemaker, operates in a similar way to the various DJing apps already available that allow users to mix their own MP3 collections – and indeed the Pacemaker firm previously launched such a thing – but the new product also brings Spotify into the mix. It’s not the first such app to link into a streaming platform, but its the first officially integrated with the Spotify system.
Pacemaker CEO Jonas Norberg told The Guardian that the app is more aimed at the bedroom DJ than the professional mixer, explaining: “We hope it’s accessible: we believe that there is a big bunch of people out there who want to do a little bit more than just passively consume the music. They want to mess around with it. That’s the kind of need we are targeting”.
Though he adds: “We also want to give professional quality to our users, so they can grow with the app. You see this trend of self-publication: things being democratised all over the place like photography and video, but this is something that hasn’t really been democratised yet”.
The app is free to download, with Pacemaker’s business model being the sale of add-on effects. They also upsell premium Spotify subs, because after a two-day free trial only paying users of the streaming service can do the mixing.
Pacemaker can also be used with the user’s MP3 collection, and doing so enables some extra functionality such as storing mixes for future listening, though Norberg reckons its the Spotify integration that’s most important.
Interestingly, a similar DJ Spotify app was the winner of the Hack Day proceedings at MIDEM this year. More on that here.