Users of Pioneer DJ’s CDJ-3000 media players can now play their music directly from the cloud, in a new feature announced today called CloudDirectPlay.
DJs who subscribe to either the Creative or Pro Rekordbox software plan can use the feature by exporting music to the cloud using their software when preparing their sets. That music can then be accessed from CDJ-3000 players as if it were on a locally inserted USB drive.
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The CDJ-3000 players do of course have to be connected to the internet, which happens via Ethernet (ie ProLink).
To enable the feature, users can update their CDJ-3000s to firmware v2.0 from the usual download page on the Pioneer DJ website.
What it is… and isn’t
This isn’t access to streaming services like Beatport or Beatsource, and it isn’t music over WiFi.
Instead, it is hard-wired network access to your own music exported using Rekordbox’s Creative or Professional plans to Dropbox (the service those plans use to achieve this).
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There is no need for users to insert a username and password to log in to their cloud libraries. Instead, to “unlock” a networked CDJ set-up, you insert a USB drive with an unlock key on it, which you generated previously using Rekordbox.
Should you lose possession of your USB key, you can change the unlock key from within Rekordbox so others can’t access your music.
Any changes you make to your tracks on the CDJ-3000s are immediately sent back to your cloud library and will be synced with all instances of Rekordbox you have cloud enabled, such as on your laptop or mobile device.
• CloudDirectPlay is available now to all users of Pioneer DJ’s Rekordbox Creative and Rekordbox Professional plans, and who play on the CDJ-3000s. More info from the Rekordbox website.
First thoughts
We always expected major new features via firmware for the CDJ-3000, and this is the first such addition to the functionality of the units.
For the people the CDJ-3000 units are aimed at (ie pro DJs) adoption of their own music in the cloud rather than logging in to third-party music streaming services is probably the most useful cloud music feature to begin with, so it makes sense that Pioneer DJ has chosen this feature.
Watch the video
Prefer me to talk you through this? In this video, a recording of a live show from the Digital DJ Tips YouTube channel, I talk you through everything in this article, and we take questions from our community on the subject.
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The use of a USB drive as basically a dongle to unlock cloud music is interesting, and in some ways it makes sense. No CDJ-3000 DJ is likely to not also be carrying a USB drive with them with music on it to DJ from, so to have the cloud unlock key on that drive too means that upon inserting it, the DJ gets instant access to all their owned music, both on the drive and in the cloud.
However, one of the uses of a cloud library backup could be that you’d lost your USB drive, so needing to also have it with you to unlock the player wouldn’t be helpful in that scenario. Maybe having a password option for logging in too would be a wise addition.
We haven’t had the chance to test this yet, and so don’t know how it works when the internet connection is suddenly lost. We are assuming the CDJ-3000s wil load the track fully from the internet before you’re able to play it, but that you won’t be able to download whole playlists locally to the machine via CloudDirectPlay, so to DJ continuously from it, you’d need internet.
Anyway, here’s Pioneer DJ’s instruction video. Let us know what you think in the comments!
Tutorial video
Phil Morse
