Owners Of Older Pioneer DJ Controllers Must Now Subscribe To Use Rekordbox 7

Owners of some older Pioneer DJ equipment have been telling us of their shock upon discovering that Rekordbox 7, the latest version of Pioneer DJ / AlphaTheta’s DJ software, is no longer unlocked automatically by their DJ gear, forcing them to pay a subscription should they wish to use it.

This was first reported by a user who posted on Reddit and then additionally to us by several of our own students. On further investigation we spotted a list of equipment on Pioneer DJ’s website that continues to work with the “Free Plus’ (non-subscription) version of Rekordbox, from which it did indeed appear that many older controllers and units have been excluded.

The affected units are XDJ-RX, DDJ-RZX, DDJ-RZ, DDJ-RX, DDJ-RR, DDJ-RB and DDJ-XP1.

What does Pioneer DJ say?

We reached out to Pioneer DJ and they gave us this official statement:

“Our products have a life cycle, and we need to ensure we are channeling resource into new innovative technologies allowing us to continue to produce hardware that our customers value and trust.”

So basically: “tough”. Stick with Rekordbox 6, or – if you want to use the current version of the software – pay a subscription.

Why has this happened?

While this is clearly bad news for users of this equipment, who tell us their gear still works perfectly despite Pioneer DJ deciding on their behalf that it has reached the end of its “life cycle”, at least as far as working with the software as sold goes, there is the possibility that the company has not deliberately decided to stop their gear from unlocking the software.

Read this next: When To Upgrade Your Gear (And When To Wait)

Pioneer DJ has introduced a new way of unlocking Rekordbox where your hardware’s serial number is automatically associated with your Rekordbox account. This means that you could potentially use the same gear on anyone’s copy of Rekordbox as long as you were logged in, but then you could also unplug the equipment, and that copy of Rekordbox you’re using would still have some of the advanced features that the equipment ownership permits. These are good things on the face of it.

What we think may have happened here is that the collateral damage from this new way of doing things in Rekordbox 7 means that the old way of doing this – where any qualifying hardware simply unlocked features in the software – no longer works in Rekordbox 7.

Whether they could have left it turned on, we really don’t know. Maybe there was a technical reason why they didn’t do this rather than a commercial reason, but of course people who own this gear may have another view on that.

What can affected users do?

The best thing to do for now is to simply not upgrade to Rekordbox 7, or to install Rekordbox 7 should you want some of the features, but just use Rekordbox 6 when you’re using an older piece of Pioneer DJ gear. This is perfectly possible, as long as you don’t run both pieces of software at the same time.

Learn to use Rekordbox like a pro: Rekordbox Made Easy

And of course, commenting under this post or the accompanying video would indicate your strength of feeling about his – and who knows, maybe if enough people do (and if it is technically possible), Pioneer DJ / AlphaTheta may reconsider…