Author: Jonas Norberg

pacemaker_for_iphone

Pacemaker 3.0

Posted in App Update by Jonas Norberg

Dear Pacemaker friend, 

As you may know, earlier this year Spotify announced that DJ applications will no longer have access to music via Spotify Premium – which would have been fatal to the Pacemaker community. We evaluated our alternatives and understood that we had to take on the mammoth task to bring music directly to Pacemaker via our own licenses and remove the dependency on Spotify Premium or any other service. 

I’m happy to tell you that we have now achieved this goal, and millions of directly licensed tracks are now available in Pacemaker. 

We’re a small team and licensing music is an ongoing process. Right now our catalog includes content from Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group, and it should cover a lot of the tracks in your mixes, but I know that many of you are crate diggers with a liking for the rare grooves. For you, chances are that there will be gaps to fill – and also gaps in your old mixes where tracks will be missing.

To solve this, our main focus during the coming months is to add more content from interesting labels, and over time, more and more of the amazing mixes in the community will start to work again. If you like, you can help us in the process by using an in-app feature that lets you indicate the tracks you would like us to license. We’ve also added a feature allowing you to mirror your playlists across from your Spotify or Apple Music accounts. 

We realise that this might be frustrating but please support us through this process – you’re an important part of our community – and Pacemaker will be on a much more stable foundation on the other side.

Kind regards, 
Jonas Norberg, CEO & Co-founder

More time and more Pacemaker x Spotify

Posted in App Update by Jonas Norberg

Spotify has agreed to allow the  Pacemaker app to keep working with Spotify as it does now, while we transition into the new experience where music will come directly via our own licenses.

Some time ago, it was announced that third-party DJ applications will no longer have access to music via Spotify from July 1st. At Pacemaker we’ve been working on bringing music directly to the app via our own licenses, which will remove the need for a Spotify Premium subscription, making the Pacemaker experience better than ever.

Unfortunately licensing music is a mammoth task and it takes time. Spotify has kindly enough given us more time and so the Pacemaker app will keep working with Spotify as it does now while we transition into the new experience with music coming directly via our own licenses.

Once we transition to the new experience, if you’re a Spotify user, you’ll still be able to sync your playlists to Pacemaker so that you can easily mix with the music you love. Apple Music users will also be able to sync their playlists, which is the most requested feature to date. We’ll work to add support for more music streaming services post launch.

We’ll update you again as we get closer to our launch.

Jonas Norberg
CEO and Co-founder of Pacemaker

The Next Step for Pacemaker

Posted in App Update by Jonas Norberg

It was recently announced that third-party DJ applications will no longer have access to music via Spotify. This decision will affect Pacemaker but we’re working on bringing music directly to the app via our own licenses, making the Pacemaker experience better than ever.

Pacemaker was the first DJ app to partner with Spotify when we launched Pacemaker for iPad back in February 2014. Since then we put millions of tracks at the fingertips of users, removing another big barrier and making it possible for more people to experience the joys of djing – creating hundreds of thousands of DJ mixes in the process.

Spotify has been a great partner and we’re saddened by the news, but we of course respect their business decision.

For a long time we’ve been looking at how to bring the Pacemaker experience to more users, and it’s now clear that the only viable way forward is by licensing music directly into Pacemaker. We haven’t started music licensing before now as it is a daunting task for even the most well versed and something that needs absolute commitment, but we’ve now been given the perfect reason to do so!

We’re working on licensing a deep catalogue based on the tracks that are used in Pacemaker mixtapes. This will ensure that the majority of the hundreds of thousands of mixtapes in Pacemaker that our users have invested so much time and energy into will continue to work. There will be a few tracks missing occasionally, but should this happen, our AI will step in and mix the neighbouring tracks together, smoothing the experience. And we’re going to continue our licensing efforts, filling the gaps.

When crafting new mixtapes or listening to existing ones, no music streaming service will be required. Instead everybody will be able to listen to or create mixes based on the millions of tracks that we’re licensing, as long as they’re either a Pacemaker+ subscriber or using a free trial.

If you’re a Spotify user, you’ll still be able to sync your playlists to Pacemaker so that you can easily mix with the music you love. For Apple Music users, we plan to add support for you too, matching your playlists to our catalogue – with the possibility for us to add more services after launch.

We’re still working on the finer details so stay tuned for more information.

Jonas Norberg
CEO and Co-founder of Pacemaker