Rekordbox DJ 4.1.2: Pulselocker’s Streaming Library Integrated

We’ve been waiting since January to find out when Rekordbox DJ, Pioneer’s DJ software, would integrate the Pulselocker streaming library service for DJs. Today in a new version of the Rekordbox software (4.1.2), there’s a bit of a surprise: Pulselocker is built-in to the library sidebar when you switch into “Performance” mode. Keep reading for the details.

Pulselocker in Rekordbox DJ

As noted above, Pioneer DJ first announced they were going to build in Pulselocker support during NAMM 2016 – and then went completely silent on their plans after that. With today’s launch of Rekordbox 4.1.2, public beta subscribers to the Pulselocker service can use the entire streaming library from inside of the “Performance” mode / Plus pack – which we prefer to call Rekordbox DJ.

As with Pulselocker’s integration with Serato DJ (see our review here), there aren’t too many features of note about the actual interface and experience:

Of course, these songs can only be used within the Rekordbox DJ software itself. You can access them offline, but don’t expect to be exporting these tracks out to a USB drive and plugging into a CDJ any time soon, unless Pioneer and Pulselocker have some very clever DRM solutions in mind in the future.

In order to save tracks offline in Rekordbox DJ, you’ll need to be a subscriber to the Pulselocker Professional plan ($19.99 / month), or be signed up for the free two-week trial. If you just have the Basic plan, you can only stream music into the player, but you can’t save it to a playlist or access it with without an internet connection.

Still A Few Valid Pulselocker Complaints

It’s absolutely worth mentioning that Pulselocker is very clearly still in a Public Beta stage – there’s a number of things that aren’t fully polished about the service. The big ones are:

• The library music catalog has a lot of covers and duplicates – for instance, searching for “Trap Queen” showed a ton of versions, including a horrid cover by an artist calling themselves Fap Wetty. For now, you’ll need to be very careful you choose the right version when loading up requests.

• There’s no way to casually browse genres of music / new releases in the DJ apps – you can only do that in the Pulselocker website
• There’s no communal / server-side metadata – so BPM, key, waveforms all have to be calculated by your own DJ software.

Pulselocker has noted around the web – including on their own Facebook page – that they’re “working hard on all these fronts” – but for many DJs, these will be baseline requirements to start spending hard-earned cash every month on a service.

That being said, the fact that Pulselocker is now in so many DJ softwares guarantees it will be on the front lines of streaming DJ music – so we’ll be interested to see how it evolves in the next few months.

Download the new version of Rekordbox here on the official site.