As we excitedly reported last week, Serato and Pulselocker are teaming up to incorporate a new version of the streaming DJ library service into the 1.9 version of Serato DJ. But details were incredibly slim on how the relaunch of Pulselocker would go down – since the service has been dark for over a year. Keep reading to find out how the new era of the cloud-based DJ library will work!
Pulselocker Is Live, Now
First up, let’s get one thing out-of-the-way – the hype around Serato DJ 1.9 and Pulselocker has a lot of DJs expectantly wondering when everything will launch, but the new version of Pulselocker is in a public beta that started this week. Amazingly, their first integration isn’t with Serato DJ, but rather PCDJ’s DEX 3 DJ software. It’s a “third tier” DJ software in that there’s not a lot of DJs out there who use it – but they did manage to beat every other DJ software to punch in terms of Pulselocker Integration
Pulselocker Pricing
We’ve been asked quite a bit about pricing for the Pulselocker service, and the final numbers are very affordable considering what you get out of it. The Basic plan is just $9.99 a month, and includes as many streaming tracks as you want, and radio features (details below) with no ads. The Pro plan adds the ability to store Pulselocker content offline, and is twice the price at $19.99 a month.
Right now you can start browsing and creating playlists for free – they’ve launched a two-week free trial that anyone can use. You can jump into their online interface, but you’ll need DEX 3 if you want to DJ with any of that content. Serato 1.9 will be launching later this year with their integration – but we don’t know who will be next.
Beatselector / Radio
One of the most interesting features to us is the easy incorporation and streamlining of the music discovery to DJ library process. Pulselocker has tackled this by adding a radio-like feature that plays new releases from the genres you selected – and quickly allows you to add the tracks to your own playlists (making them easy to find in your DJ software when you go to mix later).
This is a big deal – to be able to quickly hear a new track and then immediately sort it into your own crates and playlists is a lot of hassle removed from the digital DJ lifestyle.
Pulselocker’s Library
Just in a few minutes of searching around the library for Pulselocker, we’ve been very impressed at the breadth of selection. The company notes that a lot of the genres are hand-curated, and they’re even currently hiring for people to take on curation of assigned genres and build out playlists.
The library feels like a bit of a hybrid between an DJ pool and a streaming service – which is good news in that it gives a variety of options when digging for tracks. In general most of the music seems to be proper releases, meaning you’ll get remixes that come out (like the above Huxley remix album), but you won’t get bootlegs and edits that you might get on other DJ pools.
That being said, there’s allegedly 44 million tracks in Pulselocker’s library, so we’ve got a bit of exploring to do!
Have some wishes about Pulselocker’s DJ service (like integration with Rekordbox or Traktor)? Share them in the comments.
