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Forum: General Discussion

Topic: Stem separation question on streaming sources
 

Posted Tue 26 Sep 23 @ 5:26 pm
No, that still works fine

You can't prepare the stems though, since there is no Tidal cache
But for real-time separation both the v1 and v2 separation engine seems to work fine
 

Posted Tue 26 Sep 23 @ 5:59 pm
So I agree it still works, but I was wondering if the Tidal services owners are actually handing down the enforcement to DJ software vendors, potentially through contracts/other legal means, because they don't want us to use it with their streamed songs (I've not used Rekordbox in a minute, but I'm sure this there isn't a big technical roadblock to achieve the goal...just download the entire song temporarily into memory or on disk and then run the stems analysis).

This would be similar to Spotify pulling out of DJ software.
 

Posted Tue 26 Sep 23 @ 6:46 pm
locoDogPRO InfinityModeratorMember since 2013
Stems is an effect, a very complicated one, not sure how they could enforce "stop doing maths on tracks".
Reductio ad absurdum; eq is doing maths on tracks too.
 

Posted Tue 26 Sep 23 @ 7:15 pm
It could well be a Spotify-alike situation I guess, where one or more artists/labels doesn't want their copyrighted material separated into stems from a stream.

IIRC with Spotify it was an artist/label that didn't want their track(s) streamed in DJ software.

Atomix had to comply with that, so something similar could happen with Tidal and stems...

[EDIT] Seems to be the case with the beta hardware stems on Prime 4+ too
 

Posted Tue 26 Sep 23 @ 8:23 pm
groovindj wrote :
It could well be a Spotify-alike situation I guess, where one or more artists/labels doesn't want their copyrighted material separated into stems from a stream.
IIRC with Spotify it was an artist/label that didn't want their track(s) streamed in DJ software.
Atomix had to comply with that, so something similar could happen with Tidal and stems...


I guess it could be
If so, I wonder if it's just Tidal, or if it eventually will be all online content providers (if it's the artists/labels requesting it)
 

Posted Wed 27 Sep 23 @ 5:47 am
So as we have seen in many posts and in many different forums, this is now true across the board for Tidal.

The funny thing is, I agree with locodog...stems separation is just an advanced effect, but can really be seen as a much better form of equilization/band filtering - it doesn't actually change the song itself into an form that misrepresents the original recording. I really am curious as to the grounds for disabling this feature...by my previous statement/logic, would they request the disabling of equilization of their streamed songs too (as it is a crude approximation to this)?

I never really was a consumer of Tidal so the decision doesn't affect me (mainly because of the controversy of their so called "masters hi-res" offering), or for that matter, any streaming services for DJing, but analysis of these kind of choices are important since it is making these streaming services seem like a poor/ill-advised investment, outside of song discovery, for DJs.
 

Posted Sun 01 Oct 23 @ 12:00 pm
locoDogPRO InfinityModeratorMember since 2013
Probably from the record companies, they figured out they lose the mechanicals for acapella & instrumental versions, the extortionate prices they charge for karaoke licencing.

I'm surprised it took them this long to figure it out.
 

Posted Sun 01 Oct 23 @ 12:49 pm
But this is still all achievable from owning regular audio files. Would they do away with personal file ownership or handcuff DJ software further with real files too to safeguard sales in this manner (basically shelving the entire feature)?
 

Posted Sun 01 Oct 23 @ 2:02 pm
I think the point is that streaming is generally for personal use only per the terms and stems are a live DJ feature.

Not sure how Denon are getting round that with the Prime 4 plus
 

Posted Sun 01 Oct 23 @ 2:15 pm
They're not "getting around" anything. The hardware based separation on the Prime 4+ was actually the first to not allow stems from Tidal.
 

Posted Sun 01 Oct 23 @ 2:39 pm