Episode 140: Hot Stories

Episode 140 has us pushing back some of our regularly scheduled content, in order to bring you some of the latest headlines in DJ and dance music related news! And, our good friends Cryztal Grid join us for some in depth discussion! If you’re not up on Cryztal Grid, yet, make sure you tune in NEXT week, where we will be interviewing Gerrad and Cody and giving you an up close look in to their music, performances, and insights.   Sadly, we start the episode addressing the obvious loss to the EDM community. Tim Bergling, also known as Avicii, was found dead at 28 on April 20th. Having had very public battles with stress, depression, and anxiety from touring, and given the message released from his family, the PDJ team takes a moment to reflect on Avicii, as well as their own struggles.   Rane announced a recall on the new Rane 12’s! The popular new DVS controller needs a firmware update to adjust an issue that most people would never encounter, but in order to be applied, the units need to be sent in. Luckily, Rane says the turnaround time should be shipping units back within 1 working day upon fixing. Go to http://dj.rane.com/twelve-warranty-support if you have a Rane 12 and would like the patch!   Preorders for the new DVS unit Phase are available, as of April 25th. The new units are a little steeper than we expected, at $349 per pair of remotes and receiver. They work with any DVS system, according to Phase, which allows DJs to shed the need for using tonearms or timecode vinyl. Pretty cool idea with their own patented wireless data transmission technology, so we’ll see how it does!   Beatport in the news again, this time they acquired the recently closed up Pulselocker. Not sure what’s going on there, but apparently we’ll be seeing a relaunch in the fall. Meanwhile, Mixcloud has raised $11.5 million in fundraising, so we anticipate more development and marketing of their services.   And, of course…Native Instruments shakes things up by announcing new hardware for Traktor, as well as totally rewritten Traktor software on the way. This is interesting, given all of the questionable directions Native instruments has taken Traktor over recent years. Not to mention the lack of delivery on some expected or rumored functionality, and missing the boat on some obvious hardware support (no HID for CDJ2000NX2 until the latest beta release…SERIOUSLY?!). Lots of speculation around what is to come, but between hardware being discontinued and new products being teased, we’re definitely keeping our eye on NI!   Don’t forget about us here at Passionate DJ, as well! If you follow us at Patreon, you can now access our show “Afterparty”, which is a monthly bonus episode that consists of extended interviews, deleted scenes from the published episodes, exclusive “hot mic” moments during set up/tear down, and other specially curated content for our paid subscribers. To subscribe, go to www.patreon.com/passionateDJ TODAY!