OneLibrary isn’t what you think it is
There’s a catch
Hi there RPM ruffians,
Last week there was some big news in the DJ industry.
Algoriddim, Native Instruments and good old AlphaTheta teamed up to finally deliver something DJs have been wanting for years: a shared DJ library format called OneLibrary.
That means you can now export CDJ compatible USBs from DJ Pro and soon Traktor Play and Pro 4.
There are some big caveats though. And some important reasons that you aren’t going to be able to get rid of rekordbox just yet.
So what’s the deal?
If you’re a rekordbox user you might be aware of something called Device Library Plus. It’s been around for a few years now.
It’s kinda like an additional mirrored database that rekordbox creates on your USB to allow your library to be read by more modern CDJs and controllers like the CDJ-3000 or the XDJ-AZ.
To be honest, it wasn’t really clear what additional benefit or changes Device Library Plus offered over the OG.
But now its purpose becomes clear.
It seems that Device Library Plus is OneLibrary.
Was this planned all along? Or did they just have to find something useful to do with it? We’ll never know.
Over time AlphaTheta will be renaming Device Library Plus to OneLibrary so watch out for that exciting UI text change in future updates.
The idea is this library format can now be understood (and written) not only by rekordbox but other DJ software too.
It sounds pretty good on the surface. But I think DJs have celebrated a little too early..
What’s the catch?
This is where it gets interesting (and a bit confusing)
From the FAQ on the AlphaTheta website:
Our exported DJ library includes all essential DJ performance data, such as playlists, BPM, key information, cue points, beatgrids, and waveform data.
You’ll note the ‘essential’.
What this means to me is that you’ll get all the ‘basic’ stuff that you need to DJ with. But not necessarily *everything* that you might prep a track with, or use in your library system.
This is backed up with another FAQ:
OneLibrary standardizes specifications, allowing libraries exported to USB storage devices to be browsed by compatible software. However, full compatibility between different software applications isn’t guaranteed.
It remains to be seen exactly what the exclusions will and won’t be long term.
Engine isn’t part of this party yet. But as an example it completely lacks any sort of tagging system. That whole software ecosystem would have to be updated if this was truly to become “OneLibrary”.
It’s likely there will still be noticeable metadata gaps between platforms for the foreseeable future.
If you rely on things like MyTags for playing out you are going to be safer on rekordbox for now.
It’s not realllllly OneLibrary
Booth buddies
Everyone knows AlphaTheta owns the booth. That means CDJs. And it means your music has to speak their language if you want to play out.
At the moment OneLibrary isn’t the dream of full library and CDJ freedom. You can’t just lift your rekordbox library, plonk it in DJ Pro and expect to have your *complete* library system in there. You’ll get a good chunk of it, sure. But not everything.
And you won’t get your personalised CDJ settings saved to the stick using anything other than rekordbox. That means extra faff in the booth.
What I actually want
When I was writing this newsletter I kept making a typo over and over. I kept writing ‘OpenLibrary’ instead of ‘OneLibrary’. And that slip kind of says it all.
Even with this announcement we are still in the old closed source world. It’s just that world has grown slightly to a few different software providers.
What I personally want (and many others) is an open source library system. Something that gives full visibility of how the library database itself is built to anyone that’s interested.
That would unlock what we’re seeing with this announcement, but also allow 3rd party developers to build easily on top of too.
And full disclaimer: I’m one of these people.
I built librarydojo, my tool that helps DJs build better systems around their libraries.
Right now it works with rekordbox. But I’d love to have it help any DJ on any platform in future and an open source library format would make this a reality.
So what does this mean?
Well it’s mainly good news.
More freedom across software
Fewer headaches on CDJs, assuming they are CDJ-3000’s and newer.
Here’s what it isn’t going to solve in it’s current state though:
Compatibility with older CDJs. This is still a rekordbox job
Complete freedom to move, prepare and tag a single library across multiple different bits of software. There will be feature gaps
No Engine or Serato support as of yet
Getting CDJs setup how you like them just by plugging in your USB
Hopefully this is just the start of a wider movement and DJs can enjoy a lot more freedom in their libraries going forwards.
I don’t like to just spout press releases so I’ll be doing a deep dive into exactly how this works (and doesn’t) in a future video on the channel.
What would you like me to cover?
See you next time