As a once proud Traktor user myself, the recent beta releases by Native Instruments have been very encouraging!
I still use Traktor, I’ve just been pretty underwhelmed by the lack of development by NI, interesting directions in innovation, and a lack of addressing the core requirements of a Digital DJ in 2020.
What Went Wrong?
When I first began DJing with Traktor, a number of years ago now, I’d become very inspired by a number of DJ’s, all integrating Ableton and other external hardware, and the potential was very exciting. This way of DJing was only really possible with Traktor!
Truth be told, I’ve added a number of those elements myself from time to time, but realistically as a mainstream club/bar DJ those elements are unnecessary, unnoticed, and take an awful lot of extra time to set up. That’s without taking into account the additional technical headaches you could be opening yourself up to.
I’m all for trying something a little different to make yourself stand out from the crowd, but unless you’ve got a stage scenario and your crowd can see what you’re doing, it doesn’t really add anything significant.
I love my Maschine, mores in the studio really, but I do bring it out to play occasionally, either as an add-on controller for Traktor, or to add an extra live element that the crowd can actually see.
I stuck with Traktor, not necessarily through any sense of loyalty, or the features which it provided me… With DJing for so long on Traktor, familiarity has a little to do with it, but software is software… I’d put in countless hours, days over the years, programming and organising my music.
So What’s New?
This is where things all get very exciting! Well… For me anyway! Smart Playlists!!
I’ve always, until now, been forced to use iTunes as my music management software, as the built in music library organisation in Traktor is next to useless. Nothing much more fancy than folder management.
iTunes offered the ability to create Smart Playlists, and I could have some pretty complicated rules running in the background, narrowing down the countless number of tracks I’ve got available to me, and allow me to find what I’m looking for, really quickly.
With the release of Catalina, iTunes was retired, and Apple Music integration into Traktor was far from perfect. Things were going backwards! Folders weren’t where I expected to find them, and it was all just a bit of a mess. This called for a lot more manual input, and given software had been doing it ‘okay’ for quite some time, it seemed crazy that I’d now had to go back to doing it manually.
One of the big disadvantages of using iTunes as my music library management, was that it doesn’t have any access to certain things within Traktor, even as simple as the number of times a track has been played. It can be useful to have information, as there may be certain tracks which I have duplicates of, and it’s an easy way to see which have been programmed, and performed.
What Does This Mean For Traktor Users?
As much as Smart Playlists are a VERY welcome addition to Traktor, the truth is that Native Instruments are currently playing catch-up with the competition. Exciting as it is, Smart Playlists should have been integrated long ago, and it’s long overdue.
I’m excited to see how things develop within Traktor, but I’m still personally not all that optimistic that NI have enough focus on Traktor these days, and it feels like what was once my favourite DJ software, is falling so far behind, I’m going to have little choice but to switch DJ software (which I really don’t want to do, as I love my S4!).
Please NI, can we have this soon as not a BETA, and with Smart Playlists that allow for nested playlists too.
