This feature is part of Resident Advisor's technology month, dedicated to coverage at the crossroads of electronic music and future-forward innovation throughout the month of June.

In October 2019, Beatport introduced LINK (now Beatport Streaming), a new platform that allows DJs to access the whole of Beatport's catalogue from their DJ app of choice, making the music available to stream without ever downloading an MP3. In August 2020, Denon DJ added LINK to their PRIME hardware range, making it the first time DJs could stream music from Beatport straight into DJ equipment without a computer.

Two months later, Pioneer DJ followed suit, adding streaming functionality to their flagship CDJ-3000 player (though they opted for personal Dropbox storage over Beatport LINK at launch). The new feature was called DirectCloudPlay and allowed DJs to automatically back up their rekordbox library to Dropbox and access it, with all the metadata intact, on an Internet-connected CDJ-3000. TIDAL for DJs also lets users stream their catalogue and sync playlists across Serato, VirtualDJ, Denon DJ, rekordbox and more, as has SoundCloud.

On the surface, allowing DJs to access and play music from the cloud feels like an obvious move. A new generation of music fans is growing up in the age of streaming, for whom the humble MP3 file might feel like a dated novelty. For pro DJs, mass adoption is still likely way off. Much like the move from vinyl to CD and CD to USB, the transition is unlikely to be swift.

But the implications of cloud DJing goes way beyond convenience. It has the potential to fundamentally disrupt how the electronic music industry operates, similarly to how music streaming has redefined consumer listening habits, A&R, release strategies, royalties—and even how music is made—over the past decade. Never before has such data been available around what's played, how it's played, where it's played and by whom, in real-time. While there are many positives, there are also lessons to be learned from consumer streaming habits, including platforms amassing disproportionate power, playlists becoming sacrosanct and, most importantly, artists left behind as music ownership—and value—is undermined.

Once cloud DJing becomes the norm, artists and producers could be immediately alerted that a DJ has played their track, labels could find out which promos are taking off and where. Booking agents could see where their acts are most popular to help shape their next tour. Bedroom producers could find out what other grassroots DJs are supporting their music, creating a social layer for remix and booking swaps. One of the biggest implications, though, is that data could be sent to Performance Rights Organisations to help solve the "black box" royalty issue that's costing electronic music producers an estimated £100m a year. Manufacturers could also how their kit is being used, perhaps recorded in real-time, providing valuable feedback and influencing future products and updates.

Will this new landscape be an open-source, peer-to-peer, community-first utopia that empowers artists, producers, DJs and labels with unprecedented knowledge and access, or a dystopian vision of a world where subscription tiers replace record collections and data is gatekept by platforms? And what lessons can be learned from how the streaming landscape became a "broken record" for artists?

One of the many elephants in the room when it comes to the promise of democratised playlist info, and its attendant trove of data, is permission. Track IDs are a regular theme in DJ discourse and tend to split the room when it comes to transparency around what's being played. In fact, Pioneer DJ's KUVO system attempted to create a "social network" for dance music fans by enabling DJs to automatically broadcast a tracklist of what they're playing in the club. Ultimately, DJs didn't want their setlists broadcast in real-time, among other issues, and the platform stagnated.

Romain Pouillon, the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Beatport's DJ group, which includes Beatport Streaming and Beatsource Streaming, thinks that today's environment is more conducive to music-sharing than it was a few years ago. "I think most DJs now want to share what's going on and engage more directly with their fans," he continues. He credits livestreaming as the turning point that enabled this cultural shift. "Over the past few years, we have seen more DJs willing to experiment with new performance mediums and formats that bring the fan into a more interactive music experience, and Beatport wants to support that relationship."

Of course, DJs could share the data of what they're playing anonymously, which still provides useful insights for artists, labels, agents and more.

"We want to provide this data to the artists as well," continues Pouillon. "For example, if we see that in the city you're going to play in, there's a track that's getting played more than usual or a kind of genre that's more popular, [that could be helpful]." Pouillon says Streaming will display this info on an artist dashboard.

While launching a streaming platform feels like a natural step for Beatport, for DJ equipment manufacturers, there are more nuanced considerations.

Rik Parkinson is the Strategic Development Director for inMusic's DJ group that includes Denon DJ, Rane and Numark. From 2015 to 2019, he was a Product Planning Manager at Pioneer DJ. For Parkinson, a stream of public data flowing from DJ sets around the world in real-time is still a distant reality. "The way DJs access music is typically 10 years behind how consumers access music, be it vinyl to CDs to digital," explains Parkinson. "That isn't because they're Luddites or the will isn't there, it's because the infrastructure isn't there to support it."

Though he echoes concerns around transparency and public tracklist sharing, like Pouillon, he references the rise in livestreaming as a potential turning point. "I remember when [streaming platform] Be-At.TV first launched [in 2008] and no one wanted a camera anywhere near them. And now, you can't get enough cameras in the booth, and we've passed that phase."

Where he does see progress though, is with crowd-sourced metadata. Though some DJ software does recommend cue points based on things like track energy, using cloud DJ data, users could be recommended cue and loop points, or even beat grid tweaks, based on the activity of other DJs.

"Everybody's living in a silo, making their own grids, loops, cue points. Why are those not part of the track?" he asks. "Or when you load that track, [the hardware or software] could ask: 'Do you want to use our recommended cue points?' I suppose that's a primitive way of the industry starting to get there."

Pioneer DJ has already added something similar in the form of Cloud Analysis for rekordbox, announced in early June. The feature allows the software to check its servers to see if that track has already been analysed by another DJ, to speed up the track analysis process.

Another area cloud data could positively disrupt is performance royalties. Globally, Performance Rights Organisations have struggled to accurately attribute royalties to the producers whose music is played at clubs and festivals, an issue that is estimated to cost the electronic music community up to £100m a year.

In 2016, PRS/PPL, the UK's PRO, partnered with DJMonitor to install Music Recognition Technology (MRT) boxes that offered a Shazam-style track ID solution for more accurate reporting. As it stands, there are 32 boxes installed in 19 clubs in the UK. Compare that to 6,985 clubs operating in the UK as of 2021. Could cloud DJing bridge this gap? Given that the data can be anonymised, with the only required information about the track played and the club in which it was played, it's likely more DJs would be willing to get on board, with the added benefit of financially supporting their producer peers.

Parkinson's not so sure, claiming that many organisations have tried and failed to solve this issue. "There's been KUVO, there's been RADR by Richie Hawtin [with which the producer and DJ tweeted out his tracklist in real-time]—probably the most influential underground artists ever—there's Dubset, DJMonitor … I'm sure there are some others that I'm forgetting. I remember AFEM [Association for Electronic Music] chucked the 'Get Played, Get Paid' panel around every conference for a good few years, right? But everyone's gone quiet on it now." Surely this potential new data stream is a good place to restart the conversation? "I'm passionate about this because I was there for the struggles with KUVO," he says. "But the interest seems to have fizzled out."

Pioneer DJ says they're still working on KUVO and that it may see a new lease on life as they roll out cloud DJing to their full product range. "Accurate data collection has been an issue close to Pioneer DJ's core intention since the launch of our KUVO platform in 2013," says Rob Anderson, Pioneer DJ's UK Product Planning Manager, "as has the accurate payment of artists whose tracks are being played. The KUVO project is still very much current, and we are looking to evolve this system and to better support the electronic music community, especially as we move forward and introduce more cloud functionality."

How, or even if, cloud DJing can help with more accurate reporting and payments remains to be seen.

Another potential new revenue source for producers comes via Beatport Streaming, albeit potentially in lieu of income from downloads. "Every play made with Beatport Streaming which is longer than 30 seconds is eligible for a royalty payment," says Pouillon. "60 per cent of the overall subscription revenue is split between labels depending on their number of plays." Beatport is also working on a payment solution for the DJs themselves using blockchain technology. "[Right now], the DJs don't get a payment. In the future, we want to make this possible [using] Web3 technology [such as] decentralised payments and smart contracts."

Despite the potential for this new data to provide valuable information to labels, promoters, agents, artists, producers and PROs, at least for Beatport, Denon DJ and Pioneer DJ, most agree that adoption isn't going to happen overnight.

"We are 100 per cent behind the vision," says Parkinson, who sees these integrations as an inevitability. "It's just about when we get to that tipping point for mass adoption."

Pioneer DJ is also on board. "One thing we do know is that the DJs of the next generation have grown up in a 'streaming society,' where owning digital files is not the norm," says Anderson. "As [a] market leader, we have a responsibility to nurture these demands and provide the infrastructure needed to support the media of choice for all our users."

Though cloud DJing may have its benefits, there are still many unanswered questions and concerns around its widespread rollout. Promo companies and labels may now get more feedback than a simple out-of-five rating, including in-depth info like how long the track was played for, and even when it was mixed out, providing useful information about how audiences are responding. But could that lead to functional, generic and predictable music in the same way Spotify and TikTok algorithms affect how musicians think about songwriting?

For example, data from TikTok claims that tracks over 120 BPM “perform better” on the platform. While anecdotal evidence of tempos getting faster or slower has been a long-running theme in electronic music, having real data around current tempos—including by what percentage a track is being sped up or slowed down, in what club, in what city—could shape how newer producers start to think about their next track.

"I view this [type of data on what's being played, how and by whom] as a mix of positive and negative," San-Francisco based DJ, producer and label owner Chrissy tells us. "I would love to be able to know exactly where my music was being played. But I think that stats like 'when DJs are mixing in/out', 'what tempo they play the song at', feel a little too close to focus grouping for me." For Chrissy, the data could lead to micromanaging from labels.

"I would hate for a label to come at me saying: 'A lot of DJs play your tunes at minus eight, could you make them slower?'"

Chrissy's concerns go beyond label feedback, and into the wider impact of streaming on DJ's ability to express themselves on their own terms.

"The dance music culture I know and love has traditionally focused on misfits, outcasts, and freaks who are unafraid to showcase weird new sounds to an audience," he explained. "These sounds are often intimidating at first, and gradually become beloved parts of the musical landscape. The notion of DJs planning sets around favoured tempos or genres is a departure from this process, and doesn't feel like the culture I love or recognise."

Data has shown that the top 10 per cent of artists on Spotify account for 99 per cent of the plays. The echo chamber nature of playlisting and recommendation algorithms could see a similar top-heavy narrative play out for DJs and producers. Those in the top charts and featured playlists could dominate discovery for new DJs, further triggering recommendation by algorithms at least partly designed to promote what's most popular.

"A huge part of being a great DJ is research and digging: finding unknown music and then showing it to the world," Chrissy continues. "Exclusively [DJing with] streaming content is going to hinder your ability to develop that skill." Chrissy says he could see a situation where a healthy mix of streaming services, download stores, Discogs and local record stores is a happy medium. "Limiting yourself to one piece of the pie is a mistake. I say this to vinyl-only DJs as well, to be honest."

Another consideration is catalogue. As other streaming platforms have shown, content can disappear at any time, leaving DJs expecting certain tracks that are suddenly no longer available. Chrissy says Netflix is a prime example of the dangers of handing complete agency to streaming platforms. "When Netflix came along, and they had almost every movie imaginable, many film buffs, myself included, assumed that Netflix would continue along this trajectory forever." Chrissy says people then got rid of their physical movie collections and rental stores became extinct. "As soon as Netflix had a monopoly on at-home film viewing, they decided it was too expensive to keep all the classics and weird art films. In short, we gave Netflix the library and they torched it."

He feels the same thing could happen to music. "If streaming conquers club culture and most DJs no longer own their libraries, what happens if streaming services decide Prince's catalogue is too expensive to keep online? You will never hear Prince in a club, restaurant, or wedding again."

DJ, producer and Moon Harbour boss Matthias Tanzmann started using Beatport Streaming during the pandemic when clubs were forced to remain closed. Now he uses it to prepare his sets and sync playlists with Traktor, adding them to his Offline Locker so they're available without an internet connection. "The opportunity to access tracks that spontaneously come into my mind and that I wouldn't have been able to play otherwise is only a positive aspect to me," he explained.

When it comes to the data and how it could be used, Tanzmann says certain artists and imprints have always tried to adapt their music to popular trends. "Some producers and labels try to sound like the top 10 of the chart," he says. "In the end, it is up to the DJs if they want to play this kind of music."

Like manufacturers, he agrees that DJ streaming feels inevitable and that lessons can be learned from current models as we transition to the cloud, such as a user-centric royalty payments that SoundCloud has already adopted. "I don't think we can turn back time. Streaming is the next logical step. We can just try to learn from mistakes that are being made before."

Given the vastly different use cases of music on streaming platforms, versus music played in a club or at an event, it's not appropriate to apply every statistic generated from Spotify, TikTok and others to cloud DJing. But it is true that while many of us were blinded by the convenience of streaming, some failed to see the long term ramifications. Lessons around the disproportionate power of playlisting and algorithms, as well as the platforms themselves, are there to be learned as cloud DJing becomes the dominant format over the next ten years.

There are many pros and cons to this emerging format and while many will welcome this new data stream, now is also the time to consider the consequences and implement safeguards before cloud DJing takes hold at scale.