RjDj 0.7 out now
Apple just notified us that the RjDj single and RjDj shake is approved. We were working on this release for quite a while and i can’t tell you how good it feels to have this finally out :-)
So what is RjDj 0.7 all about? It is about making things accessible. In RjDj 0.7 you can download new scenes and share your recordings. If you are an artist who wants to create scenes, you are now able to upload your scenes through our website. In order to get this all working, we have created not only new features in all RjDj players but also created a brand new web application.
1. Scene download
Scene downloading is a long awaited feature and now it is finally here. The idea is that you have three options to get new scenes. One option is to browse the app store for RjDj albums. We have two albums released (rjdj album and rjdj shake) and more will come during this year. The second option is to download new scenes via the RjDj player (the application formerly known as RjDj Single). Many of the downloadable scenes are free but you will also find paid scenes. Paid scenes can only be purchased through your browser (not inside the RjDj player) at the moment. Of course we are very much looking forward to itemized transactions in the new iPhone os3. Scenes which are bought are added to your account on RjDj.me and you can download them at any point via your iPhone / iPod Touch.
The scene download feature is also quite important for all the artists and musicians out there who want to create RjDj scenes. You are now able to create your scene and upload it to the RjDj server where it will be made available for download to through the RjDj player.
2. Recordings sharing
In November last year, Fabian said this about RjDj:
“Too bad I did not know about this (RjDj) two nights ago when I found myself proposing to my then-girlfriend, now-fiancée, because I would have recorded the whole situation. It would have surely made for a unique wedding song…” http://blog.geyrhalter.com/2008/11/16/a-sound-application-a-healthy-drug/
Hey Fabian, with the new recording share feature, you can not only record situations like this but also share them with your friends directly and via almost any social network out there, in an instant. You can now broadcast your message in a song, like any decent rock star is doing it ever since. We strongly believe in the communicational aspects of music. RjDj is bringing that right to your fingertips.
The cool thing with the RjDj recording sharing is that you don’t even need to sign up and create an RjDj account to share your recordings. You can claim your name later if you feel like it.
3. Web App
The center of all the new features is the RjDj web app. RjDj.me is the place that makes the download of new scenes possible as well as the upload/download and sharing of recordings. Most important, RjDj.me is the home of your RjDj account. Your site will list all your uploaded recordings and scenes installed. You are able to send your new recording to facebook, twitter and many other social networking sites and we are working on blog widgets to get your recordings on your own blog. People will be able to listen and comment on your recordings and of course share them. We are trying to make RjDj compatible to many existing portals and standards. Right now you can login and create your own RjDj account or alternatively use your facebook credentials.
In the scenes section of RjDj.me you will find listings of all the scenes available. We hope that we will see some exiting and new scenes coming up in the next weeks and month. With an RjDj account you will be able to add scenes to your scene collection. This collection is available to you on your iPhone, iPod Touch and you can download all those scenes to your device.
Last but not least i want to say thanks to the whole team behind this release.
Andie Nordgren has done a great job in focusing and organizing us all and pushing things through until they are done. Andie really rocks.
Paul Brossier is the man behind the client and he was fighting hard to get the iphone hardware right to the edge.
Chris McCormick done a great job on the website and general architecture.
Amaury Hazan helped wherever necessary and just won the RjDj all-rounder of the year award.
Guenter Geiger did what he could to keep the PD world alive.
Frank Barknecht done a great job in creating some excellent musical pieces and most of all created the RJlib which is the basis for many of the scenes to come.
Florian Waldner is getting his grips around the content section.
Andy Farnell is supporting us a lot on the whole production side.
Alexis Fellenius Makrigianni did a wonderful job on getting the design and html of the website into shape.
Keep up the good work guys.
April 2nd, 2009 at 2:40 pm
RJDJ made me buy an iPod touch. It is one of the greatest apps I’ve ever used and it makes me smile and “sing”/humm along while walking through the streets.
Keep up the great work, this is one of the rare apps i pay for :)
April 2nd, 2009 at 3:32 pm
nice but… I want to use my recordings in songs. How do I offload my creations without them being compressed to mp3 in the newest versions? also, if I have recordings that are private, how do I offload them using your service without them being made public?
April 2nd, 2009 at 3:49 pm
do the only way to have the scene on the itouch is downloading from the itouch itself? or is there an alternative?
because when the tell me that i owned it, i click and the page link me to RJDJ single!
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:21 pm
jmob
quality of compression: certainly something to improve but it already takes ages to get a recording with decent length uploaded… so it is a tradeoff we have made.
private tracks: also something we were thinking about but not part of this release.
The use case we are covering with this release is communication… use the recordings to say something or use it when you recorded something interesting. To get high quality sound material for your songs is something different….
April 3rd, 2009 at 7:19 am
*sigh*
Well, I waited out the months between updates and finally got the notification that RjDj Album was updated today and I excitedly queue’d up some scenes to give it a try. Then I discover that you guys STILL don’t have the ability for people who paid for your first version of RjDj to download new scenes! Ok, fine, I’ll happily switch to your free player to get new scenes, but could you at least credit me the $5 worth of scenes that I already bought in the album?
Come on, if I buy an album in a store, Apple doesn’t punish me by charging me again to put them on my iPhone! When are you guys going to get it?
April 3rd, 2009 at 9:14 am
I like Brandon am disappointed. How come people that have paid for the app get left out in the cold? It doesn’t make sense. :(
April 3rd, 2009 at 4:19 pm
I purchased the RJDJ album when it first came out and there are a few scenes on there that I absolutely love. Now with the new release of the stand alone RJDJ player, my old “album” scenes can’t be ported over unless I buy them again. Is it possible for me to make the scenes that came with the RJDJ Album available through the RJDJ Player?
Right now I have two applications on my iphone, and I have to flip flop between the “album” app and the “player” app depending on what scene I want. I’m just looking to consolidate my scenes. Right now there doesn’t seem to be a way to do this through the “shared space” profile section.
April 3rd, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Ok, so the free RJDJ app has got a bunch of new scenes,
but the album version hasn’t??????
BIG FAIL!
Why can’t I use the album version for everything?!
Now I have to bring the free version back to my iPhone
to run 3 (!!!!!!!) RJDJ apps?!
Please make one or two!
But now the free one seems better than the one I paid for?!?!
April 3rd, 2009 at 6:22 pm
@Rocco: You cannot use the Albums to download scenes from the web because only one Application can be started from Safari, and that is the mainn, Single App of RjDj.
Think of the Albums as just that: Albums with a set of (reactive) music in it, bundled with a music player. But the main player is the RjDj app known as Single (yeah, misleading name, but that’s what people are used to by now)
– Frank
April 4th, 2009 at 2:07 am
@Frank: I love RJDJ but I’d like to second what other people have said and state that those of us who bought the album feel “left out in the cold” over having to toggle back and forth between the stand alone “Player” and the “Album” apps just to listen to new and old scenes. The only way I can currently get the Album songs (which I own courtesy of the Album app) is to re-purchase them and download to the Player app. At present, we can’t consolidate our old album purchases with the new scenes available through the Single Player app. There’s gotta be a way you can let us port the Album scenes we own through our website profile so we can migrate them onto the stand alone Single Player.
April 4th, 2009 at 9:18 am
Hi Keegan, Rocco, Brandon
I think there is two issues. One is releasing a topic or artist specific album as a stand alone app and the other issues is having all the scenes in one place.
issue 1: if apple had released os3 earlier and enabled in app transaction we would certainly only have one rjdj app in the store now. Since that is not the case, our strategy is to release topic or artist specific rjdj apps instead. So lets imagine we are releasing an artist specific rjdj app which has scene download… means you would be able to load other scenes from other artists into the artist specific app… well… does not make sense. right?
issue 2: you want to have one place where all your scenes life. That makes more sense to us and we are discussing this with some of the artists. So buying an artist specific app would enable you to sync the scenes into the “general” rjdj player.. Feelings about this are mixed because it looks like some artists strongly prefer to have their scenes only in their app…. anyway… this is where we are with this topic right now.
The whole idea of music as software is very new and brings some particular problems with it. E.g. everyone knows about software updates but who has heard about an update of the metallica album they bought five years ago? We appreciate all your feedback a lot and it helps to make the next steps and decisions but please lets stop calling the RjDj album a rip off just because we try to make this work for all parties in this game.
April 4th, 2009 at 10:59 am
I think the idea of artist specific apps is the wrong way to go, it fragments the user base, not only that but we will end up with pages and pages of RJDJ’s on our devices. With the advent of OS3 there is no need to do that, just buy the singles or albums directly from the “player”.
Think of it this way, if someone suggest you needed a dedicated copy of iTunes for every album you bought and had to flip flop between them to listen to your music you would say they were mad!
April 4th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
@Chris: My sentiments exactly!
@Michael: While I understand your point, I’m still not convinced by the argument that some artists want their scenes to be left as part of a “package”. The only reason why this doesn’t hold up as an excuse to keep the “Album” VS “Single” player app concept, is that nearly EVERY one of the scenes available for the Album can be purchased and loaded onto the Single player app.
We already know that the Album is not comprised of only one artist. If memory serves correctly, there are around 3 or 4 artists showcased in the Album application. If their work can be sold seperately and loaded into the Single player, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to port over our exisiting Album app scenes to the Single player app.
April 5th, 2009 at 11:47 am
SMELLS VERY FISHY INDEED
April 5th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
@Chris and @Keegan
With the advent of OS3 we will certainly change a couple of things. But os3 isn’t in the store yet and who knew 2 month ago it would feature in app transactions? Also check out other apps like tap tap… i think the model we are using is well known and established. we are by far not the only company using this. At the same time, of course, if we had had in app transactions earlier than things would look different… but all those if then and had had… lets just keep on doing stuff. i think we definitely moved one or two steps forward with this release and we will keep on doing so.
April 5th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
Well, at the time the Albums were released, there was no way at all to download or otherwise distribute additional scenes separately. We’ve spend a lot of development time to make that possible with the new website and the new client player. iPhoned OS3 probably will offer another way to distribute downloadable content and are looking into that, too. And these new features come with the free app, so everyone, including owners of the Albums, can use them!
Offering the same music piece through different means is not totally without precursor (is that the right word?): You could get the same track on CD, LP, vinyl single or on a compilation when music still wasn’t reactive. :) I have lots of dupes like that in my collection of physically distributed music.
Frank @ RjDj
April 6th, 2009 at 10:03 pm
@michael
ok, I understand what you are trying to achieve with this version. However, it just seems downright bizarre that we don’t have a way to export our recordings to our computers for use within our own songs. Rjdj apps are ear candy machines and the fact that we can’t use our recordings without having to use a line out into our computers is very frustrating.
April 6th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
@jmob
all i can say is that you are right… /me thinking about rjdj settings to change the compression rate. would that help?
April 7th, 2009 at 4:24 am
@michael
Sure that would be great. Perhaps in the future we could have a dedicated way of transferring to a folder that we designate on our computers? Rjdj is beyond amazing.
April 7th, 2009 at 4:53 am
[...] community site RjDj 0.7 out now [RjDj [...]
April 7th, 2009 at 6:15 am
[...] community site RjDj 0.7 out now [RjDj [...]
April 7th, 2009 at 7:30 am
Just a suggestion that you’ve probably thought of and considered already, but several other apps (BeatMaker may be the best-known) use a desktop client that allows files to be shared via WiFi. That obviously requires development time to be spent on the desktop app…or why not hit up the BeatMaker folks and see if they’d be willing to collaborate on creating a general file-sharing client that could be used by any application?
Unless you were to partner with a particular artist to release an app based on the RjDj platform (e.g., related to an album release, or one artist releasing an RjDj-based album) I must say I agree with the people who would like to consolidate all their scenes into the Single app. Ultimately, there’s no difference between Album and Single in that the scenes from the former can be downloaded into the latter. You could always ask those who purchased Album and wanted access to the scenes in Single to send you a screenshot to prove they have Album installed, then give them credit :) (way too time-consuming on your part, I suspect).
Are there any plans to consolidate into one app? At the moment it seems like having Single alone would make more sense.
April 7th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
I think the moment os 3 comes out you should shelve all your current apps in favour of a single universal rjdj app.
There’s also another problem with the scenes. A lot of them are mediocre at best. This whole purchasing scenes thing is only worth it if the actual scenes are good. It’s not enough to just stick a pitch shifting delay and call it a “scene”.
Being open source and friendly is all good and nice,and I love the experimental aspect of the whole project, but if you want to make money out of this you have to step the quality way up.
Another point. If some scenes are purchase only, how do I preview the scene to check the quality?
I’m more than happy to pay for good scenes, but I don’t want to pay for something just because it has the RJDJ name on it. So is there going to be a preview system or something? It’s hard since the scenes are not actual audio files to be listened, so you should consider this.
Also you need a proper forum, this blog comment thing is not good for discussion.
April 8th, 2009 at 8:21 am
@Thomas: Quality of scenes: This is just the beginning. In german there is a saying: “Aller Anfang ist schwer” Creating scenes is open to everyone and i am as curious as you about the content that will come along during the next couple of months. The rjdj team did focus very much on the product aspect in the past and we are shifting our attention now more into content aspects… so i can say for sure that i ve heard a couple of things which are in the making which were better than madonna, brittney spears, take that, modern talking, heino and my all times favorites original oberkrainer together.
@Junai and @jmob: The desktop client: yes we were thinking about that and also had some great ideas about it…. But… currently we have no resources to start a project like that… So please keep on supporting our work and i am sure we will find a way to get all of those features done ;-)
April 8th, 2009 at 8:30 am
guys. i just read a comment by mike @ http://more.rjdj.me/2008/12/29/the-rjdj-shake-is-here/ … i think it has relevance to the discussion above>
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Mike Says:
April 7th, 2009 at 5:06 pm e
RjDj, as I understand it, is a set of musical scores. Would you expect to buy a book of sheet music at your local music store, then come back a week later and expect to get more works by the same composer/arranger for free? Come on you kids!
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May 6th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
[...] clearly not explicitly a game, one of my all-time favorite iPhone apps, RjDj, is celebrating its latest update – which concludes a long undertaking to bring more social elements to the app“ posted [...]