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48 hours after the dawn of the news species, I've had some time to break through the sexy images, Youtube vids and PR ridden with bold claims, to take a cold realistic look at what the new CDJ-2000 and 900 offer - other than being shiny pretty things that empty wallets. And being treated to a presentation at the Ministry of Sound, I'm now a hell of a lot clearer on what Pioneer are trying to achieve with this release. And it's much less about the hardware and a whole lot more about the whole DJ workflow. Look past the actual PR and see the bigger picture - it's a bold move for sure.



Firstly, in this industry, Pioneer shall henceforth be known as Pioneer DJ. There's a new logo (well tagging DJ on the end) which sets them apart from the rest of their empire. I suspect this is so that the Pioneer mothership can have tighter analysis on the various divisions within divisions. But welcome Pioneer DJ.

So let's see what we have at the end of a month long "dawn of a new species" teaser campaign. Having read 48 hours worth of skratchworx comments as well as lengthy threads elsewhere, the general vibe is as expected - it's not much of a change and it's ridiculously expensive. One one level, this is quite true, but after watching the presentation on Thursday night, I have a much better idea of just where they're coming from with this release.

While the actual release appears to be about new CDJs, for me it's much more about revolutionising the way DJs work with digital music - the workflow from downloaded music to the dancefloor. Obviously, there are different systems in booths - vinyl, DVS systems, MIDI controllers and of course CD decks. What Pioneer seem to want to do is create an entirely new infrastructure - based on their hardware and software - that enables DJs to turn up as a gig with a single USB key, plug in and rock the crowd. Paraphrasing an established catchphrase with DJ speak, Pioneer DJ want you to "rinse and go". And despite them tipping their cap and playing nice in the software/DVS direction with MIDI HID, the new Pioneer Dj message is that they want to eliminate laptops, vinyl, media and the associated crap that you stuff into your DJ luggage and enable you to play wherever you like - as long as it's on Pioneer gear of course.



The backend of this is rekordbox. Created by Mixvibes, it's seems to work in the same way as Denon's Music Manager. You create waveforms, add cues, hot cues, loops, analyse BPM and finally gather your music into handy playlists. Once done, you offload this to USB media and you're done. This is however a 2 way street, as set history is written back to USB and can be viewed in rekordbox. So as much as it hurts Pio fanboys, I feel you owe Denon a huge debt of gratitude for the basic idea.

Like all the other systems that use offline music management (shock horror - it already exists in Denon, Numark and Cortex units), the success or failure of the systems will largely be down to how you organise your music inside rekordbox. Pioneer can only provide so much in the way of help. If you choose to have your music as tag-free WAVs in a single folder, then it's entirely your fault if you find it doesn't work well for you. This new way will if anything make you more organized.



But that is the easy bit. Anyone can write software to manage music. But how to you use the music in the club? Well on existing gear you don't, hence needing new hardware to make using your music a lot easier. So the new CDJs have an infrastructure that enables sharing your music across up to 4 CDJs. The CDJ-2000 and CDJ-900 come complete with USB ports and LAN ports too. At the most basic level, you can plug a single USB device (no hubs so no multiple devices) into one CDJ and share it between 2 devices. But you can have different USB devices in different CDJs and share them between each other via a regular network router.

So having established that one device can be used on 4 different CDJs, it then becomes a matter of how easily you can actually use your music from with the belly of the CDJ beast. Pioneer DJ have added a huge 6" telly screen to the CDJs in a bid to give you the maximum legibility. By maximum legibility, I mean 6 lines of track selection, a heap of fancy graphics and a much improved waveform - essentially half a DVS squished into a still small screen. Yes, it's quite doable, but a laptop screen is a lot easier to use in this respect.



So in principle, this is a really good idea and a very brave move on Pioneer DJ's part. Having persuaded the DJ world that vinyl is for fossils and CD is the new way, they're now saying that CD is soooo last year (decade actually) and that their new way is in fact the one true DJ way to the exclusion of all others. They just want to make life easy for DJs, clubs and engineers and make a really slick workflow that emphasises performance rather than technical prowess in setting up gear. And regardless of your opinion of Pioneer and CDJs, I'm pretty sure that every working DJ would be so much happier if all they had to take with them to a gig was a USB key.

But there is however one tiny issue that Pioneer DJ need to think about - there's an absolutely humungous number of DJs that love the living crap out of vinyl and always will. CDJs came along and despite their wonderfulness, they weren't adopted by everyone. And those people stuck with vinyl and eventually moved to DVS when they were happy with the abilities of said systems. So despite whatever digital magic Pioneer DJ come up with, DVS users will never give up vinyl.



But I'm not too sure that Pioneer DJ are too bothered. To me, this is about entirely sewing up the high end club market - the real top end of the DJ evolutionary ladder. So it won't really matter if you use CDJs or not - if you want to play at a club using their gear, it's increasingly likely that you HAVE to use CDJs. And if the clubs run lemming like towards the new CDJs and this new way of working, this will become the new standard in a short space of time. Once the club owners and engineers see the benefits of the new CDJs, I imagine that they'll pretty much insist on their DJs adopting the new way. Adapt or die - it's natural selection after all. And simply from a marketing perspective, it's much easier to sell a cheaper Merc than a more expensive Yugo. Pioneer want to start at the top and work down.

So as you can see, this wasn't so much about adding bells and whistles to the existing models, but much more about moving forward into the new age. Let's face it - Pioneer DJ would be crazy to have the new CDJ apple fall far from the tree. They need users to have a familiar experience should they decide to embrace the new way. So when you look at the new models, there really isn't a lot different, except the stuff needed to enable this new digital workflow. There are of course some updates to the rest of the CDJ metaphor, but for me they pale into insignificance against the major shift that Pioneer DJ hope to bring with their introduction.



And with this shift comes comes a certain refocus of their target DJs. The CDJ-1000 was aimed at the wider market - anyone could own a pair of 1000s (well perhaps before the recent price hikes), but with the new way in place, the targets for the CDJ-2000 are and I quote "professional working DJs, Superstar DJs and Superclubs" i.e. people who make a shitload of cash just from DJing. If you're in this category, you have to think of your equipment as your livelihood and invest accordingly, thus $4K on a pair of CDJs isn't too much of a reach if you fall into that bracket. And for clubs, it's peanuts really.

The CDJ-900 however is the one for the rest of us. It's built on the same "prepare and perform" foundation but obviously hasn't got everything that the 2000 has. The spec of this is much closer to the 1000 than the 800 that most seem to be assuming it upgrades from. It lacks the large lush screen, but does still offer the basics of the new way plus some "performance" extras like slip mode, albeit in a lot less detail. Hey - Pioneer DJ want to give you a reason to buy the 2000 right?



But be under no illusion - Pioneer wish to dominate the scene, and crush DVS systems, even if they do offer HID for DVS compatibility. And you can't help but think that if they thought they could get away with it, they'd leave out the CD drive as well, in the same way that Apple offed the floppy disk. But then again, putting a DVD drive in there does make the CDJ-2000 accept every single popular music medium bar vinyl.

So in a nutshell, Pioneer have taken stuff that exists already, taken it a step further and laid out a very compelling and cohesive vision of the future as they see it. This will also be rolled out on future machines too so everyone will be able to "prepare and perform", even if it is on a different platform. I totally get where they're coming from, but the proprietary dominance factor of forcing anyone who wants to play seriously in clubs bothers me. It would be nice if say rekordbox became a standard way of working but was open to all brands of gear. I like freedom rather than enforced slavery - no matter how comfy the chains might feel. And then there's those bloody DVS loving fools - how dare they prefer the tactility and choice of software.



So do you want to go down this path? The benefits are obvious - media free streamlined music management and a simpler setup. No more CD wallets, laptops, complex cabling or switchovers either. All your music will be handled inside your CDJs without recourse to the picking up email effect of DVS systems. I think for CD rocking DJs, it feels like a total no brainer. But trying to sell this to DVS users might be quite a bit harder, especially if they use vinyl. That's one medium that seems immortal.



The uptake of the new units is an interesting conundrum. Who will drive the adoption of this new way of working? Having already shown that the "new species" is in fact just a milkshake of existing DNA, you have to understand that where others failed to make a real dent with their new ideas, Pioneer have the near untouchable brand, respect and infrastructure in place to pull this off. You walk into club and expect to see Pioneer, thus swapping old CDJs for new isn't really an issue.

And which is the cheapest way for Pioneer to go about it? I suspect that Pioneer will give assist superstar DJs in getting CDJ-2000s, as the best PR they can get is the VIP DJ list all using CDJ-2000s. This of course will encourage the clubs to switch over as well. I suspect that before too long, riders will be changed to specify CDJ-2000s or nothing. If you want Roger Sanchez in your club, you'd better have 2000s installed or he isn't getting out of bed. And this will slowly filter down through the rest of the scene as other DJs get to use them. It may be that rekordbox is free and non-2000 owners will be able to feel the benefit of the new way when they work, but they'll still be messing with CDs back at home, ultimately hate it and switch up themselves. It's a viral thing really.

So to underline this - think of these new CDJs not as upgrades as such, but as a path to the non-media all digital hassle free path that Pioneer wants to take you down. Look not at the handful of hardware tweaks and more at the new workflow. Then perhaps you'll get where "dawn of a new species" is coming from.



As a footnote to this - the chances of me spending anymore than 5 minutes with these machines at the launch event was impossible. And with the crappy disco lighting and ear bleedingly loud music majestic sound and light experience of MOS, it was near impossible (for me anyway) to formulate opinion on the actual units. But BPM is 2 weeks away, so I'll be sure to spend time with them in quieter surroundings and daylight too.

UPDATE: Photo shoot