BPM 2015: Virtual DJ 8.1 To Come With Shazam

This leaflet here at the BPM Show alerted me to the forthcoming version of Virtual DJ – 8.1 – and I can report that it has what at first seems to be a strange feature for DJ software: Shazam integration. However, once you realise what they’ve done, it’s actually pretty awesome…

Rather than somehow Shazaming tracks for you (which of course wouldn’t make sense within DJ software), it instead taps into the huge database of information from Shazam’s website about the current big tracks being Shazamed: In other words, the tunes people don’t even know the names of because they’re so new, but that they’re loving on first listen.

Virtual DJ has always been pretty advanced when it comes to incorporating tunes and recommendations from outside of your local DJ collection; assuming you’re online, it can give you suggestions as to what to play next depending upon what millions of other Virtual DJ DJs tend to play next, and of course it has a streaming service built in for quickly playing songs you don’t have in your collection.

But this new integration gives you a direct “in” to the biggest tracks of tomorrow, rather than just the biggest tracks of today, as voted for by the general public – ie, the people likely to be on the dancefloor in front of you right now. That potentially makes it pretty powerful.

Of course, we’ll let you know how it works in practice as soon as we get the software for review.

• Virtual DJ 8.1 is currently in private beta, but Atomix says it should be available publicly within a week or two of now.

What do you think of this idea? How do you use Shazam? Do you think this is something that’ll improve your DJing? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.