Richie Hawtin seems to have released his "twitter hack" we first about back in April. This enables people to send the current in Traktor Pro playing tracks out into the web via Twitter. In the press release its noted that this app will enable the various royalty collecting agencies to better get a handle on what is actually played. Indeed thats true, what I do not understand is why making this possible is to hard? The sad news is that this app does not only drag the GEMA and friends into the 21st century but also NI! Come on guys, you want to be at the fore front of digital DJing and you are behaving like monolithic dinosaur when it comes to enabling your users to participate in the world wide web or when trying to interface your products with custom tools. Just keep reading this blog (including previous posts) to see what kind of "innovation at the edges" I would hope would be actively encouraged by NI. Then again the minus folks are also sadly a bit confused about making their content accessible, like wtf! using flash to display text content on a website?!?
Here is the relevant excerpt from the press release:
“By providing the necessary information to track what is really being played in clubs, the Twitter DJ application would not only drag the likes of GEMA, PRS and SOCAN kicking and screaming into the 21st century, but make sure the real artists get paid instead of performance payments simply being carved up between the Madonnas and U2s of the world. If record sales are slowing down and performance is now the key area where artists can achieve financial stability, better solutions need to be found and a workable structure put in place as soon as possible. We hope that our Twitter DJ application is a step forward in the development of these types of systems.“