Fluxus begins here

[averwhy]

The problem

For a while now, DJ softwares have fundamentally been the same, and three companies have primarily dominated the space. Rekordbox, Traktor, and Serato (I don't count Denon here since their software is hardware locked). These are paid softwares with strong emphasis on their subscriptions and hardware purchases. Especially in my case, I've been trying to do some unique stuff with my DJ setup (a Pioneer DJM-850 and OSCPilot) and I've found none of these softwares to be quite good enough for my end goal. I even tried Ableton, but found it too complicated to setup and lacking critical features like pausing/resuming, built in FX that work, waveforms, and more.

With these apps, it feels like some features are just an afterthought. Especially MIDI- a powerful MIDI interface (kind of like Abletons) would allow users to do so much with a DJ software. Additionally, they have rigid workflows for mixing, and the ecosystems are usually very closed off. Not to mention bloat (cough cough, streaming and video features in Rekordbox, cough cough). Lastly, these apps are largely still designed off of legacy codebases. They've been around for years, after all. (Yes, the Rekordbox software was released in 2015, but somehow still feels almost as old as Serato).

The alternatives

Alternatives to these apps exist- but they're lacking. Mixxx is open source, but the UI is a little dated (no offense), and it's had some stability issues allegedly. DJUCED is too basic. VirtualDJ is a pretty popular one but still has a paid plan and isn't quite flexible enough.

There's room for innovation. That's where Fluxus comes in.

Fluxus will be a flexibility and control focused alternative to these softwares, serving as a truly viable alternative. It will have features like:

• Customizable UI for any DJ usecase
• Powerful and flexible MIDI integration- in's and out's
• Universal DJ hardware compatibility¹
• Cueing, looping, FX, EQ'ing- no missing features from the other softwares
• Fully open source and free, forever. Yes, really²

Not to mention, it's built using Swift for MacOS- so it will be fast and efficient.

Yes, this is an ambitious project. But I'm passionate about it, and have the desire and commitment to bring this to life. In the 50's and 60's, an international avant-garde art movement of artists, poets, and musicians called Fluxus bridged the gap between art and everyday life. I feel inspired by this group, along with my love of music, to create this truly free software so anyone can DJ with no limits.

Follow along with the development of Fluxus in the Devlog category here in discussions. There is also a project board with feature planning. If enough traction develops, I can make a Discord.

Footnotes

1. It's possible some hardware won't be compatible. This will be researched more towards Fluxus' 1.0 release. ↩

2. I'm definitely going to accept donations. But there will never be features locked behind a paywall of any kind. ↩