beaTunes News

Today is the day you can get your hands on the first early access (EA—yep, kinda like beta) version of beaTunes 5. It's feature complete and stable, but it hasn't been used by many people yet. That means: please check it out and let me know, if you find any issues. To give you an idea what it looks like, here's a screenshot of the new dark mode showing key/BPM matches from the Beatport Top 100:

Here's some additional important information:

• If you're already using beaTunes 4, make sure the analysis queue is empty before you install EA1.
• Once installed, it will upgrade your existing beaTunes 4 database, should you have one. Before doing so, it should create a backup in the database directory so that you can go back to version 4. However, it's always a good idea to have your own backup!
• The database upgrade may take a while. Do not interrupt it. Instead, get a coffee, play with your dog, check your kid's homework. There's nothing more boring than staring at an indeterminate progress bar.
• EA1 is not fully localized. In the French and Spanish versions you will see English labels in some places.
• This EA release will stop working a week from now. There will be either a new EA version before the week is over or the final version will be released.
• The final version will not be a free update, unless you very recently purchased a license from the beaTunes.com website (magazine keys don't qualify!). As always, an upgrade license can be purchased for a significantly discounted price once the final version 5 is out.
• Media key support for Windows will hopefully happen in EA2. For macOS, you might need to disable the rcd and allow beaTunes to use the accessibility API. But at the very least, you need to enable media key support in beaTunes' playback preferences.
• Version 5 introduces an improved color concept that takes tempo/rhythmic features into account. To see these "new" colors you need to re-run the color analysis. Please note that the "old" color is still there, but it has been renamed to "timbre". To see the "new" color column, you may need to enable it, e.g. via View -> View Options.
• There is a new Beatport integration for charts and song matching (Beatport can be chosen as source). To enable it, you need to grant beaTunes access to your Beatport account. You can do so via the corresponding checkbox in the general preferences.
• For a complete list of changes, please read the NOTES.txt file in the distribution.

There are a bunch more features I can't wait to talk about, but those will have to be explained in subsequent posts. In any case. Please let me know how you like this release. Feel free to ask questions. Your feedback is very valuable to me.

Thank you.

Downloads

• beaTunes 5 EA1 for macOS
• beaTunes 5 EA1 for 64 Bit Windows
• beaTunes 5 EA1 for 32 Bit Windows

Update 30.5.2017

It looks like there is a small memory issue connected to the new key detection. This will be resolved in EA2. The current dev snapshot already contains a fix.

Labels: Early Access, Release