On your main machine start SoundFlower and set the system audio output to be SoundFlower (64ch) in your System Preferences.On your virtual machine, install Spotify and, if desired, Growl, pyechonest, appscript and pyOSC.

On your main machine, install all of the above software and start Spotify.

If you choose to use Spotify and would like to display key and BPM information alongside your playlists, you can also install and use my Key and BPM Spotify app, the code for which can be found here:įinally, if you would like to control Ableton Live with a custom DJing template on the iPad, install TouchOSC on your iPad: Jack instead of Soundflower, Virtual Box instead of Parallels, and Pure data is simply used to reroute the output of Soundflower to another input of Soundflower, so really, any DAW application capable of passing audio from an input to an ouput will do.įor the automatic retreival of EchoNest data for the currently playing Spotify track, you will also need: There are alternatives for many of these programs e.g. In order to recreate this particular set-up on your machine you will need the following software installed: As you can see it's a complete spider's web of messy hacks involving most components of the OS. The above is a diagram of how the hack works. I am simply posting it here for prosperity and for tinkerers who are interested in how this was achieved. I do not have any intention to maintain or update this code.

Needless to say, this implementation is OS X only, but it would definitely be possible on Windows, as well. If anyone can think of any ways to streamline this process, please do let me know. It requires lots of different bits of software to each perform seemingly innocuous tasks, but every singly task is critical to the system working. The two streams are then sent into individual tracks in Ableton Live, each with a Max For Live patch which reads the Spotify streams into internal buffers which can then be sped up or slowed down at will, effectively allowing you to beat-match and, theoretically, do a whole DJ with streamed content. This system relies on a virtual machine (Parallels in my hack's case) to play a second Spotify stream. Hacked together at MIDEM Music Hack Day 2014.

Dj app spotify