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Tonium launches Pacemaker online community

Swedish start-up Tonium launched their new DJ mix sharing community today, March 5th, 2008.

Donald Bell Senior Editor / How To
Donald Bell has spent more than five years as a CNET senior editor, reviewing everything from MP3 players to the first three generations of the Apple iPad. He currently devotes his time to producing How To content for CNET, as well as weekly episodes of CNET's Top 5 video series.
Donald Bell
Screen shot of Pacemaker web site.
The Pacemaker web site allows you to create and share DJ mixes of your music library, legally. Tonium

Tonium, makers of the as yet released Pacemaker portable DJ MP3 player, have unveiled their new online community DJ mix portal today, along with a free Mac/PC music editor.

The new site allows anyone to create DJ mixes of their own music collection using the Pacemaker music editor software, and then upload the mix to the Pacemaker online community, where the mix can be streamed by anyone. If the Legal section of the Pacemaker Web site is any indication, Tonium have taken great pains in making sure the music sharing service is airtight. Along with agreements Tonium has struck with international music publishing houses, the Pacemaker music editor has some built-in safety measures that prevent users from using too many tracks by any single artist. Mixes also require a minimum amount of songs before they can be uploaded.

Screen shot of the Pacemaker DJ mix editor.
The Pacemaker mix editor lets you cobble together a mix of music on your PC, then upload it to share on the Pacemaker community. By the looks of things, I'm making a Madlib mix. Tonium

At first glance, the free DJ music editor offered by Pacemaker is a pretty fun application on its own. Tacks can be dragged into an editing pane and then manipulated with DJ effects such as filters, delays, crossfades, and backspins. The Pacemaker audio editor supports MP3 (16Kbps to 320Kbps), AAC (8Kbps to 256Kbps), MP3 VBR, FLAC, WAV, and Ogg-Vorbis, and can calculate the song's beats per minute automatically, to make beat-matching less of a guessing game.

Once the Pacemaker hardware is realeased later this month, it'll be exciting to see how the hardware, software, and Web site all integrate.