Developer: Mixonset Inc.
Price: £6.99 per month
Size: 95 MB
Version: 3.0.13
Platform: iPhone & iPad
Mixonset is one of a number of ‘Lazy DJ’ apps out there offering an AI-powered music mixing experience. The idea at the heart of such apps is to provide automated transitions between music tracks, fading one into the other like a professional disc-spinner.
In this particular case, Mixonset has been around since January 2020. The advent of version 3, however, seems like a good opportunity to catch up on what it has to offer.
Mixonset’s angle has always been to combine AI DJ mixing with a more traditional music streaming experience. To that end, the developer has just added Apple Music compatibility to the existing Spotify and Tidal support.
Apple Music support is only in beta at present, and we encountered issues importing our playlists, with a message telling us that “we don’t have full Apple Music catalog yet,” encouraging us to switch to Tidal. Which is far from ideal.
Apple Music implementation isn’t quite there yet
Still, we were eventually able to create fresh Apple Music playlists within the app. When you finally get down to it, the core AI DJ technology can be very impressive in a couple of ways.
Give the app time to populate its library with your own music, and Mixonset will form mixes based on BPM and mood. This can yield some nice flowing results, though there are one or two whiffs. Creating a 115 to 135 bpm mix is one thing, but inserting Radiohead’s dirge-like Exit Music into the middle of it is hardly in keeping with the party vibes found elsewhere.
The smart mixes throw up the occasional curve ball
But the really impressive bit comes when you instruct the app to play in Highlight mode. Here, the app will isolate the most interesting minute or two of a song, then beat-match that song with the next one.
You’ll need to give the app time and space to process these mixes – it doesn’t take kindly to skipping forwards – but leave it well alone and you’ll be impressed by the way it manages to paste these tracks together.
Smart mixes soon start appearing based on BPM and mood
Admittedly, this trick works much better with beat-driven electronic music than other genres. The fade-in audio effect comes across as slightly weird and tinny when playing a Bob Dylan playlist, for example.
But who really wants to beat match and seamlessly stitch together Bob Dylan tracks? This is largely aimed at upbeat electronic music fans, and no number of chilled mixes can really change that.
Highlight mode takes the meat of the song and beat-matches it
There is an undeniable sense of roughness about the app. Besides the aforementioned library implementation issues, the app throws up the odd typo and clunky UI element that will grate if you’re used to using one of the major streaming services.
The developer says that it will fix the issues and glitches with its Apple Music implementation in future updates, but until that arrives we couldn’t recommend that Apple Music users pay to sign up for the Mixonset Pro experience. Spotify and Tidal users looking for a seamless DJ experience, however, might find a perfect party companion in Mixonset.