The FL Studio community was rocked earlier this month as producer Deadmau5 claimed the use of his samples was “stealing,” even though these samples were bundled with the software and assumed by most to be licensed royalty-free. FL Studio developer Image-Line has not responded to a CDM request for comment, but they did talk to MusicRadar.com. Managing Director Jean-Marie Cannie told that site:

We’ll remove all melodic loops from FL Studio to avoid this kind of stuff in the future but that won’t change a lot I’m afraid. Our demo material has been stolen 1000s of times in the more than 10 years we have been doing this. The difference here is that this time it was stolen from a user that made it big.

I’m going to ignore for a moment the question of how “that won’t change a lot” – people will be able to steal demo content even when it’s not there? That aside, there are two odd things about this story:

1. Image-Line seems to helped create the problem by shipping sample content in software without being clear which license covered that content and which is which, then responded with the inexplicable argument that that sample content was supposed to be for “demo” purposes only (with nothing that I can see to back up that statement, and evidence that precisely the opposite was the case). No one is angry enough to dump FL, because it’s an excellent tool, but I sure hope Image-Line learns from the experience.

2. Many users are nonetheless responding “good riddance” to the loss of sample content.” For a lot of people, the bigger question here really is artistic, and maybe it’s time for computer musicians to draw a line.

“Demo” Samples – or Sample Content?

Let’s go back in time to the samples themselves, before the user DirtyCircuit produced a song with these samples and before Deadmau5’s response. If we give Image-Line the benefit of the doubt, there are two ways they could have avoided trouble. One would be to label what they call “demo material” so that it’s clear it’s not supposed to be used. The other would be to include an explicit license prohibiting certain kinds of use – I’m no fan of legalese, but then they’d be legally covered.

The problem is, they did neither. Image-Line and Deadmau5 seem to have entire fabricated the idea that this is “demo content,” as many FL users and CDM readers have noted.

(highlight mine)

The content is listed under a section called “Packs” in the default content included with FL, in sections called “Loops > Drum Loops” and “Loops > Melody Loops.” Claiming this is “demo” content is downright disingenuous, because the same section includes individual notes of samples of drums and instruments for keymapping and even synth and plug-in presets. To say it was “stolen” has to be one of the oddest comments ever made by a software developer. It almost implies that making any use of default parameters is intellectual property theft, which, while I suppose it’s ideologically pure, would be absurd. Image-Line almost went out of their way to make this content accessible to its users.

These sample packs aren’t mentioned in the documentation, but downloadable sample packs are one of the selling points of the program, and that is in the marketing materials. As near as I can figure, Image-Line actually made up the idea that these were demo samples because they wanted to make Deadmau5 happy.

What Rights You Get with FL

Updated: if this were demo content, it would be covered under the End User License Agreement for FL Studio. The license is explicit in that case:

“The Software and the Demo Songs, in its entirety and each part of it, are protected by Belgian copyright laws, international treaty provisions (Convention of Bern) and European Directives.

You acknowledge and agree that the Software, including but not limited to the source code, the structure and organization, and the Demo Songs in its entirety and each part of it, are proprietary to IL and/or its partners and that IL and/or its partners retain exclusive ownership of all right, title and interest in and to the Software, Demo Songs, documentation and trademarks. As producer(s) of the databases contained in the Software and the product package of the Software IL and/or its partners retain all sui generis rights in the content.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, IL shall in no event claim ownership rights to new and original music made by using the Software.”

EULA for FL Studio

Furthermore, that has been communicated in plain English by Image-Line support:

* You can not use or sell any of the songs/loops that come included with FL Studio. If you want to use parts of it, you can contact the original creator and discuss this issue further with him.

* You can not license, copyright, sell or distribute in any way the individual samples & sounds, or make samples packs out of it.

http://support.image-line.com/knowledgebase/base.php?id=36&ans=41

Of course, you’ll notice an inconsistency here:

1. Image-Line never does make any included sample content royalty-free, which is unprecedented in music software. (The loops that come with programs like GarageBand, Ableton Live, and every other app I can think of are explicitly made royalty-free.)

2. The EULA says only “demo songs,” and is entirely mum on the question of sample packs.

3. The support FAQ says “loops,” but that’s never made clear by the EULA.

It would be correct to say that the Deadmau5 samples would be off-limits if they were part of a demo song. The problem is, what are they doing in the “Packs” section, where it appears to be among other royalty-free samples? Unlike the demo songs and samples, those are free to use in your own songs – you just can’t resell them on a sample disc, for instance.

Here’s what Image-Line says about the samples they provide free when you buy the product. They’re available as a separate download, but then, that doesn’t make this make much more sense.

All samples are royalty-free, which means you can use the samples in your own compositions and songs without paying any further royalties. You are not allowed, however, to resell or redistribute any or all of the samples as a sample pack or sample CD.

The thing is, the demo songs are a completely different part of what ships with FL. You can find various demo songs in a folder called “Cool Stuff.” (You can try all of this out with the FL8 demo.) “Faxing Berlin” is indeed a Deadmau5 song, but the loops from the song just show up in the Packs. There is a Deadmau5 demo song included with FL, but it’s a different song (“That’s not true,” which is oddly appropriate for this situation.)

It’s obvious, then, that Image-Line fumbled the way these samples were distributed and labeled, the way the license was expressed in the user agreement and support, and in their reaction to the whole affair after the case. It’s possible Image-Line didn’t communicate adequately with the artist, that the artist signed away rights without examining the consequences, that the samples actually got put in the wrong folder, or some combination of all of the above. We haven’t gotten clear communication from I-L, though, explaining what the heck happened.

Obviously, the fix is pretty easy:

1. Artists, be careful with your samples, or assume your fans will be able to differentiate. (In fairness, the actual Deadmau5 track is to me obviously superior to the DirtyCircuit “remix.”)

2. Developers, be explicit, both in legal documentation and in communicating to your users.

In the meantime, I’d like to see future versions of FL that are clearly labeled and clearly licensed, and I don’t think there’s anyway to argue in this case that they were. I’d also like to see a clarification from Image-Line of what, in the current EULA and software, actually is licensed to the users, because this isn’t typical of competing packages.

Artistic Response: Presets, Begone!

Some people are, predictably, upset by the whole affair – and I think they have the right to be frustrated with Image-Line for being apparently incapable of handling content that ships with their own software.

The surprise is, a lot of people are actually glad to see the “Loops” out of the Fruity. You can read endless responses from forum members who say this kind of sampling is bad for the perception of the tool, because it overshadows the genuinely creative work a lot of people are doing with it. Once you get out of the legal and developer-specific issues, you really do get into the question of the artistic merit of the sample use. In my view, using a sample – any sample, regardless of license – as the basis of a song without significant modification amounts to plagiarism. It may be perfectly legal, but if you aren’t placing that sample in a new context, and you’re claiming it’s “your” work, you’re doing something dishonest. Now, we can debate all day about where to draw the line, but the problem isn’t sampling, it’s, say, taking a couple of samples, looping them endlessly, and calling it a song. Odds are, you won’t even have to have a debate about that, because a lot of people will simply lose interest musically.

Among many users of a program with “Loops” in its name, and among readers of this site who are themselves often fond of sampling, a lot of people would like to be done with sample content in general. On a simple, practical level, samples you don’t need from other people’s songs can get in the way of your work. A number of readers of CDM said they’d be happy to be done with this sample content and demo songs just to save room on their hard drive. (Happily, some installers give you a choice; I know Cakewalk’s SONAR 8 allows you to uncheck the sample projects on install, only because I just installed it.)

You can read the extensive comments on the previous story, but these two lines from wi_ngo pretty much sum it up:

I LOVE the Grey Album.

I HATE factory patches/loops/presets.

In other words, sampling is fine. Preset content is boring. Sampling without doing anything with those samples is playing a track, not really sampling.

So, most of the frustration at the moment seems to be that Image-Line not only botched the release of these samples in the first place, but isn’t communicating clearly in the aftermath. (I think the latter is the real problem, even more than the former.)

But all fruit, no loops? That sounds just fine to most. And none of this seems to be dampening enthusiasm for Image-Line’s flagship music tool.

Final score:

Deadmau5: 1. More publicity for Faxing Berlin.

DirtyCircuit: 0. The original is better.

Image-Line: 0. Totally muddled the situation before, during, and afterward.

FL Studio: 1. Happily, people still like your software.

Preset content: 0. You’re gone. No one will miss you.

Samples, unmodified, as the core of a song that’s not a “remix”: 0.

Community policing: 10. See also: Crystal Castles. Forget the license, forget the law – in the Web age, music fans have become the final arbiters of what matters – and artistic value matters.

Xfer Sample CD, Anyone?

I had almost forgotten – on top of this comes the oddly-timed news that Deadmau5 will be releasing his own sample CD – yours for a hundred bucks (US). Friend Steve Duda hand-coded some DSP, as well.

Stranger and stranger – Duda says:

“we saw a niche for one geared towards building blocks of EDM with a twist – this one is royalty-free, so it can be used in original productions with no fear of legal repercussions from the original artists who often are sampled on other CD libraries”

Well, unless I missed something, the only legal repercussions I’ve seen from sample libraries are the Deadmau5 FL Studio libraries. I don’t know of any other sample libraries that have uncleared samples on them, as that’d indeed make them worthless. So, no chance this is related to the separate FL issue, is there?

I’m also trying to wrap my head around this one:

One thing for certain, the sounds of the XFER Sample CD will be featured on dance tracks for decades to come.

I enjoy Deadmau5’s music, but to me the idea that this particular sample library will be featured in dance tracks in 2040 is not “for certain.”

(I imagine I’ll still be getting bizarre spam comments on posts I’m writing now on CDM after I’m dead, but that’s another matter.)

In case you’re planning your dance tracks for when you’re 64:

Deadmau5 Xfer Sample CD-ROM presale

Fruity Loops, while a long-time underground favorite of PC music makers, seems to be on a roll at the moment. We were lucky enough to get an FL Studio 8 sneak peak with Didier Dambrin, Image-Line’s lead programmer — one of the great music software artists. Since our French was nonexistent and his English was limited, the scene was something like this: Didier silently tweaks his way around his software, we squint at the screen, and magical sound awesomeness happens.

FL Studio 8’s feature set will evidently be set free gradually, starting with a beta build called “7.4″ you’ll be able to download from the forums. The new features are FL’s combination of sublimely powerful tools and oddly superfluous toys. In the toys category: a live audio visualization you can float around your screen. (I’m guessing they’ll be fun to look at when you’re completely stuck creatively in the middle of a project.) In the sublime category: a new beat slicer that takes Edison several leaps further. Beat slices are MIDI assignable, filters and such are already available, and … well, it’s rather hard to describe, but it’s all put together in a Fruity way that makes it compelling.

The other revelation was that the cult-hit SynthMaker VST creation tool is now being licensed by Image-Line for inclusion with FL Studio. It’s not clear yet what if anything will be unique to this version, but the combination of FL’s tools with custom SynthMaker instruments you’ve built yourself sounds lovely. It should give you something to muse on while we wait on Ableton and Cycling ‘74, who are still mum on any product of the partnership they announced last year. No other details yet on FL 8 or FL SynthMaker, but this one’s dead center on our radar.

Ed.: Deckadance DJ software has been on our radar for some time on the DJ software front: lots of MIDI control (with one caveat; see below), agnostic support for multiple vinyl timecode systems, and most interestingly the ability to run the whole app as a VST plug-in. Dreams of loading Deckadance into Ableton Live danced through DJs heads. The app even added built-in support for Nintendo Wii remotes. But the software, from the development house that brought us FL Studio (”Fruity Loops”) was Windows only. No more:

Image-Line has just released the latest beta of Deckadance, 1.20RC3. This version is the first version to include support for OS X. The developers have written on the Deckadance forums that the port to OS X required almost a complete rewrite. Early reports are mostly positive, with a few bugs (mostly on the Windows side reported here and there). Other notable changes include:

• Redesign of the Digital Vinyl System panel. It includes now a real-time signal spectroscope and an easy-to-use interface
• Vinyl timecode control of decks inside Live and Live LE
• Native support for Numark Total Control console

However, there’s no reports of a fix to allow pitch bend messages for deck pitch control, a personal obsession of mine. [Ed.: Wally, fairly sure you're not alone on that! -PK] Still, though, kudos to the Deckadance team for getting the OS X version out the door before the end of the year. Let’s hope 2008 holds great things in store for Deckadance!

1.20RC3 Beta Announcement [Image-Line Forums]
Windows beta download; Mac beta download

(You must be logged into the free Image-Line forums to use the download links.)

Image-Line has also posted a video showing Deckadance running on both Mac and Windows:

Image-Line has also announced a new developer is taking on Deckadance in Argu’s absence:

Image-Line is pleased to hand the baton for Deckadance development to the capable hands of Luis Serrano Cavero. Luis is an experienced developer of DJ tools, including his own DJ midi controller, and brings further inspiration and enthusiasm to the Deckadance project. “We are very proud, and fortunate, to have Luis on the team” said [Jean-Marie Cannie, Managing Director of Image Line Software].

The announcement comes with the release of 1.13, with various bugfixes and improvements, deck sync and monitoring enhancements, and Behringer BCD3000 console support.

As we again offer our condolences, it’s nice to see this developer’s work memorialized and recognized; I hope we get to know more of the faces behind the tools we care about.

Deckadance homepage

We are saddened to learn that Juan Antonio Argüelles, “Argu(ru)”, died Sunday night in a car accident. He was respected as one of the most talented plug-in developers anywhere, as the creator of plug-in house discoDSP, and later a developer of plug-ins for Image-Line. He had a deep role in the creation of FL Studio 7, the sampler DirectWave, and Deckadance.

Some of you probably know more of the details of his work for both discoDSP and Image-Line. If you’d like to share anything about him as a person, or his tools, please do. The tools that developers create are a special thing to all of us in our music and in our creative lives; part of the joy of using software someone else creates is getting to know something of their personality. So, from all the users of his tools and the digital music community, you will truly be missed, Arguru.

Both KVR and our friends at the Spanish-language Hispasonic have running threads of condolences.

Rest in Peace, Arguru [KVR Audio Forum thread]

Fallece Juan Antonio Argüelles, “Arguru” [Hispasonic]

Our condolences to his family, friends, and colleagues, and to his fiancee.

Deckadance, the DJ software from Fruity Loops creators Image Line, has only just come out and already has its first update. 1.10 is a big jump. Updates to the Ms. Pinky SDK support means it can now support absolute mode timecode (so you can needle drop anywhere you like), not only for Ms. Pinky vinyl but also M-Audio Torq and PCDJ, both of which are based on Ms. Pinky. There’s also an adjusted interface and updated playlist, among other bugfixes and enhancements.

The most interesting addition, though: it now natively supports the Wii remote from Nintendo. WiiJ, anyone?

Of course, you don’t need Deckadance to DJ with a Wii remote. On Windows, you can use GlovePIE, allowing for custom scripting. And on Mac, the most elegant solution is probably OSCulator, which translates to OpenSoundControl data, MIDI, and keystrokes. (Traktor, for one, supports both OSC and MIDI, though I haven’t yet tried OSCulator with it; I did have some issues using NI’s OSC implementation in Reaktor when I tried it. Update: you could use OSCulator and MIDI if OSC isn’t your cup of tea — more below.) For MIDI compatibility only, there’s also WiitoMIDI.

But I think built-in support in Deckadance is an interesting development. I’ve heard rumblings about Wii controller support showing up in other applications, as well, including VJ software. That means the Wii remote won’t be so much of a novelty in performance — meaning we’ll all have to actually learn to play with the thing skillfully. But maybe that’s a very good thing.

Thanks to Alexandre Guillet in Paris for the tip!

Updated: OSCulator the best choice for Mac MIDI, too? I erroneously implied OSCulator was for OSC only and not MIDI; if you’re on the Mac and wanting to use a Wii remote, see my separate note about OSCulator.

As for the Deckadance implementation itself, Wiij.com isn’t so impressed. I hope Image Line takes him up on his offer of help.

Deckadance, from the makers of FL “Fruity Loops” Studio, is now shipping. No word on the Mac version in development, but Windows, at least, is shipping now. We’re excited to try it out for all the reasons we were when we first saw it, and now we have some additional details to flesh in:

1. It hosts VST plug-ins. One of our big complaints with too many traditional DJ apps: you’re restricted to the included effects. Deckadance wisely allows you to use VST plug-ins. Like many of you, I’m not quite ready to give up Ableton Live, though, so that brings us to our next point:
2. It will act as a VST plug-in. Drop Deckadance into any host program, and you can take advantage of its vinyl support capabilities and DJ tools while using everything you like about your host.
   
3. It has some lovely effects of its own. The Juice Pack is included. I’ve been using these with FL Studio 7 as I test that, and it’s a nice bundle for US$99. $179 with Deckadance is a great deal, too. And since they’re VSTs, you can use them even when you’re not running Deckadance, in case you want some FX love in SONAR or Live.
4. It’s cheap. US$179, or $149 during an introductory offer for May.
5. It supports lots of MIDI controllers. Now confirmed: Vestax VCI-100, Behringer BCD2000 & 3000 (though interestingly not Behringer’s DJ controller), Allen & Heath Xone:3D, M-Audio X-Session, the ugly but serviceable Hercules DJ Console MP3 & MK II, and slick EKS XP10 are all supported out of the box.
6. It supports lots of vinyl control systems. Rather than restricting you to one vinyl system, Deckadance “autolearns” the timecode used by various systems, and “has been tested with timecode vinyls & CDs from msPinky, Stanton FinalScratch, MixVibes, Serato Scratch Live, Virtual DJ & Torq.” Notably absent: NI’s upcoming Traktor Scratch. NI tells us they don’t think Deckadance will be able to reverse-engineer their timecode with support for absolute mode. We have heard, though, that absolute timecode (which allows you to needle-drop, etc.) on at least Ms. Pinky, so we’ll see if Image Line can reverse engineer NI’s system.

There are plenty of big questions here, of course, not the least being how this “autolearn” system will work and if it’s competitive with systems integrated out of the box, like NI’s Traktor Scratch. But after years of relative stagnation in traditional digital DJ systems, things are getting interesting. And, while I don’t expect this will be a huge market, I’m personally interested in ways of bringing vinyl techniques into other live performance setups in tools like Max/MSP, FL Studio, Live, through integration of plug-ins like the Ms. Pinky VST or Deckadance in VST mode.

Deckadance Product Page

The creators of Fruity Loops aka FL Studio (Image Line software) have just announced a new DJ application called DeckaDance, and this thing looks like the answers to our prayers. We here at CDM love applications that don’t tie you into a specific controller/hardware/control vinyl solution. DeckaDance seems to have everything we’ve ever wanted in a DJ application, and not only does it support several different types of control vinyl, it actually has a learn mode to adapt itself to new types! Add the fact that it’s a VST host capable of hosting both effects AND instruments, and is capable of operating as a VST plugin as well, and I think we have something that will truly change the face of DJing (unlike some other recent products). Here’s a run-down of some of the more notable features:

1. Works as standalone or VSTi plugin
2. Hosts VSTi soft synths & FX in 8 slots
3. 8-slot sampler that samples from the decks
4. 6 inputs & 12 outputs
5. Supports Final Scratch, Serato Scratch, MixVibes and (our favorite) Ms Pinky vinyl
6. Capable of learning new vinyl control systems


7. Auto-sync

Most surprisingly, it says that a Mac / Audio Units version is planned, in addition to the current Windows version. With the availability of Image-Line’s Poizone and Toxic III soft synths for OS X, perhaps it’s not as big a surprise as it would have been a few years ago, but it’s nice to see ImageLine pushing forward with multiple OS support (I’m guessing that a Linux/Jack port is further down the line :-).

The only glaring omission I see so far is a lack of support for FLAC files (although it does support MP3, WAV and Ogg), but I’m sure we’ll see that in a future version. No release date has been set, although Image-Line says it’s coming “real soon”. If the performance aspect is there, and if this thing has a similarly powerful workflow and rock-solid stability like it’s sequencer brethren Fruity Loops, I think Traktor (and DJ Decks, and Torq, and everything else) is in for some serious competition.

A demo is already available.

DeckaDance Sneak Preview

Ed.: This is just the sort of thing we’ve been waiting for. A full-featured DJ plug-in that works inside other apps means you can add DJ sets to your existing live sets, scratch during a performance … the lines between DJing and performance continue to blur. And an open DJ app could finally free the full-time DJs from reliance on hardware/software platforms, at just the right moment as Final Scratch customers got burned by the Native Instruments – Stanton divorce. We’ll watch this closely, for sure. -PK

Well, sort of a big deal, anyway. Technically, porting plug-ins between platforms is not an enormous issue; it’s primarily an issue of testing. Testing, though, means hauling Macs into your office. (I knew something was up with Cakewalk, for instance, when I saw a shiny Power Mac G5 in their testing studio.) And Windows users who touch Macs generally have to find a way to make their peace. In Image Line’s FAQ on whether they’ll ever support the Mac, they link to this movie by a guy who, erm, obviously knows nothing. Maybe he’s better with Windows? (Then again, it’s kind of fun watching him freak out.)

Anyway, it’s nothing personal that’s keeping FL Studio from running on Macs. Anyone who’s visited their FAQ in the last few years can see the answer, put plainly:

FL Studio was developed in Delphi therefore it’s almost impossible to port FL Studio to the Mac OS (or any other OS) without a complete rewrite.

Delphi? Really? Fun side note: Object Pascal, the primary language in Delphi, was developed (wait for it) at Apple (to enable the early Mac application frameworks, no less). Now, I know some people who love Object Pascal and I know nothing about it, so I’ll just stay quiet — and, as I recall, Reagan was still President when Borland was aggressively touting Pascal on the Mac, so I’ll take Image Line at their word. But beyond technical issues, as Adrian notes, shipping Mac software is indeed going to be a philosophical change for IL.

Programmers: anyone want to recommend some handy tools for the Image Line folks to port their Delphi software to Mac? Heck, I’d be more likely to run FL Studio on my PCs if I could also run it on my Macs. (That’e been my experience with Ableton Live.)

Toxic III [Image Line]

Before you get your hopes up, though, I don’t think this necessarily means you’ll see a port of Image Line’s flagship FL Studio, nice as that might be. Plug-ins are far easier to port from platform to platform than larger applications; note that cross-platform tools like Reason, Live, Cubase SX, and even Logic (back in the day) all began their life as cross-platform software. If the code is heavily tied to tools on that platform, porting can be near-impossible. (I have one word for why you shouldn’t expect FL Studio for Mac any time soon: Delphi.)

In the meantime, Windows users, Toxic III is US$59 through the end of the month; US$99 after that — but maybe we’ll get lucky and this will find its way into an FL Studio bundle. CDM Interface Verdict: Sick.