Slash Music vs World Controller

Slash player is all about custom user experience on top of an official Spotify Premium access. It lets you view playlists, search songs and manage playlists in the same way you would if you were using Spotify. The main difference is that this application gives you an improved UI with strong focus on separate artist albums and playlists. In the future we’re looking to add even more ability to customize this player specifically for your everyday use.

World Controller was written to solve a particular problem I encountered in live performance. I needed a way to choose a Digital Performer chunk simultaneously on multiple computers, AND select a corresponding MainStage patch to play live parts against a track. Specifically, World Controller uses a wireless network MIDI session to control Digital Performer and MainStage at the same time. Any Mac Laptop on the same wifi network that subscribes to the wireless MIDI session (set up in Audio MIDI Setup) can respond to commands sent from World Controller, perfect for simultaneous control of multiple computers in a redundant playback situation. You can create a set list that can be edited and re-ordered any way you like. Each set list item provides a button to select a particular Digital Performer chunk, and another button to select a MainStage patch. There are also transport controls for Digital Performer playback as well (sent as Patch change commands to the DP Remote Commands), allowing you to start, stop and rewind the current chunk to zero. This app is optimized for use with these two pieces of software, and it is the missing link for me that enables seamless playback in a complex live performance situation. More features will come in subsequent versions, but right now, all the commands sent wirelessly are patch change commands on channels 15 and 16 (MainStage and DP respectively). Any musician on stage can now run the app and be connected via peer to peer networking to get live updates of the set list. Everybody see the same list and sees what song is cued up to be played next. There's nothing else out there that does this one specific thing!