After learning how the device works from YouTube videos and reviews, I knew I had to trick the Web Portal into believing I had an actual Stem Player. This ordeal is not new for ye, when he released his album "The Life of Pablo" exclusively on Tidal, most people consumed the album illegally, which he mentions in his song "Saint Pablo" - A million illegally downloaded my truth over the drums.Īt first, ye's announcement confused me because I knew nothing about the device and it made no sense how he would ship the album directly to it. It was known Stem Player users would rip it, but it would also mean other users would buy it just for the album, which didn't sit right with me. Some fans panicked since there wasn't enough time to get a device, even if they bought it that day, it could take months to arrive at their homes. It was a new song being played on the Stem Player and the announcement that the album was to be released exclusively on the Stem Player after the listening party. On the morning of the 18th, I wake up and check Instagram, there's a post from ye. ye announced he was having a listening party on the 22nd of February of 2022 for his next album, Donda 2. Initially, the Stem Player was even called DONDA Stem Player. The Donda album rollout counted with 3 listening parties, followed by the album release. So, why develop an emulator? Birth of the emulator Having only 8GB is a blessing in disguise, or else people with larger libraries would struggle to find their favorite song.įrom the get-go, one can see the device is an expensive lackluster gadget.
Easy to brick, if the configuration files contain any error.Even though the Web Portal has higher quality stems, lower quality ones are the ones sent to the user's device.Shipping takes too long, usually months.Novelty wears rapidly thus it is mainly used as a speaker.A community guide has been made and is recommended over the official. If you want to go to the previous song, you must go through your library. Play/Pause, next song and volume control. All stems of a song take the same amount of space regardless of how much actual data they contain Stems are stored uncompressed, WAV format.
Extremely slow USB speeds, it takes hours to backup the whole device.With ye's catalog, stems are simply sent to the device. Songs from links or local files are sent to the back-end, split and then the stems are uploaded to the device. The songs can come from links, local files or the existing library, which contains all ye albums since Jesus is King and a few singles. Once the connection is established, you can modify some device settings or upload songs. You're out of luck if you don't use a Chrome-based browser. The Web PortalĪll actions on the device are done through the web portal and it uses WebUSB for communication. Still, it's hard to justify the price point. Music production enthusiasts noted it was interesting since it introduces the mixing concept to a broader audience. The device was announced a few days before the album Donda was released and, for the most part, was deemed a hypebeast-y gadget. It is possible to get the files off the device, when connected via USB, it can be mounted as mass storage. In fact, they use the open-source Deezer's splitter called Spleeter. The splitting process is done off the device. NO! As the name implies, it is a stem player. The Stem Player only has the capacity for 4 stems per song, which expose the following elements: vocals, bass, drums and other(everything that doesn't fit the other categories).Ī common misconception is that it splits any song into stems. A song stem is an isolated component of the song, they can be individual components (e.g vocals, drums, piano.) or multiple components (e.g vocals and instrumental). It is a 200$ device created by Kano Tech in collaboration with ye that allows to playback song stems and individually control their volume. Excepting the title, I'll be referring to him as ye throughout the post.
Writer's Note: Kanye West has legally changed his name to ye. This blog post will cover the story of the Stem Player (since release), how the emulator was developed, how badly the creators have designed and handled the product and some behind the scenes conversations that led me to lose all faith on the company and the people managing it. Kanye West's Stem Player - An engineering disaster
0 kommentar(er)
