Your XDJ-AZ Will Stop Playing Apple Music Again Unless You Update. This Is the Second Forced Deadline in Under a Year.

What exactly needs updating, and by when?

AlphaTheta's October 2026 notice sets a hard cutoff: April 1, 2027. After that date, Apple Music tracks will not load on rekordbox or on the XDJ-AZ and OMNIS-DUO unless four separate pieces of software and firmware are current. rekordbox for Mac and Windows needs version 7.2.0 or later (first released August 2025). rekordbox for iOS and Android needs 4.5.4 or later (September 2025). And the two all-in-one units themselves, the XDJ-AZ and the OMNIS-DUO, both need firmware Ver. 2.00, which only came out this October 2026.

"From April 1, 2027, Apple Music tracks will no longer be available to load on these products listed below unless the required update has been installed."

AlphaTheta says the update is needed "to ensure a secure and reliable Apple Music service," language that points at Apple's side of the handshake, not a feature AlphaTheta chose to build. Everything else on the units, local files, other streaming, basic mixing, keeps working regardless. Per the notice: "No update is required for products other than those listed above."

Why is this the second forced deadline in under a year?

Because it already happened once. A December 2025 notice from rekordbox gave owners until January 27, 2026 to move past rekordbox 7.1.0 (Mac/Windows), 4.4.0 (iOS/Android) and firmware 1.21 on the OMNIS-DUO and XDJ-AZ, or lose Apple Music the same way. That cutoff came and went less than ten months before this new one landed. Two forced update cycles in under a year is a pattern, and the pattern is Apple's backend, not AlphaTheta's product roadmap, moving the goalposts on how Apple Music authenticates and streams through third-party hardware. AlphaTheta ships the patch, DJs absorb the maintenance.

What else is bundled into firmware Ver. 2.00?

Alongside the Apple Music fix, the same firmware adds Spotify "Streaming Direct Play" support to both the XDJ-AZ and the OMNIS-DUO, letting DJs pull tracks straight from Spotify on the decks themselves. It's a genuine upgrade dressed inside a mandatory patch, the kind of bundling that makes a forced update easier to swallow, but it doesn't change the core problem: skip the install and the deck doesn't warn you, your Apple Music library just stops loading, potentially mid-set or mid-tour.