Big news is coming from one of the leading companies in the electronic music dance world. On the heels of Soundcloud’s DJ integration announcement yesterday, Beatport – now in its fifteenth year of existence –has followed suite with two big features shared at Amsterdam Dance Event that will be coming in 2019: their own version of DJ software integration, Beatport Link, as well as a new subscription service called Beatport Cloud.
Beatport Link will use its now-owned Pulselocker technology, recently acquired by Beatport, to stream directly into DJ softwares including Traktor and Pioneer DJ. The Beatport stream will allow the lion’s share of their available content to work within the respective programs, while still providing a fair revenue share to the labels and artists from which the music comes. It’s an ideal way for even more attention to be brought to many of the boutique labels and to-be-discovered artists that share their music on the platform, and a seamless way to bring more DJs to utilize the software.
Beatport Cloud, the platform’s soon-to-be-launched cloud software program, will allow customers an unlimited amount of file re-downloads – which is an unbelievable saving grace when an artist breaks a laptop or loses precious files. Any tracks that are purchased on Beatport will be available for re-download at any time. Even further, customers can re-download just about all of the tracks you’ve ever purchased on the platform – the only exceptions being tracks that have altered or removed licenses. If you’ve been a faithful Beatport customer since its first launch fifteen years ago, that’s a hell of a lot of music.
Along with this Cloud program comes quite the catch-up move by the platform: a brand-new subscription service available to the platform’s customers, similar to those that exist already with streaming platforms like Spotify and Soundcloud. The difference with Beatport, however, is that it will include capped subscription tiers. Rather than a flat ~$10/month fee, like Soundcloud Go or Spotify, each tier will provide an allotment of tracks to the customer – all of which will be in a lossless quality format like .wav or .aiff.
The highest tier, Beatport Cloud Pro, will offer 20 tracks/month at a $40 monthly subscription. When joining the subscription, all of your .mp3 tracks will also be upgraded to a lossless format, which could ultimately save you – if you’ve always been an .mp3 person – a fair amount of backspending as well.
For artists and labels, the capped tiers are a much-favored move as they will continue to uphold a strong revenue stream for those working with Beatport. This stands out as a strong differentiator from the Soundclouds and Tidals of the world, where a free-for-all subscription could result in a distinct loss of revenue for artists sharing their music.
It’s thrilling to see how the launch of this subscription service will go, as it brings Beatport into the playing field of streaming services across the board more heavily now than ever. Beatport Link will offer a better version of Soundcloud’s feature – however Soundcloud has upped its streams to 256kbps AAC – and will be an absolute gamechanger for those hitting the decks in the future.
