Beatport launches new streaming service - Initial Impressions

Beatport has been on a crusade of late, trying to modernise their whole operation. The company was hit with a massive round of layoffs just over a year ago, as new owners SFX (who operate many of the major dance music festivals) sought to cull any extraneous divisions of it, and refocus on the core business.

Over the last few months, this meant finally getting rid of Beatport's outdated, Flash-based interface, and upgrading to a modern new website, which was somewhat confusingly branded Beatport Pro. This new moniker now makes a bit more sense, as Beatport's new streaming service is called... Beatport. That's it. Seemingly, SFX are going all in with this new service by making it the absolute focus of the Beatport brand.

Invites to the private beta were sent around yesterday, and as the Octopus received one, we thought we'd take a look around, and see what impact this is likely to have on the dance music landscape.

The first thing to note is the content. Or, the lack thereof. Presumably, as the beta gathers steam and the service goes live to all, this will improve, but right now, only a couple of the searches I made yielded the results I was after. Mainstream artists in particular are conspicuous by their absence and lack of material - there may be a page for Calvin Harris (currently featured front and centre), but a trip to his profile provides a fairly small list of remixes of his work and less popular tracks. Looking to stream albums like Motion or 18 Months? Forget about it.

So don't imagine this is the entire Beatport store in a streamable format - as far as we can tell, it'll operate a bit like Soundcloud, in that artists have to upload music to their profiles.

A search for Knife Party, for example, yields a profile page for the duo, but you're then presented with the following message: "Knife Party has not uploaded any tracks or mixes yet."

This seems to indicate that Beatport's streaming service will also play host to exclusive mixes from artists - if they can get enough on board, this would certainly give them an edge, and further hasten the demise of Soundcloud, where it is now almost impossible to upload a mixtape.

The design and layout of the new site is crisp and modern, and the whole site is incredibly responsive. Playing music is incredibly easy too, and for the time being, the service is totally advert free - a major achievement, though it remains to be seen if this is a sustainable model.

The player works well, though can be slightly confusing. I initially thought that you couldn't scrub through tracks, or skip back through them, as the only option presented is to skip forward. Thankfully, both of these things are actually possible: scrubbing can be achieved where the track is embedded on the page, or in the main player, though getting the progress bar to appear there is pretty fiddly. Skipping backwards is possible too, as the site fully supports keyboard-control: right arrow to skip forward, left arrow to skip back, space to play/pause. Again, these are all the sorts of things that you would expect to see from a modern streaming service, and it's good to see Beatport mostly execute them very well.

Another nice touch is that there's an 'Up Next' queue that you access from the player. When you play a song, Beatport will follow it up with the rest of the playlist/release you picked it from, or will play related songs.

You log into the site with your existing Beatport login. Upon doing so, you are informed that you will now be given a profile page that is viewable by everyone else, and you're therefore mercifully given the chance to quickly change your old embarrassing username, and thus your profile URL. It's a great little touch, and shows that some thought really has gone into this.

Profiles are extremely basic at the moment. As far as customisation goes, you can add a profile picture, and that's it. Profile pages will show any tracks or mixes that you've hearted (which can be done from within the player, or beside the tracks themselves) (Update 26/2/15: this appears to be buggy at the moment, as I found three tracks that I'd listened to, but definitely not favourited, on my profile). It's a nice start, but hopefully profiles will expand to do a bit more than this.

Elsewhere, there's a Popular chart called the PulseChart - this is not the same as the storefront chart, however, as not every track from the store can be streamed. There are also curated collections, similar to those that have existed on the Beatport store for a number of years, and that still exist on Beatport Pro. Each one focusses on a genre, theme or artist, and I would expect to see artists partner with Beatport to curate their own, as currently happens on the store.

Intriguingly, there is also a tab at the top of the page for Shows. This isn't live yet, but a placeholder page promises the prospect of being able to be alerted to upcoming shows or festivals for your favourite artists. Perhaps Beatport are also seeking to forge deals to stream some of these shows in the future - I really hope so, as that would again help to make this a one-stop destination for all electronic music.

So, will it succeed? On the face of it, it's quite a risky strategy. This new service is definitely a loss-leader for Beatport. There are no ads, no subscription fees or pro services - it's all absolutely free. On the other hand, it appears that artists will not be payed at all for streaming, the idea being to drive people to the store, with money being made there.

But then, and this is the most intriguing thing of all - it's actually quite difficult to get to Beatport Pro (the store) from the streaming service. Take the homepage, for example. Aside from a dismissible banner that appears the very first time you use the site, there isn't a single, solitary mention of the store, or the ability to purchase songs, ANYWHERE on the entire homepage (Update 26/2/15: I've since noticed that hovering over tracks on the homepage does actually bring up a small shopping cart icon). There are fairly large links on the pages for individual tracks or releases, but as it's possible to play tracks without visiting these, quite how many people will see this I've got no idea.

Still, Beatport should be able to find quite a nice niche for itself - it hosts a lot of content by smaller labels, and rarities, that you simply wouldn't find on any of the mainstream streaming services, which positions it well to win over dance and electronic fans.

The old Beatport was always created with DJs in mind, and though the new streaming service will certainly make it easier for them to discover new music, this definitely feels like it is aiming to appeal to the masses, and draw them further into dance and electronic music.

Time will tell if this will be successful or not, but it's an extremely positive start, and is hopefully indicative of a new approach within the industry at large.

You can sign up for early access to the beta here, and do get in touch with us with your thoughts on the new service.

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Alex Simpson

Writer, musician, and all-round top guy. I set up Excited Octopus. Currently, I'm on a one man team. It gets lonely sometimes. But I don't mind, because I love you all.

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