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Beatport launching free streaming service

(Dutch)
http://www.djbroadcast.nl/news/news...ng_service.html

Roughly translated quote

quote:

The most popular download site for electronic music, Beatport, will launch a streaming service in 2015 according to The Wall Street Journal. Beatport was bought by SFX in 2013 by SFX, the American entertainment giant which also owns ID&T. The new streaming service should freely accessible. Advertisements are supposed to generate the necessary income. Beatport says the service will get the common streaming features. The new service will be added to the Beatport Pro website. SFX is currently negotiating with the majors (Universal/Sony/Warner) to offer their catalog on the service. 90% of the content served will be from (relatively small) independent labels. According to the American newspaper the new service will also feature event information, artist profiles and Boiler room-esque live streams.

Not sure what to think. How about you?

Depends on the implementation, but my gut feeling tells me this will be tacky and shit. Need more info though.

Unless you are big, why bother releasing?

quote:

Originally posted by Beatflux Unless you are big, why bother releasing?

My inner 14-yo just giggled out loud at that.

Sounds to me like Beatport is going to eat up all the advertising revenue they can gobble while paying pennies or less to artists.

My reaction is bad; Beatport were bought out by a company that is essentially a hedge fund. It's purely about monetization for them - they looks at things in terms of accountancy.

That's why there were basically riots at the Beatport offices when it was announced that many people were being laid off, and sadly it was people who had been part of the start up culture (i.e. work long hours for little compensation because you'll get a promised payout in the end, just like google employees).

It will really just be another streaming service. The money is in streaming big artist's cheesey hits to the masses. Not a small number of plays for niche EDM.

If they don't separate it from Beatport's normal sales portal, RIP Beatport.

I mean I honestly wouldn't mind having a streaming service for Beatport if you could perhaps subscribe to your favorite artists and labels and play their new material or something similar. It would be a nice, convenient way to listen to new releases etc.

I just don't see the added value. They have very little exclusive content and not that many listeners want EDM offerings exclusively. Spotify is by far a superior service in every possible way. Heck, even soundcloud is due to the semi-social aspects of it.

I understand why Beatport goes down this route, but I fail to see any way how this could become a success.

Thinking about it, I reckon they want to pull a Beats by Dre; Get a few million subscribers, from a niche market and get bought out by Spotify or Apple.

SFX bought it to make money off it - a streaming service would mean pennies to them, but as a database of users? Worth a decent fortune.

I will bet that within 3 years time, if they are able to make the streaming service work, we'll hear a major international company has bought BP. Makes total sense to me. Small but popular company gets bought by hedge fund, cuts costs, staff, expands database for a proposition sale to a larger company.

Bain Capital playbook 101

And the artists make exactly zero moneys from it.

quote:

Originally posted by Mr.Mystery And the artists make exactly zero moneys from it.

Sadly, damn right.

Taylor swift has sold an estimated 65m singles (including streaming sales).

To date (i.e. her entire catalog and career), she has received less than $500,000 from spotify.

Now factor in that spotify is the largest streaming portal in the world, and that an average EDM track might sell a couple of thousand (at best), you're looking at pennies (literally) paid out by Beatport to their artists for streaming.

I promise you, this is all about make Beatport look attractive as an acquisition down the road. It will yield absolutely fuck all to artists, but Beatport will use the spotify excuse: "But it will give artists exposure to new consumers".

They're basically reinforcing the awful current model of give your work away for free (while large companies make a fortune from it), so you get marketing and exposure and can then eventually make it back on gigs, performances, licensing and merchandise (if you ever get there).

I wonder if they will make it mandatory to allow them to stream your tracks if you want to sell it via beatport....? Cunning wankers

quote:

Originally posted by DJ RANN Sadly, damn right. Taylor swift has sold an estimated 65m singles (including streaming sales). To date (i.e. her entire catalog and career), she has received less than $500,000 from spotify. Now factor in that spotify is the largest streaming portal in the world, and that an average EDM track might sell a couple of thousand (at best), you're looking at pennies (literally) paid out by Beatport to their artists for streaming. I promise you, this is all about make Beatport look attractive as an acquisition down the road. It will yield absolutely fuck all to artists, but Beatport will use the spotify excuse: "But it will give artists exposure to new consumers". They're basically reinforcing the awful current model of give your work away for free (while large companies make a fortune from it), so you get marketing and exposure and can then eventually make it back on gigs, performances, licensing and merchandise (if you ever get there). I wonder if they will make it mandatory to allow them to stream your tracks if you want to sell it via beatport....? Cunning wankers

This has been debunked by Spotify. She was on track to make 6 million $ on spotify in 2014. They expected 12 million for her in 2015. https://news.spotify.com/us/2014/11...n-and-counting/

The 500.000$ Taylor was referring to income just from Spotify US.

Do not forget it is not just services to blame, also the consumers. They too want more for less as it is possible. Also more music sales are more fragmented than ever as over half of the world can listen to whatever they want without TV or radio deciding what they have to listen to. Big artists earn less where small artists still earn very little but at least they have the chance to earn something. It is evening out the music ecosystem. Big artists just have to learn to settle with less.

There has been research by one of the world's leading research firms Nielsen and the results where stunning. Conclusion: You take your music away from a platform you will not make it back anywhere else under normal circumstances. People decide on which platform they consume music, not the artists. If an artist is not present on Spotify but the user is, the likeliness of the user switching to another service is near 0.

Conclusion, less exposure for swift, less income for swift and less fans gained for swift. All in all the ultimate bad management decision.


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This in relation the Beatport thing, whatever Beatport does it won't really matter. Also, even if they introduce streaming it won't hurt sales. Their clients are dj's. DJ's do stream, but if they need something they either download it illegally (in which case the artist wouldn't make money anyway) or buy it.

so if this is an ad gauntlet, what would make it stand out as a better option for the middle ground artist? will there ever be a unifying marketplace or is that just not ideal to begin with? Is it going to stay like this for awhile?

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