Beatport.com to become a streaming platform, DJs to move to Beatport Pro

Beatport has been the number one destination for dance music fans for over a decade now, but given the steady rise in the popularity of streaming, the SFX-owned company has decided to move on from being a pure MP3 retailer and start catering to a growing audience of dance music fans.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Beatport’s MP3 store is going to be migrated to a service called Beatport Pro, which will continue to cater to DJs. At the same time Beatport.com will be transformed into an ad-supported on demand streaming service.

The move makes a lot of sense and there have been a few companies that over the years have attempted to break into the dance music streaming market, Pulselocker being one of the most interesting (although to date it hasn't made much of a dent in the market), but none have the brand recognition the Beatport has.

The key question mark is around the ad-supported nature of the service. Given what we know about - for example - Spotify’s revenues and how important paid subscribers are to the overall financial well being of the company it is would be puzzling for Beatport to focus exclusively on free ad-supported music. It would be very difficult to make a profit on that kind of a service given the royalty rates that need to be paid to rights holders in the process.

The plan might make more sense if Beatport was to start by offering free ad-supported music with a view of offering a premium product somewhere down the line, after it has attracted a few million users to the site.

Beatport will also have to sell the transition to its label partners, who to date have fared well through the traditional MP3 sale model and may be unwilling to switch to a service that pays them less than a penny per play, even if the target consumer is different.

Most importantly, Beatport will have to compete directly with the likes of Spotify and Deezer - who also offer a free ad-supported service - and it can only win that battle by making deals with labels that those two services have not managed to close deals with.

There is probably room for a good genre-specific streaming service and SFX has the clout to push it to its vast audiences (including festival-goers), but Beatport needs to act quickly and make sure that its catalogue is top-notch from launch.


(Andrea Leonelli)