By Lily Moayeri
Communities. Influencers. Superfans. These buzzwords have dominated music industry discourse in recent years—but they’ve always been integral to DJ and electronic dance music culture. Digging for music, sharing it with friends, playing it, personalizing it, remixing it, recontextualizing it, are some of the tenets of that universe. Few understand this better than the Beatport Group, whose multi-purpose platform has built a DJ-centered ecosystem offering a cross-section of services designed to meet their particular needs.
“It’s nice to be able to be specific,” says Beatport’s Chief Revenue Officer, Helen Sartory. “We’re music nerds. We’re the people in the corner of the party talking about the artists they love, making music, transitions. In a lot of ways, our job is simpler [than mainstream DSPs] because we know exactly what we’re building and who we’re building it for.”
Beatport has come a long way since its visionary beginnings in 2004 as a DJ-focused music download marketplace. Today, it encompasses a subscription streaming service, Beatport LINK, a DJ mixing app, Beatport DJ, and its editorial site, Beatportal, among other services and initiatives. The platform continues to evolve, broadening its musical reach with open-format genres and bridging digital and in-person experiences through Beatport Live & Interactive, which connects the broader dance music community—fans, DJs, and industry professionals—via Beatport Tickets and Beatport Connect.
A dance music-exclusive ticketing platform, Beatport Tickets—currently available in the U.K. and Europe through Beatportal—will soon launch in North America, integrated into the Beatport store.
“It feels like a long time coming for us,” says Sartory. “For electronic music, live revenue makes up a huge portion of the livelihoods of artists and labels and promoters and everybody that is around the community. Quite a large proportion of DJs on Beatport are putting on their own events or performing at events and need to promote. As a split has emerged between huge arena tours and festivals thriving whilst grassroots venues and smaller promoters are struggling, we partnered with an existing technology platform, Weeztix, to create a ticketing platform that is tailored towards independent promoters and small venues that are putting on electronic music events.”
These events are often less about the headliner and more about the scene they represent and help shape. As a result, listings require nontraditional information that provides context for the event beyond a marquee name or a playlist. In support of this new venture, Beatportal is expanding into deeper nightlife culture coverage focused on events, promoters, city scenes, and the subcultures surrounding them. This content, in turn, attracts a wider audience that isn’t strictly DJs, but fans of electronic music—some of whom may be toying with becoming DJs themselves. Following a cyclical logic, by tracking the events these audiences attend, Beatport gains insight into the music they’re interested in and, in the process, can potentially turn fans into customers of the catalog, and vice versa.
Extending this real-world approach to the electronic music industry, Beatport has spent the past year hosting one-day summits called Beatport Connect in key cities worldwide. The Los Angeles event this past September focused on timely topics such as A.I., breaking an artist, fan engagement, and staying grounded, featuring major industry players and creatives while also providing space for emerging talent.
Ease of entry for potential DJs is one of Beatport’s cornerstones. Through Beatport LINK and Beatport DJ, curious fans can cost-effectively explore the craft without heavily investing in downloads or equipment. Says Sartory, “It’s only recently that we realized we’ve got a lot of people visiting the platform who wouldn’t necessarily consider themselves a DJ yet, but they’re really interested in the scene. The lines between what’s professional and what’s hobbyist are very blurred. We’re hoping to make everything more accessible where you can enter at any level. We can welcome them into the community and show them interesting events and find other ways for them to engage.”
Established DJs with regular bookings are less likely to use Beatport LINK, instead relying on USBs, where they can organize, tag, cue, and mark their downloaded music files for a professional mixing experience. Sartory says there are three categories of users: new DJs who use streaming, experienced DJs who collect downloaded music, and hybrid DJs who do both—using streaming as a testing ground for discovery and downloading the tracks they want to keep.
To further pave the way for burgeoning DJs—and curious fans—Beatport offers a “Track ID” feature on its mobile app, a kind of “Shazam” for DJ sets that can identify tracks even when they’re sped up, slowed down, mixed, or played in loud environments. It’s a somewhat controversial move, as keeping selections secret has long been part of DJ culture, with some DJs even covering the labels on their records to keep tracks exclusive.
Sartory acknowledges this, but asserts, “The modern outlook is: We’re here because we love music, we’re here to promote music, if you’re going to be performing music, you should be shouting out the artists and producers and labels that have made it. On every social media post, half of the comments are, “’Track ID,’ meaning ‘What’s the track?’”
While DJing can sometimes veer elitist, Beatport has widened its scope beyond granular electronic dance music genres to include African, Caribbean, Hip-Hop, Latin, Pop, and R&B filed under the “Open Format” heading. These genres have also been added to the song choices on Beatport LINK. Previously, these styles lived on Beatsource, Beatport’s open-format DJ community.
Genres are subjective, to say the least, and the names and categories Beatport assigns to songs don’t always align with those used by DJs thereby making it confusing and difficult to find what they’re looking for.
Beatport is actively working to address these issues. Sartory says, “Genre classification is really important and it’s hotly debated. There’s whole teams of people that decide: Is this a new sound? Is this a fork in the road? Is this a genre that’s going to last or is it a flash in the pan? As we start to release more personalization tools, you’ll start to see your own mix of music that hopefully appeals to your taste, whether you are a purist or a genre blender.”
