adam reeve

Looking for decent dance music to download? Not impressed with iTunes and it’s collection of radio edits? BeatPort may be just what you’re after. These guys are a digital distribution site carrying the majority of major dance labels (with a couple of notable exceptions). Tracks are available in a number of formats, but I typically use 320kbps mp3 which is perfectly good enough for most live environments. Whats more : mp3 == no DRM rubbish!

Digital distribution of dance music brings (to me) two major benefits:

• Easier to get hold of new tunes
  You know the situation – you’ve just heard some wicked track on a mix CD or radio show, and you simply must have that bad boy. SO off to your local vinyl emporium (which may be quite some distance depending on where you live). They’ve either never heard of it, or they just sold the last copy. Now all you need to do is login to BeatPort, search, and download. Nice!
• It’s cheaper, much cheaper
  Want the Armin Van Buuren mix of that track, but fed up of spending $10 to get the vinyl with the other 3 useless ones? BeatPort lets you download just the mix you want, for around $1.50 a track.

There are bad sides too however:

• The prices, while reasonable, have been going up steadily since I’ve been a customer.
• The download interface is a pain if you have more than a few tracks in your basket.
• If you don’t like flashy animated interfaces, you won’t like this site!
• They have partnered up with Stanton, which means I get ads for FinalScratch (*spit*) all the time. Not cool.
• There are still some very significant missing labels, like the Vandit group (Paul Van Dyk). I’m sure this isn’t their fault – PvD is well known for wanting to control everything he touches, but it does detract from the “one stop shop” nature of the site.

Anyway, if you’re in the market for tunes, I recommend you check them out (especially if you live outside of the US – it’s a serious bargain with exchange rates where they are). Of course, if you’re wanting to play them live you’ll need something to play them on – I use Serato Scratch LIVE (more on that later).