At Amsterdam Dance Event, Beatport shared some of their upcoming plans for their music distribution platform. 2019 is looking to be a banner year for the company, with two major expansions set to roll out: Beatport Cloud and Beatport Link. Keep reading for the initial details on their subscription services and upcoming DJ software integrations.
Beatport Cloud
Beatport has been fairly open about how their profitability has increased in recent years. Even as the streaming services continue eating away heavily at music downloads, Beatport has maintained solid growth. To continue their success, they’re launching a new subscription service called Beatport Cloud in 2019.
According to a presentation at ADE, Beatport Cloud will have three different subscription tiers, called Beatport Cloud +, Beatport Cloud X, and Beatport Cloud Pro. They have planned monthly pricing of $4.99, $17.99, and $39.99 respectively.
Here’s the details of the features that come with each plan:
Unlimited Re-Downloads
Beatport has successfully renegotiated with rights organizations to allow subscribers to be able to re-download their purchased tracks an unlimited number of times. This will apparently also be retroactive for any account, meaning if you bought something on Beatport in 2003, you’ll be able to download it again when you sign up for any Cloud subscription.
Cloud Pro Gets Retroactive Lossless Library
This one is pretty substantial. Beatport Cloud Pro has been crafted to be a service that focuses on users who value high quality lossless files. When you join Cloud Pro, Beatport will automatically upgrade your old purchases to a lossless format (AIFF or WAV).
Needle Drop previews
Instead of just being able to preview tracks with a pre-selected segment of the track, Beatport Cloud users will be able to preview a track anywhere and scrub around it before downloading. Finally, you’ll be able to hear what every track’s second drop sounds like without leaving Beatport’s store.
Free Lossless / MP3
For X and Pro, there will be a certain number of free tracks that the subscriber will get each month. X gets 10 free MP3 quality tracks, while Pro gets 20 lossless tracks. This starts to justify the cost of these plans, especially for DJs who are already buying more than one or two tracks each month.
Lossless Fee / Store Discount
One other benefit for Cloud subscribers comes in the form of actual discounted purchases from the store. For Cloud X and +, users will get 10% off the prices for every track they buy.
Cloud Pro users won’t get a discount on the store prices, but they don’t have to pay the 75¢ lossless upgrade fee on any purchase – which is a sizable discount in of itself.
Beatport Link: Streaming in DJ Software
The company also confirmed that they’re set to launch Beatport Link – a streaming integration for DJ softwares. The integration is based on the Pulselocker technology which Beatport purchased earlier this year after that service shutdown.
This comes immediately on the tail of Soundcloud and Tidal both announcing new integrations for Serato, Traktor, Virtual DJ, and others.
There’s very few details so far about the streaming integrations, but Native Instruments and others were mentioned at ADE as partners – meaning we are likely to see Beatport Link in future Traktor versions.
Let us know in the comments below.
