BEATPORT to cut 600 labels

j2j · Post by **j2j** » Thu Dec 27, 2007 11:56 am

leedsquietman wrote:I respect anyone who can make a living out of selling tunes through digital downloads, it takes a lot of time and effort to produce quality that lasts.

If your music is not a quality song with a quality production, it will not sell. All the BS promotion and spamming in the world will not sustain sales.

It is probably better that Beatport do take that approach, keeping the site for the leaner, meaner material that is worth paying for.

I totally agree with you

j2j · Post by **j2j** » Thu Dec 27, 2007 11:57 am

90's child wrote: a song that is #1 on the sales chart on stompy sells 200 to maybe 700 or 1000 at the most? its always different of course....but on beatport I've sold close to 1400 of a remix of a particular song just on that one site in 2 months, and it only got up to 33-49 on the main chart.

Its so true... LOL, the biggest dance records " tracks " right now, sell like a thousand copies...

90's child · Post by **90's child** » Thu Dec 27, 2007 12:05 pm

nah. I know someone who has an exclusive (digital download) deal with Beatport and between digital sales and vinyl he does 3, 500 per decent release.

j2j · Post by **j2j** » Thu Dec 27, 2007 12:08 pm

I was half kidding,

I remember hearing somewhere that a Label like Ninja, is averaging 10,000 a release now. Thats pretty small for them. thats all. and they could be selling even less than that, i can't really remember.

leedsquietman · Post by **leedsquietman** » Thu Dec 27, 2007 12:09 pm

I don't think Jamendo is DIRECTLY competing against Beatport.

I work full time and earn a nice living and music is a secondary thing for me, so I produce and mix my own music. I also master it (if that is the correct term). I have taken courses and have plenty of books from the experts in these fields as a reference but I will never have a proper acoustically treated room with a professional setup, expensive automated mixer console and tons of outboard gear and top converters etc. Heck, I would settle for a really nice audio interface, like an RME FF800 and half a dozen really nice mics and a top preamp with some good monitors.

So my music sounds OK to me and many casual observers, but I know that it doesn't have the extra gloss and punch that having recorded it in a pro studio with pro mastering would deliver.

I could just take the current midset and try to sell it anyway, my music sounds better than 3/4 of the crap people put out on the net.

BUt I know that if I did, I would probably just end up taking a loss and having a basement full of unsold CDs etc.

Jamendo is a great site but I don't hear of too many people who had their music produced in a good studio and properly mastered giving their music away for free on Jamendo. Even those of the ethos that 'music should be free' are loathe to spend thousands of dollars and then give it away !!

It's a good place for unsigned artists to showcase their home demos.

Some of the recordings are exceptional quality for a home demo but the majority are just amateur productions with an average sound quality, although sometimes the songs are exceptional, even if the mix quality isn't and you can still enjoy the music.

It's odd that the amount of good stuff to garbage is probably no worse than on Beatport or Juno even though it's free - some people need a rethink of how valuable their material really is when they are thinking they will sell it and make a killing. A lot of stuff for sale at online music stores really is so bad that that people wouldn't take it for free.

j2j · Post by **j2j** » Thu Dec 27, 2007 12:16 pm

All I am saying is...

even on a site like beatport, or track it down. IT sounds to me that the so cold " top producers, with pro masters, and great mixis " have...

tracks that sound the same + kick drums that are so upfront in the mix i am just turned off.

Now. on this site vonyc.com the music is hot. but its you know who. and its not heavy, its energy, but its chilled. but its good music.

j2j · Post by **j2j** » Thu Dec 27, 2007 12:23 pm

Oh and @ Leedsquietman,

a pro album can totally be achieved at home.... mastering. its a little different.

but most of this music. is not big major studio productions anymore even some major label albums come from a home studio nowadays.

90's child · Post by **90's child** » Thu Dec 27, 2007 12:24 pm

It depends what you're looking for. There is plenty of commercial/electro house that has the upfront kick sound (usually pumping the sidechain) and sounds very "pop". But then again there is alot of quality deep house out at the moment that is both underground, musical and deep.

leedsquietman · Post by **leedsquietman** » Thu Dec 27, 2007 1:50 pm

Yes, a pro(ish) sounding album can be achieved at home but only by people who know how to use their tools, know how to arrange and mix (too many get obsessed with throwing a hundred plugins on just for the sake of it) and at least be able to use mastering techniques such as compression/volume maximizing, EQ and keep some dynamic range without clipping and other nasties.

There's no denying that having better quality equipment helps significantly with the above.

This immediately rules out about 75-80% of people recording at home - hence a lot of crap music.

Too many people releasing their Fruity Loop or Reason mix (with no compression or too much sucking the life out of it) and using a 10 dollar computer mic to record vocals with (and not taking time to edit out flaws and background noises) with noise and clipping going on everywhere, usually with muddy, horrible bottom end because they cranked up the bass rather than fixing it in relationship to the kick, which will blow out many people's domestic hifi speakers etc. Then they encode it straight to 128 Kbps crummy mp3 quality, whereup on they get the phasing underwater cymbals and overhyped sibilant vocals.

Having said this the main thing is the music/arrangement/tune. I'd rather listen to a fairly poor quality demo recording if the track is performed and arranged well than some shit music that was polished up in a top studio. As my old man said, nobody successfully polished a turd....

morerecords · Post by **morerecords** » Thu Dec 27, 2007 1:55 pm

Beatport is freaking corny. Have you ever seen one of those interviews they do? It's terrible. I always felt like, "who gave you the authority to reperesent us?"

They don't give us enough credit as musicians, and they don't do A+R with a progressive mind. Beatport protrays electronic artists as a bunch of Meatheads.

We are serious artists.

And don't get me started on sellingMP3s, that is a terrible tragedy unto itself. A

At least they sell AIFFs too.

beats me · Post by **beats me** » Thu Dec 27, 2007 2:40 pm

On one hand I think this is great because there is way too much average sounding to sounding like everybody else tracks on beatport.

Sidenote: has anybody else noticed that ALL Electro House songs have the exact same bass sound. wtf? The top 10 regularly sounds like you are listening to the same artist...or 10 remixes of the same song.

On the other hand I don't see this making much of a difference as these songs and labels being dropped aren't being heard anyway because the top 10 songs/artists will always rule the site. Most people aren't digging that deep. It's becoming like the major music industry except decided by the public instead of a few corporate executives.

OK, now all the hardcore digital crate divers will chime in with "I search deep!". That's cool but you aren't everybody.

Sales Dude McBoob · Post by **Sales Dude McBoob** » Thu Dec 27, 2007 3:30 pm

j2j wrote:Maybe its my monitors... when I check out these tracks on beatport and track it down. to me they sound lifeless.

Maybe go back to vinyl? It's true, buying vinyl is a lot more expensive, but damn, I get so psyched how alive music gets on real decks with a nice amp.

To my ears, really great music gets lost in the great sucktunnel of digital files. You can put an iPod on shuffle for ten hours, playing the greatest music ever recorded, and it'll all sound like elevator music fifteen minutes into it.

I'm not a user of Beatport, but from an outsiders perspective it seems like a really questionable business. I mean, they hold a DJ contest, but they don't allow conestants to use Ableton. Um??? Hello. That's like McDonalds holding a hamburger contest and not allowing... uhh... you know, like Burger King to enter. Okay, shitty analogy, but you know what I mean.

The whole success of MySpace was the result of them allowing any musician to create an MP3 page. Why exclude musicians? Who wants to give a company money that excercises this twisted and crap business model?

This is my Beatport:
http://turntablelab.com/

djadonis206 · Post by **djadonis206** » Thu Dec 27, 2007 3:59 pm

every ones music tastes are different

Beatport rocks - I rarely buy from the Electro House genre because yes, aaaalllllll that shit sounds the same

look in the

house
progressive house
Electronica (my favorite)
and Techno

genres

Electronica has all the bomb house I love - crazy twisted almost electro housish yet hard like techno beats - check it out

Minimal's got some good stuff but you have to weed through a lot of deep dead air just to find something slamming

here's something you should try - we have a small collective of friends and we all shop beatport, know friends at big labels and have a nice contact list of up and coming producers

when my boy gets a jam or I get a jam we share that jam - that way no real jams go unmissed

there's so much music out there there's no way you're going to find all the diamonds in the rough. Get some friends, trade some jams and watch your super jam folder grow

it's all how you play the game

or you could just keep hatin'

j2j · Post by **j2j** » Thu Dec 27, 2007 6:57 pm

I'm not hating..

djadonis206 · Post by **djadonis206** » Thu Dec 27, 2007 6:58 pm

never said you wuzz cuzz