Beatport increases quality control, cuts labels

[attentat]

As a person who has had a label on Beatport since it's beginnings I have to say that I think the quality control thing is a good idea. When we first heard about this we stopped and thought about how this was going to affect us. we have always cleared the $300 dollar mark but it still gave us something to think about. I can honestly say that some of our early releases do not sound as good as our later releases but this is because we were learning as we went. We have learned more about the mastering process and have been more selective with what we release and it has had an effect on our sales for the better. I have been told by people who work at Beatport that it is true that the more your label releases the better you will do. This is mostly true for smaller labels. Bigger labels are established and have a fan base. If a smaller label can keep it's name near the top or all ways in the eye of the new release section they will get more exposer. Most of Beatports clients are DJ's looking for new tracks to play at there weeklies or monthly gigs and they want new tracks. They shop every week for new releases and if you all ways have new tracks up then you are likely to make your money. This is true even if just a few people buy a couple of tracks a week. I know for a fact from running a label that back catalog stuff rarely sells and Beatport really is about new releases. So all this is to say that I think the money thing might be the easiest way for them to figure out who should stay or go but what I think is more important is that they figure out a way or set some type of standard for mastered quality of tracks. There is a lot of stuff that doesn't sound good, regardless of style of music.
Another thing about Beatport that I think is interesting is the fact that they don't take paid advertising. All ad space is given on a set of criteria that includes things like, how has the label done in the past, who is the artists or remixers, is it going to be released on vinyl or cd, is the label doing promotion outside of Beatport to bring traffic to the site, art work and a couple of other things that I can't remember right now. What are people's thoughts on this?

[dtunes]

Beatport is a rip off !!!

They need to get their pricing sorted.....I grudge paying an extra £1.00 for a .WAV file...and I'm not going near MP3's .........I do download as I DJ in Ableton now....but the pricing is now starting to put me off buying anything at all............also theres been a few .WAV files I've downloaded that the mastering is weak or quiet.....dissapointing.



Oh and their website is a bit cheesy and slow.......I wish a good competitor would appear that does .WAV files

Some sort of quality control is needed though...far too much kak on the market.....



Anyway moan over.....

shameless self-promotion: we sell WAV, FLAC, MP3 files for a fixed price 1.50€, should be among the fairest pricing in the market. .
and as far as quality control goes, we like to think ourselves as pretty well off too...of course our small shop can't compete with the majors in quantity of offer yet, but here are some of the bigger labels we have on the minimal/tech front:
Cocoon, Bpitch Control, Mo´s Ferry, Rrygular, Fenou, Traum, Trapez, MBF, Shitkatapult, Mille Plateaux, Resopal, Boxer, Klang, Weave, Dumb Unit, Cynosure, Backround, Playhouse, Neutonmusic, Ghostly, Wir, Defrag, Orac, Spectral Sound, ~Scape, Freude Am Tanzen, Regular, Connaisseur, Milnormodern, Ostwind, Iron Box, Autist, Disko B, Harthouse, Frisbee Tracks, Festplatten, District Of Corruption, Treibstoff, Ware, Klitekture, Philpot, Musik Krause, Gastspiel, Television, Budenzauber, Meerestief, Brique Rouge, Globox...and more quality labels are joining in daily

err...sorry for the spam guys

[patrick bateman]

Another thing about Beatport that I think is interesting is the fact that they don't take paid advertising. All ad space is given on a set of criteria that includes things like, how has the label done in the past, who is the artists or remixers, is it going to be released on vinyl or cd, is the label doing promotion outside of Beatport to bring traffic to the site, art work and a couple of other things that I can't remember right now. What are people's thoughts on this?

And feedback....

and it's a fact that front side banners are SO important and can really make a track big, even a track that isn't that good.

[victorgonzales]

yeah having shittily mastered work up on beatport is a disgrace...

Thats the main thing I never understood about that site. You cant really control personal taste but ifa label is poorly mastering their tracks and the all sound like crap thats definitely a reason to either cut or warn them to improve.

I have a list of labels I wont download from there because they consistently release tracks that sound like sht. Sounds like they mastered them in 2 dollar headphones.

I think a large part in defining a labels sound is the utitlization of a matering engineer (maybe yourself, or a friend of the label) that fits in with your artists, and continuing to use the same one if your satisfied. I think this can help with getting a signature sound for a label. Especially if the artists are on the same page. But sometimes even if the artists are not on the same page a common mastering engineer can kind of bring the sound under the labels umbrella per say...


I wouldnt put out a track that wasnt mastered well ever, I would be letting myself down. Also, at this point, its all about how loud everything is, not about the quality of the master. Sometimes the better mastered songs dont sound as good on beatport because the louder ones may sound thicker at low bitrates. The loudness war is uponess and has been...

I am curious who here is vehemently against labels just making music hyper-compressed and loud? I mean I know a lot of the people that post here do it, so I am just curious what the split is.

The loudness war is a real problem, seeing if we can reverse it day by day.

I master everything on my label but I try and find tracks that are pretty well mastered by the artist to begin with. Why would you even pick up something that sounds crappy and then have to fix it?

I have a couple different studios I take tracks to and a pro audio engineer I have check my work. I rarely compress anything when mastering someone elses tracks. I just try and keep the rms around the same volume and put a slight limiter it there is a noise in it that peaks WAY to high. Ussually the limiter isnt enought o effect 98 percent of the track though. I think songs sound horrible on big systems when they over compress them. A club sound system will make a dynamic clear sounding track sound awesome.
I think the overcompression is to make them sound louder with those low bit rate samples on alot of the sites.

[livecollective]

yep

[Krul]

For the first time in.... ever. I think. A song I actually like and will spin has reached the mnml top 1 (prompt-evolve). Maybe its working...

[dncn]

i cant claim to have read the whole thread, but im in one of those moods where i thought i'd drop in my two penneth/cents/whatever

any business will follow its figures, if it is selling, someone must consider it to be of a good enough quality for them to buy.

while i still believe that there is a case to be made for the fact that one mans gold is another mans sh!t, there is some stuff on there that is truly terrible, and why?

before downloads became common it was fucking hard work to set up a label on any scale, but labels still came about because people believed in what they were putting out enough to take the risk financially,

they would ask themselves questions about how committed to making it good they could actually be, how they would source new artists, how to keep it something they could be proud of, unfortunately now it seems that labels are often thrown together off the back of , for example, a club night, where the residents got good reactions to their, well, for the sake f argument lets call them 'productions' that they sneak in before their headliner turns up,

or even when someone sets up a label based around the fact that their mate has made 4 decent tracks, and knows someone with a bit of a name...

i mean,,,

fck

i dont know

sometimes i feel like you/we should all have to go through some hardships with this thing called music, and if your urge to make it is no weaker, if your focus is no less sharp out the other side, then, and ONLY then should you be putting out records, because when i hear half the stuff i hear these days that has for some unknown reason shifted a load of units, i wonder why i fucking bother.

making music is not something to be done because its 'hip'
that sh!t should come from the soul.
theres too many bullshitters stepping on the good peoples toes these days
looking for their x factor/15 minutes of fame bullshit 'look at me' scenester kudos.



is any of that even relevant?.... i dunno, goin back to the beats...

[dncn]

the amount of people who agree are conspicuous by their absence