The streaming world continues to shift and warp, this time teaming up two ostensible competitors in the name of taking on Apple’s curated playlists.
Beatport has announced a partnership with Spotify, according to a release, with the ostensible goal of Beatport benefiting from Spotify’s massive market share and Spotify taking advantage of Beatport’s curation expertise and deals with electronic music labels not available on the major streaming services.
The deal will grant Spotify access to “exclusive music releases previously available only on Beatport” – labels and artists, please check your contracts now – as well as access to streams and programming from the festivals and live events held by Beatport’s parent company, SFX.
“We are thrilled to be operating a Beatport presence within Spotify and providing our unique content around all things EMC to the Spotify audience,” according to Greg Consiglio, Beatport’s President and CEO. “They will be the first to access the latest need-to-know exclusive electronic music from Beatport and will also be able to watch to a mix of original festival and event video content.”
Apple’s launch of their Apple Music service has not been without its wobbles but its curated playlist has stood out as a great feature which other services including Spotify are generally lacking.
Depending on the extent, however, the deal will also give Spotify far superior access to electronic music (particularly the kind that was aimed squarely at the DJ market over the last 10 years of Beatport, and earlier dance material which has been digitized) than Apple has and probably makes the service the top electronic music streaming service in the market.
That’s gonna hafta be people with Beatport exclusive deals. I only know one artist that I consider at all significant who’s gone down that road, although they had at least 1 guy @ DEMF sniffing around.