Beatport has confirmed that it is launching a new Beatport streaming service starting next year. What does this mean for labels that sell on the site?

In a puffy interview with Beatport Creative Director Clark Warner, Billboard’s Megan Buerger dramatically downplayed the impact of Beatport Streaming, insisting that the service was not aspiring to challenge existing streaming platforms like Spotify.

“We’re not aiming to be a jukebox in the sky… It’s not supposed to be this major cloud experience. We’re aiming to be a single sign-on, which we’ve worked on with SFX for a long time.” A single sign-on is essentially a one-stop digital shop for consumers of the genre.

SFX Entertainment, Beatport’s parent company, purchased streaming app Listn in October. The Listn service was quickly shut down and its staff assigned to work on Beatport Streaming.

Even before the SFX takeover, Beatport has long been preoccupied with expanding the site’s audience beyond its core of DJs to festival goers and “fans”. In the past, the company has launched a number of these initiatives that failed to gain traction, including fan outreach initiatives like BeatportMixes and BeatPortal.

Sources who were not authorized to comment told us over the weekend that Beatport is preparing a major amendment to its uniform agreement signed by every label that sells on Beatport’s platform. More details are unavailable.

Warner provided few details about Beatport and SFX’s plans to monetize the site, other than this statement that artists “should be paid”:

Warner said the free streaming model won’t drastically affect business. “One of our core values is that artists should be paid,” he said. The company’s music store charges roughly 50% more than other digital retailers for downloads, and distributors 20% more for placement, and Warner said they’ve paid close to $170 million in royalties to partners over the last decade. Ideally, facilitating music discovery will boost sales for artists. “We’re catering to the traffic that we already have,” he said. 



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