Beatport review
Beatport website
| www.beatport.com | Site up since January 2004 |
I have to start by saying this is my favourite site, so there might be some bias here. At first glance the design of Beatport is very trendy but too cluttered. Use it for a few minutes though and it becomes pleasantly easy to use. Beatport also offers a guided tour for first time visitors quickly helping them to the features of the site.
Beatport has a comprehensive catalog from all genres of electronic music including pre-releases and old classics. Available file formats are MP3, MP4 and WAV. WAV files are not downloadable but will be FeDex shipped on CD-R.
| Format | Quality | Price |
|---|---|---|
| MP3 | 192 or 320 Kbps VBR | $0.99, new releases $1.49, out of print releases $1.99 |
| MP4 | ? | same as above |
| WAV | CD quality | $1.99 + FeDex shipping |
Previews are about a minute or two and listening is done with the built in Flash preview player. It would be nice though if you were able to listen to previews while browsing the site. The quality of preview clips is acceptable but should be better for my tastes.
When registered, tracks can be bought simply by pressing the Buy button next to the tracks and the download will begin immediately in the default file format selected in user settings. Alternatively tracks can be put into the Crate and downloaded after a checkout process where the file format can be selected for individual tracks.
Beatport is quite clearly USA's leading dance music download site. They recently made a deal with Stanton Magnetics and Native Instruments to provide a complete integrated experience for DJs. This means being able to buy tracks directly from NI's Traktor DJ software and playing them right away with Stanton's Final Scratch. This co-operation should bring some good news to labels on Beatport as well. The site relies heavily on Flash and requires Flash 7 plugin to work.
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