beatport brickwall

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
drush
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Re: beatport brickwall

Post by drush » Mon Mar 23, 2009 4:35 pm

mrvinyl wrote:basically there's too many producers
you're spending a lot of time and energy on the wrong things.

there may be an exponential number of "producers" these days. there is not an equivalent increase in good music.

make some good music. the rest will take care of itself.

make something that people are going apeshit for and you can sell it yourself directly. you don't need beatport or anyone else.

or are you more concerned with getting the right gigs so you can stand around and wave your arms?

contakt321
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Re: beatport brickwall

Post by contakt321 » Mon Mar 23, 2009 4:53 pm

drush wrote:
mrvinyl wrote:basically there's too many producers
you're spending a lot of time and energy on the wrong things.

there may be an exponential number of "producers" these days. there is not an equivalent increase in good music.

make some good music. the rest will take care of itself.

make something that people are going apeshit for and you can sell it yourself directly. you don't need beatport or anyone else.

or are you more concerned with getting the right gigs so you can stand around and wave your arms?
I agree that the OP is spending a lot of time on the wrong things.

I disagree that good music is the answer. Take a look, there is a lot of questionable music on Beatport.

Focus on a combination of good music, creating awareness, and creating a network. That will be the answer to your problems, and these three things are interconnected.

PS: A final note, just having music on Beatport doesn't guarantee a sale. It makes it easier to get a sale, but you have to have the awareness for people to give an F_ck about you to even check your release, and the talent to make the song amazing and a must buy.

Give up on lamenting the number of producers, it's increased dramatically over the last 10 years, and will continue to increase as the barriers to entry lessen.

drush
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Re: beatport brickwall

Post by drush » Mon Mar 23, 2009 5:03 pm

contakt321 wrote: I agree that the OP is spending a lot of time on the wrong things.

I disagree that good music is the answer. Take a look, there is a lot of questionable music on Beatport
that actually supports my point.

barriers to entry falling is a good thing. people should be able to get into music, or any other creative endeavor, and express themselves. but you've gotta be doing it for yourself and you've gotta be true to yourself while doing it. then it doesn't matter if you have a computer and 1 app or an entire room full of CV-only equipment that's constantly falling out of tune. or a couple of sticks and a tape recorder.

following fashion, trends, and marketing might get you some attention for about 30 seconds.

leedsquietman
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Re: beatport brickwall

Post by leedsquietman » Mon Mar 23, 2009 6:27 pm

Beatport also have a policy that if you don't shift a certain number of units, that they remove your song anyway.
Any label that cannot produce $300.00 in GROSS sales each quarter will be put on a probationary status. If the label is unable to hit the $600.00 mark by the second quarter then that label will be cut from the Beatport system
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contakt321
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Re: beatport brickwall

Post by contakt321 » Mon Mar 23, 2009 7:19 pm

leedsquietman wrote:Beatport also have a policy that if you don't shift a certain number of units, that they remove your song anyway.
Any label that cannot produce $300.00 in GROSS sales each quarter will be put on a probationary status. If the label is unable to hit the $600.00 mark by the second quarter then that label will be cut from the Beatport system
Wow, that's really interesting. That's probably a decent policy though. Essentially $300 gross = 200 downloads of one MP3 at the normal price of $1.49 - so by that math $600 is 400 downloads of a single track. I think that's pretty reasonable.

Just an anecdote - dance music used to be based on vinyl, and to a degree it still is. The former barrier to entry was being able to afford to press vinyl (and of course getting a distributor). Typically vinyl manufacturing plants would have a 500 piece minimum and realistically, it was way more cost effective to press 1,000.

Interesting to me at least.
Last edited by contakt321 on Tue Mar 24, 2009 1:47 am, edited 1 time in total.

jonny72
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Re: beatport brickwall

Post by jonny72 » Tue Mar 24, 2009 1:43 am

mrvinyl wrote:beatport apparently accounts for over 80% or something of all digital dance sales

thats why
Where did you get that figure from?

I'd be very surprised if they had even 50% of the market amongst the smaller / independent digital retailers.

If you include Amazon and Apple I doubt they've even got 1% of the sales. Apple sell zillions of downloads every second of the day, even if only 1% are dance music that is still trillions every second of the day.
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Superchibisan
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Re: beatport brickwall

Post by Superchibisan » Tue Mar 24, 2009 3:43 am

we're talking dance music here, not all music sales. itunes and amazon are irrelevant regarding strictly dance music.

contakt321
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Re: beatport brickwall

Post by contakt321 » Tue Mar 24, 2009 4:17 am

If only Amazon offered 320 Mp3s...at $0.99...if only.

Chang
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Re: beatport brickwall

Post by Chang » Tue Mar 24, 2009 5:49 am

IMO the term "Producer" is thrown around and misused way too much especially in the genre of electronic music. Every morning you wake up, you "produce" something in the toilet. This is not the job of a "Producer." A real producer is a finisher with keen sharp musical skills.

There is a Musician (band) a Producer, an engineer and a Mastering engineer. Anyone running around making anything including myself is not a real "Producer" just because you hit render. The term has been abused imo and is becoming lost in history. I see it on business cards of musicians all the time and it makes me laugh sorry.

leedsquietman
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Re: beatport brickwall

Post by leedsquietman » Tue Mar 24, 2009 10:41 pm

Yup. Usually 17 year old kids with a cracked copy of Fruity Loops and 'Dope Beatz for sale, hit me up yo !' refer to themselves as 'producers', in between hanging around in gangs at shopping malls and having to babysit their younger siblings.

To me, like being a bona fide Mastering Engineer, you can only classify yourself as a producer if you have regular PAYING customers buying your services (no, helping out your mates for free or local community artists who have some raw talent but no gear or dough doesn't really count either). And from there, those paying customers have some tangible sales success with their project you worked on, so you have viable references. And your input as a producer included arrangement, having ideas on restructuring a track, or changing vocals/instruments and shaping something into a better, more streamlined and refined end track. Not just hitting the record button and pushing some faders around.
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mrvinyl
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Re: beatport brickwall

Post by mrvinyl » Tue Mar 24, 2009 11:14 pm

what about if you've released hundreds of albums by yourself and other artists but they were all rubbish - would you be a producer? or perhaps a crap producer p.s. im boycotting beatport temporarlily
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jonny72
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Re: beatport brickwall

Post by jonny72 » Wed Mar 25, 2009 12:30 am

Superchibisan wrote:we're talking dance music here, not all music sales. itunes and amazon are irrelevant regarding strictly dance music.
You might want to have a look at the stuff on Amazon and iTunes nowadays, most of the major dance labels are on there now. Wouldn't surprise me if you could find most stuff on there if you checked, its pretty easy getting your music on iTunes and they give a pretty good deal so labels and artists would have to be pretty stupid not to go down that route.
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Superchibisan
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Re: beatport brickwall

Post by Superchibisan » Wed Mar 25, 2009 12:31 am

well yeah, i didn't say it wasn't present. what im saying is people think BEATPORT before they think ITUNES when it comes to dance music.

contakt321
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Re: beatport brickwall

Post by contakt321 » Wed Mar 25, 2009 1:45 am

jonny72 wrote:
Superchibisan wrote:we're talking dance music here, not all music sales. itunes and amazon are irrelevant regarding strictly dance music.
You might want to have a look at the stuff on Amazon and iTunes nowadays, most of the major dance labels are on there now. Wouldn't surprise me if you could find most stuff on there if you checked, its pretty easy getting your music on iTunes and they give a pretty good deal so labels and artists would have to be pretty stupid not to go down that route.
The biggest problem with both iTunes and Amazon is that they don't offer 320kbps MP3s. This is considered by many to be the minimum bitrate you want to use to DJ at clubs on Ableton, Traktor, Serato, CDJ, etc.

It is easy to get stuff on iTunes now, and Amazon - they have a different business model than Beatport as far as I can perceive. Beatport APPEARS to be maintaining themselves like a proper record store, only stocking "good" tunes, where Amazon and iTunes are competing on selection, offering anything and everything.

There are good reasons for all 3 of these companies to operate in the fashion they do.

jonny72
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Re: beatport brickwall

Post by jonny72 » Wed Mar 25, 2009 2:30 pm

contakt321 wrote:The biggest problem with both iTunes and Amazon is that they don't offer 320kbps MP3s. This is considered by many to be the minimum bitrate you want to use to DJ at clubs on Ableton, Traktor, Serato, CDJ, etc.
Not sure about Amazon, but pretty much everything on iTunes is now in 256k AAC which is equivalent to 320k MP3 quality wise. They work fine in Live (and are DRM free), not sure about other DJ tools though.

iTunes is really good for compilations, even from the specialist dance labels, which work out really cheap.
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