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Music

It’s Not the Streaming, It’s the Listings: Why Beatport’s New App is a Ball Buster

“Where should I go tonight?” is now answered more easily than ever.
Avalon Hollywood

It was only a matter of time. Beatport, the digital music e-tailer that pioneered the sale of high-quality mp3s to the DJ market, has now plunged into the live event pool with its new app. In an announcement yesterday and during presentations at the Beatport Lounge at Miami Music Week, the SFX-owned company introduced a new free app for iOS and Android that provides unlimited streaming of the millions of songs in the Beatport catalog at no cost to the listener. Perhaps more audaciously, Beatport has partnered with live event listing service Bandsintown to create an in-app geolocation-based event-finding service.

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While the music streaming market is increasingly competitive with juggernauts Apple, Amazon, and Google sprinting to catch up to Spotify, event listings for dance music has been a relatively stable and sparse environment. Resident Advisor has successfully made events a cornerstone of its site as other apps and content-filled pages of indie ticketers have come and gone. While Bandsintown has listed DJ gigs and electronic music events for a while, the name of the New York-based concert app doesn't exactly indicate to dance music fans that it's for them. Beatport's app will now pull event listing data from Bandsintown, creating an electronic music-only mobile concert discovery service and giving established club owners and upstart DJs a good reason to update their listings on Bandsintown.

In a conversation yesterday, SFX COO Greg Consiglio clarified that the company has not bought Bandsintown, nor does it plan to. "We're done with that phase," he said, referring to the company's massive expansion by buying up smaller dance music-affiliated companies over the past few years. Consiglio and Beatport Executive Creative Director Clark Warner also made clear that Beatport's event listings won't exclude non-SFX events. For instance, if you're in Vegas in June it will tell you that there's a little festival happening on the Motor Speedway.

Live events are not only the cornerstone of SFX's portfolio (if you didn't already know, the company owns the promoters behind Tomorrowland, Mysteryland, Electric Zoo, and a chunk of Rock in Rio), they are the linchpin to an audience that no longer buys records. While the Beatport Pro store still services the high quality mp3 needs of DJs, unlimited streaming expands the Beatport consumer base exponentially. (A premium plan is already in the works for users who may want to avail themselves of offerings like stems or higher bitrate audio.)

Earlier this year, Google announced plans to passively enter into the world of ticketing by aggregating concert listings. Google's sheer size makes it a player, but what Beatport lacks in search, it can make up for in curation through your user profile. You like tech house? Here are the tech house parties within 50 miles of your location. You hate psy-trance? You don't have to see where psy-trance is happening. You have a crush on DJs with long hair? Seven Lions, half of Big Gigantic, and Steve Aoki are all in town.

By integrating listings in its app, Beatport is creating a fully-contained user experience of dance music consumption and increasing access to events for fans who are eager to attend them.