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Comment by oliyoung | Hacker News Reader

Beatport does one thing really well (sell music to producers & DJs - if you make the Top 10, you're the IT producer for a couple of weeks) and several things kinda half-assed (ie Beatport DJ is a poor man's Soundcloud).

This is just cleaning house before a refocus in 2014, a streaming service being a priority.

Timing sucks though. Sucks hard.

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> Beatport DJ is a poor man's Soundcloud

More like Mixcloud, as Soundcloud specifically says not to use them for DJ mixes unless you have rights to all the music.

The amount of remixes and the like up on Soundcloud makes it seem like that isn't the case.

I can understand the desire to refocus as a streaming service, except that there's no way for DJs to consume streaming content in their DJ sets (no DJ software does this), and most DJs don't have internet connectivity when they're gigging.

My guess is that if they do pivot towards being a streaming company, they'll target EDM fans (consumers) instead of EDM DJs (prosumers).

I can't imagine why a DJ would trust his live show to any streaming assets. A service interruption is certain to displease the crowd.

songs that are added to the "Locker" are stored locally, so all tracks can be played without an internet connection. the Locker itself is DRM'd (not the tracks), so whitelisted applications (Traktor and Serato) can access the folder and play the tracks without issue.

Beastie Boys known to let the stream ... drop!

> there's no way for DJs to consume streaming content in their DJ sets (no DJ software does this)

PulseLocker does exactly this. https://pulselocker.com/

edit: It's not "streaming" in the technical sense, but it is an unlimited subscription model.

I don't understand PulseLocker's subscriptions. What does the track count mean?

I can't imagine only 25 tracks being useful for anything. Heck, a single mix can be 30 tracks, and that's whittled down from 100+ easily.

You pay more per month if you need more tracks. The subscriptions I see go up to 1000 for $60. Then you can rotate tracks in and out.

FWIW, I'm not a DJ, so have no expertise here. But the founder is one of the guys from Dirty Vegas. I'm guessing he finds this model useful, or at least knows people who do.

Article: http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/09/pulelocker-a-streaming-and-...

My understanding is you get a DropBox-esque directory where you can download n tracks, in addition to whatever you own otherwise. The tracks are all DRMed and log the number of plays, etc. You could have 30 PulseLocker tracks, and they can co-exist with all your other music. If you find you don't like some of your current 30, you can swap them out at any time for different tracks. I think the idea is that you can try out as many songs as you want, but you'll probably buy them if you use them regularly (so you can free up more slots to try out more tracks). Of course, the 1000 tier seems pretty bountiful, but I don't know anything about EDM.

Even if they have internet and software support, it's not reliable enough for streaming services. I was reading your post when the soundcloud feed I was listening to dropped out (literally). I don't think any EDM DJ would accept that risk. This would support your argument that they'd be targetting a new audience.

The idea wouldn't be you stream your whole set from “Teh Cloud™”, but you'd be able purchase assets/tracks on the fly, but ahead of time

I'm sorry, but isn't this exactly what beatport does now?

I'm not saying he explained it well ;)

That's what's holding them back from doing streaming apparently (at least this is what Matt Adell alluded to last week), there's no hardware support in the CDJ's, or for that matter reliable connectivity.

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