DJs and Streaming music via Beatport LINK discussion

Amps I admit I don’t know a huge amount about how they pay, but as they are outright purchases I figured they can’t be that bad, but I could be wrong.

i haven’s sold anything on beatport, so this is all speculation, maybe someone more knowledgeable can chime in. my understanding is that you have to be a label to submit to beatport. which means from an artist perspective, the cut of money from every sale goes first to beatport, then to the label, then you get whatever is left over after mastering, promo, and distribution cost. which is likely nothing.

303abuser you get whatever is left over after mastering, promo, and distribution cost. which is likely nothing.

Which is fucking criminal

Mad_Cyril
Spotify is another platform where the actual artist gets very little.

Mad_Cyril i have a good friend who makes trance and he’s been top 10 on the beatport charts at times and never made a penny. he uses it for promo to get dj gigs. the whole make music for promotion vs pay, clubs expecting djs to play for exposure, etc. needs to change. someone is making money, but it’s not the people doing all the work.

Dubman not sure if i’m typical, but my ration is $1 earned for every 34 hours of my music that is streamed. given each record takes 10-30 hours to produce, not including thousands in gear costs, that’s a bloody expensive hobby.

Maybe a JC project?

303abuser How difficult is it to start a record label that Beatport would recognise? Could you start your own and self publish through Beatport? What would you need? An email address, company reg and a logo?

Mad_Cyril You would need upwards of 80k to cover the development and design fees and thats before hosting and promotion, and assuming you can get your first iteration out the door in under a year.

I would also guess that whet the artist gets after an ‘online sale’ might be down to their contract, so even though you drop your fee, the label might just hoover up more of the cut and still give the artist fuck all???

Amps
There’s cheaper ways to do im sure.

Was thinking a basic hosting / transaction processing model with a good UI.

Most of that can be set up as a service now.

Advertising could be done effectively and efficiently without subscribing to standard models.

Be good to break the norms

Amps
Was just talking about setting up a company.

Amps no idea, but unless you’re able to everything yourself, it’s likely going to be cost prohibitive anyways. let’s say you could do it cheap for a few hundred dollars, you’d have to shift so many units to just break even, i can’t imagine it’s worth the hassle.

maybe if you could set up a collective where you have several good artists, a mastering engineer, maybe a couple of people into graphics/video/etc. and you’re all willing to work for the greater good, it could be viable. maybe.

Mad_Cyril There’s cheaper ways to do im sure.

Was thinking a basic hosting / transaction processing model with a good UI.

Bandcamp just needs to improve their visibility and on-site navigation really.

Mad_Cyril Gotcha.

303abuser As a bit of a walking one stop designer type (jack of all, master of non), I reckon I could box loads of it off myself bar the actual music / mastering / audio side of things. Dunno the costs on mastering or such things… how many units to be in profit you reckon? Thousand? Five thousand? Ten thousand?

Mad_Cyril I think getting a good UI that you are happy with, that tests well regards debugging and then with audiences for usability, plus a strong database / storage / server, you are looking at employing at least one full time developer / coder and one full time designer for a year… Please don’t find a better way of doing it, you’ll have me out of a job!