Dave Haynes

It has been reported on Resident Advisor that Beatport are to cut back on the number of labels it offers on its store to labels who gross over $300 per quarter. It’s not clear to me whether this is an official line or whether it’s more of a statement to fall back on if they don’t want to take a label on.

There’s three reasons why Beatport would put this into place:

1) I’ve heard some music fans complain that they have to wade through hundreds of random releases from hobbyist digital labels each week and Beatport will want to be seen as a quality store, not just one based on quantity.

2) It’s an administrative and costly nightmare to have to account to a large number of individual parties (Beatport currently has 7596 labels). Even when statements and sales reporting are as automated as possible, it’s still a massive headache doing each quarter’s accounting run (I know, I’ve been there, done that!)

3) It’s a drain on human resources just to have to deal with these labels on a day to day basis regarding new releases, banner request, sales notes submissions, ammendment requests etc. And I know from experience that rightly or wrongly it’s often the smaller and lower-end of labels that can demand the most time and attention.

So what does all this mean?

I think it emphasises the role that aggregators and distributors (the oft misunderstood middlemen) have to play in this market where selling direct to consumers/stores is very easy, but not always the best or the only solution. If you’re a label you need someone in the middle providing one point of contact for technical / billing / relations. That certainly solves problems 2) and 3) above.

Perhaps a more difficult question for a smaller label is how to solve problem 1). Beatport certainly are imposing a strict policy of approving new labels before content is sent to them and have been for some months. So if you’re a small label it’s is important to have a game-plan and be able to present it properly. The essentials are a strong identity (logo, niche, web presence, back-story), an idea of your upcoming releases, at least one or two known artists and/or remixers. And this must all be communicated. It still surprises me how many labels think that they can simply sign up to a store, deliver their music and just expect some money to come in.

There can be no doubt that it’s easier than ever to start your own record label. Which is absolutely superb but remember, without a strong gameplan you should really think about sticking to the many other ways of making your music heard, even if that’s just for free, to your mates, on your Myspace or blog.

It would be easy to make a simple case that stores like Beatport should carry everything and then let the user decide what they want to buy. But whether you think Beatport is good or bad, let’s not forget the value an intermediary can have in the market place by filtering out what they think is good and what they think is bad. In this case, I think at 7500+ labels Beatport’s long tail reaches about as far as it should. And it would be interesting to see the effect were it actively trimmed.