Beatport 3.0 launches today

OK lets stay on the central issue here... Beatport, punitive (predatory) territorial pricing and what we can do to protest it.

That no one higher up in Beatport is speaking out about this should not lead you to think they don't care . They just want to ride out the critical wave. Their position of being neither the lowest or highest in terms of pricing is seldom born out in equal cummulative comparison checks using SimpyDJ. While there are more expensive downloads around, Beatport Ranked in the top 15% of sellers, pricing of almost all the tracks I looked at as a test. For my music purchases overall buying Beatport WAS the most expensive option.

The thing I find most annoying is that the very country that shaped the dance music industry to be what it is today, is being raped by those that should be encouraging its continued growth and development. The same group that 2 or 3 years ago started out providing a price competitive solution now seek price partity and in the case of album purchases, moderately to significantly more money than vinyl purchases. Seems the shining knight has become the opressor.... In classic traditions of the music industry, the stars will likely just become another hack also-ran.

Phil

 

All right, i'm sorry i went a little bit out off topic. This issue has hit me hard... :S

The truth is that we can think/make whatever we want. It seems they have it clear and as they are not getting involved in any of those conversations, we can expect they will do not, and will keep on selling with this prices.

The only thing that we can do is to forget that a shop called beatport existed.. and pray to ask god (Todd Terry) that other shops don't follow them in these kind of acts...

carpe diem

 

Rob - I don't use Itunes so I don't know how they deal with the matter.

However here's a thing;-

The main provisions of European Competition Law (what in US terminology would be Antitrust Law) concerning abuse of dominance are contained in the Article 82 of the Treaty of the European Communities which states:

“Any abuse by one or more undertakings of a dominant position within the common market or in a substantial part of it shall be prohibited as incompatible with the common market in so far as it may affect trade between Member States. Such abuse may, in particular, consist in: (a) directly or indirectly imposing unfair purchase or selling prices or other unfair trading conditions; (b) limiting production, markets or technical development to the prejudice of consumers; (c) applying dissimilar conditions to equivalent transactions with other trading parties, thereby placing them at competitive disadvantage; (d) making the conclusion of contracts subject to acceptance by other parties of supplementary obligations which, by their nature or according to commercial usage, have no connection with the subject of such contracts.”

The UK pricing policy is clearly in contravention of at least two points of the above.

 

What this has done in my opinion is give the competition a chance to catch up with Beatport.

I now simply use beatport for tracks I cannot get elsewhere. That is the beauty of the intenet economy as it levels the playingfield somewhat.

My favoured site currently is trackitdown.net as they have a rapidly growing number of labels, a better player and cheaper prices (as well as offering wavs at £1.75)

My feeling is Beatport will have to do something to compete - wether it is offer tagged-up flacs, pre-key marked tracks or lower prices.

 

so who is still boycotting beatport? i am, although i am sorely tempted to make an exception for the new marc houle album. i don't wan't all the tracks, so i don't wanna buy the CD, and you can't get the MP3s anywhere else (well not legally!)...


hmmmm

 

I am - clickgroove, dancetracksdigital, juno and topplers all the way for me.

Beatport still haven't made any sort of attempt to justify their position - I do not like Beatport one bit - get the feeling I'm not alone!

I might send them another e-mail telling them how much I've spent elsewhere. Sure they don't care but it will make me feel better.

 

I bought 8 tracks off there last night They have at least decided to make some tracks 1.49 instead of 1.99.

I think http://www.trackitdown.net is fast catching up with Beatport though and it is in HTML not Flash which is very usable.

Is there a way to link to individual tracks on Beatport despite it being a Flash application? I can't seem to figure out how to do it....

 

what sort of music are you into rocdollar?

 

All sorts but I mainly play dnb on Bassdrive. I do buy from other genres though such as techno and breaks - trying to mash things up a little. Links in my sig to show archives if you fancy a listen. How about you?

 

4 to the floor stuff but the weirder end of the market, some tech-house, some techno, some minimal, some deep house, some italo, disco edits... I dunno, really just what I consider to be good quality music.

You can check out my stylings at www.trackwerk.net

I will have a listen at the weekend, thanks.

 

I haven't totally boycotted them, but I've switched my shopping order and now visit them 3rd instead of first. This has resulted in a drop from what used to be around 10 new tracks from them a week to now about 2. I'm also finding djdownloads.com and releaserecords.com have a great selection, and I can usually get what I'm looking for without looking anywhere else.

2 weeks ago I didn't buy anything from BP (but I bought 6 songs from other retailers).

 

Well, just for the record. I haven't bought a single song from beatport since v3.0. I love simpydj and I just bought a bunch from djdownload. And I checked out a few sweet netlabels lately.

UUUUh yeah, boycotting feels gooood =)

I wonder if I'd ever find out if they cut their prices in half - make sure someone posts it here when that happens!

Cheers, h00la

 

So ... it's not their practices you object to, but their prices?

 

Well that's quite closely related in this case. If it was just the prices, then I'd try to work around the Euro/Pounds/Dollars issue with a proxy or something. I simply don't like the fact that they argue with local prices and whatnot when it's just a matter of making more money when they feel they have a sufficiently strong market edge.

Linking Traktor to Beatport gives them a considerable edge over other stores, and so far I was just lazy and sufficiently happy with their selection to just not bother with looking for other stores. Now I feel that raising prices in the way they did, is not what gives me the confidence that they would be able to wisely handle a quasi-monopoly situation should it ever arise. So I'm annoyed, which gets my lazy bum off the couch and has me looking for other stores.

That's a "no" for prices and a "yes" for business-practices I object to. In the long run it's selection (I want "broad" of course) and prices (guess =), and Beatport give me a strong feeling that a strong competition will help them go in the right direction more than me playing loyal customer. In most other situations I'll gladly pay more for quality (Traktor?), but here is a situation that I see differently.

Cheers, h00la

 

Nope its the practice of singling out a geographical region and saying you pay the same nume but in local currency which in reality means "You pay 50% more for your tracks because you live in that region"

My opinions on the penalty pricing matter...
1/ It sets a dangerous precedent for us in other regions.
2/ Its simply not fair to those affected by this and I'm not! It does not change the fact Beatport singled out a market segment and penalized them for no other reason than 'they can'.
3/ It shows us Beatport are the same greed ridden pigs most of us see the rest of the record industry as being akin to.
4/ That no one from Beatport publicly got up and defended their practice shows the "gutless weasel spirit" is alive and well and that as users of their serivce they feel no need or desire to interact with those who make them rich gutless weasels.

For my part I just added up my purchases in recent weeks. USD$260.00 give or take $5.00 was spent on music. Of that Beatport got ~$11.50 of it. Had this penalty pricing not been in play they would have gotten >85% of that money. Were it not for the fact that most of the the tracks I wanted were regional locked elsewhere and I could not get the proxy to work, they would not have gottten that much. I would normally spend more than that but I have been getting a bunch of legal Electro stuff on CDR in the past few weeks so I have not had to spend money to feed the addiction.

Phil

 

Today the European Commission sent a Statement of Objections against alleged territorial restrictions in on-line music sales to major record companies and Apple. I think they should do the same with Beatport after they raised up prices for users living in a Euro-country and even worse for those living in the UK.

I've sent an email to the European Commission and suggested that they should investigate on the Beatport policy as well.

Let's hope things will change.

Here the press release from the website of the EC:

MEMO/07/126

Brussels, 3rd April 2007
Competition: European Commission confirms sending a Statement of Objections against alleged territorial restrictions in on-line music sales to major record companies and Apple
The European Commission can confirm that it has sent a Statement of Objections to major record companies and Apple in relation to agreements between each record company and Apple that restrict music sales: consumers can only buy music from the iTunes' on-line store in their country of residence. Consumers are thus restricted in their choice of where to buy music, and consequently what music is available, and at what price. The Commission alleges in the Statement of Objections that these agreements violate the EC Treaty's rules prohibiting restrictive business practices (Article 81).

Apple operates a series of iTunes on-line stores in the European Economic Area (EEA) which sell music downloads. The Statement of Objections alleges that distribution agreements between Apple and major record companies contain territorial sales restrictions which violate Article 81 of the EC Treaty. iTunes verifies consumers' country of residence through their credit card details. For example, in order to buy a music download from the iTunes' Belgian on-line store a consumer must use a credit card issued by a bank with an address in Belgium.

The Statement of Objections does not allege that Apple is in a dominant market position and is not about Apple's use of its proprietary Digital Rights Management (DRM) to control usage rights for downloads from the iTunes on-line store.

Procedural background

Statements of Objections are a formal step in European antitrust investigations. After receiving such statements, companies have two months to defend themselves in writing. They can also ask the Commission to hear their case at an oral hearing which usually takes place about one month after the written reply has been received. Only after having heard the company's defence can the Commission take a final decision, which may be accompanied by fines of up to ten per cent of a company’s worldwide annual turnover.

 

I knew there was a case - shouldn't have dropped outta Law School... duh!

 

so glad that someone is doing this. beatport's blatant profiteering makes me really angry. it also encourages other MP3 shops to bump up their prices - 320kbps MP3s on juno are now mostly £1.29, whereas they used to be 99p.

hope this gets the problem sorted.

 

Yeps, but its not only about the pricing.
Beatport has territorial sales restrictions which means you can not buy all tracks you wanny buy.

 

@chris:

Maybe it's not a bad idea if more users sent an email to the European Commission, here are the email-addresses I found on the (more than a little bit confusing) website:

1. InfoComp@ec.europa.eu
2. comp-greffe-antitrust@ec.europa.eu

Rainer