We have become accustomed to hearing about different business maneuvers coming from the SFX Entertainment camp over the past two years, primarily in the form of mergers and acquisitions as the company has looked to expand its global empire over a wide swath of the dance music industry. Robert Sillerman's SFX has slowed its frenetic buying spree in the latter half of 2014 as it looks to consolidate profits and generate more revenue, but the moves have not stopped. It has announced that one of its properties, the popular music-purchasing platform Beatport will now officially enter the streaming space with a relaunched version of its Beatport Pro, via Dancing Astronaut.
The new Beatport music service will offer free, ad-supported streaming to users, according to the Wall Street Journal. This will give users the ability to listen to Beatport's catalog of music on demand. Beatport currently offers the ability to purchase mixes, which are comprised of Beatport's music library available for purchase via the platform. This will expand the capabilities of listeners and DJs alike to stream music before they purchase.
One major hurdle will be to obtain licenses for songs, though focusing on electronic music will make it easier to stay clear of the Big 3. Many big electronic acts, like deadmau5, Krewella, Porter Robinson, Dirty South and Calvin Harris, have signed limited or exclusive with majors deals to take advantage of their large distribution networks. Another major hurdle for SFX will be to comply with copyright laws in different jurisdictions around the world, which is one reason why the global Spotify rollout has not been instantaneous.
Beatport will be jumping into an increasingly crowded market with Spotify, Deezer, Pandora, YouTube's Music Key and Apple's Beats Music, so the competition will be fierce from the start. It has the advantage of a large electronic music database that grows daily, with many tracks signed to two-week exclusive deals on the service. It may try and leverage that to build its streaming platform even greater.
No word on the exact release yet, but stay tuned for the launch in 2015. It may look like what you see below.
