[B]NCV Feature of the Month[/B]

May /June 2006, issue 3 – [B]A Review of Online Dance Music MP3 Stores[/B]
Written by Deliz
Reviews by Deliz & Dave O’Brien

When it comes to technology, there is only one thing to do…embrace it and adapt because it won’t slow down for anyone. As a DJ, you could say the same thing when it comes to new products and recording equipment, but what about the format a DJ chooses to play? What else could a DJ play other than vinyl, or why would a DJ want to play anything else? Many reasons come to mind but the two most important aspects to think about are musical selection and money. The more music a DJ has to search through, the better the chance of finding quality music, not just fillers. With the high price of vinyl and CD’s in stores, it’s a shame if DJs can’t afford to buy new music and pursue their passion. Vinyl will always be noted as the Godfather of musical formats for DJs, but if trends are changing then a DJ is either setting them or following close behind. What’s been happening in the DJ community over the last few years is a changing of the guard, the shift of power from vinyl to CD’s, many of them burned with invisible, digital data transferred over the Internet. This new process hasn’t only affected the DJ’s but the record labels as well seeing how the cost of pressing vinyl and CDs isn’t a concern with web distribution.
I myself have made the switch from buying vinyl to MP3/WAV downloads, although it’s not from a lack of love for the black beauty, but due to location, selection, and money. Online dance music stores offer hundreds of thousands of releases that would take days to listen to in a record store. Clearly, sampling music on the net is a more efficient way of sifting through mass quantities of music, but it’s also impersonal. You can’t hold the record in your hands, read the liner notes, or gaze over the cover art. When making a comparison between the two, there will always be pros and cons for either side. What it comes down to is personal taste. For DJs, it’s all about the music so why not embrace both vinyl and CD and avoid missing the hidden gems!
Here’s a review of some of the top Dance Music MP3/WAV stores on the web. They are in no particular order and there’s no rating system, only a general overview of the most important features. The reviews are based on the following criteria:

-Facts, Layout, and Functionality
-Genres of Music, Predominant Styles of Music, Number of Labels & Artists
-Registration and Membership Process
-Cost per track and Methods of Payment
-Sample Player, Length, and Quality of sample

[B]Beatport – www.beatport.com[/B]

Beatport is one of the largest and best-known MP3 DJ stores online, and it’s due to their amazing selection, slick website, and various formats available for download. Based out of Denver, Colorado, Beatport is backed and managed by a highly credible cast of DJs including John Aquaviva, Richie Hawtin, and Bad Boy Bill. Your first encounter with the site might be a little over-stimulating. A box centered in the screen continuously changes ads showing the new, big name releases. There are a number of static ads for other releases and labels, and about a dozen links to choose from ranging from ‘advanced search criteria’, to ‘DJ’s track-listings’, to ‘Musical Genres’. It’ll take a couple of minutes, or maybe a half hour, but once you master the functionality of the site it’s easy to maneuver. The only concern I have is using the ‘back’ button to view previous pages. It’s not always consistent and won’t necessarily bring you back to the last page viewed.
My favorite feature of the site, which isn’t advertised by Beatport, is the quasi-database system you can build through your account: listen to tracks, click to purchase so they’re in your checkout crate, and logout. Those tracks will remain in your crate until you buy them or remove them, therefore, if you’re not sure about a track you can come back to it and give it another listen.
Beatport specializes in House, Trance, and Progressive House, but they dabble in many other sectors as well. Here’s a breakdown of the styles with the number of releases in parentheses (note that certain releases can be labeled under more than one style).
1. House (15186)
2. Trance (8229)
3. Progressive House (7556)
4. Chill-Out (7463)
5. Electronica (5947)

And the rest… Techno (5807), Breaks (4431), Tech House (4205), Minimal (4171), Deep House (3905), DnB (3213), Electro House (2191), DJ Tools (1492), HipHop (1287), Hard Dance (789) , Psy-Trance (629), Hardcore (249).
To make a purchase on Beatport, you have to make an account. Registering is free but you must provide a billing and email address. The formats available for download are MP3 and MP4, ranging from $1.49US to $1.99US, and $2.49US for new, Beatport exclusive releases, meaning they’re only available on Beatport. If you want the uncompressed, original recording of the track in WAV form, you’ll have to add $1 US more per track. They accept all major credit cards but not Paypal, nor debit transactions at the moment.
One of the best features of Beatport is their sample player. They actually have one so you don’t have to download the samples onto your computer, plus, they offer at least a 1:30 to 2:00 of track length to sample.

[B]KarmaDownload – www.karmadownload.com[/B]

Located in London, this is Europe’s largest legal download service for independent music. The site is ordinary in design and simple to use, lacking the flash ads and stimulating look of Beatport. The links are divided into four genres of music (Rock, Dance, Urban, Unsigned Artists) and when one is chosen you get a list of subgenres on the side bar. When trying to listen to samples some clips took a while to load, and while browsing the site it crashed a couple times. Karma keeps it simple and functional and probably does so because they boast over 150 000 releases from over 3500 labels. Beatport compares to Karma in dance releases but Karma also offers Urban music and Unsigned Artist music.
Membership is free and registration requires a credit card, billing address, and email address. Downloads are available in 192 and 320 kbps. They cost $0.99 per track and $9.99 for a standard album, and there’s a handling fee of $0.50 on transactions under $5.00. Karma-loop offers a program for regular users so that after they purchase 10 tracks or 2.5 albums, they are entitled to download a free track. The only problem is that the currency isn’t marked anywhere.
The sample player is average at best. It’s integrated into the page with flash and all samples must be played from beginning to end. The player is dependent on the page you’re viewing so when you listen to a clip you cannot continue to browse the page. Doing so will stop the clip from playing. The clips are 30 seconds for most styles, and 1 minute for dance tracks. The only positive feature about the player is that the sample quality is quite good.

[B]Track it Down – www.trackitdown.net [/B]

Located in London, Track-it-Down does exactly what their name implies. Unlike other download services, you can actually tell them what you want and they will try to find it and make it available for download. This is one of the best looking sites for downloads. The layout is very clean and easy to navigate, much like Karma Download, and they offer more than just music downloads. They have a News section with articles on DJ/Dance Music related topics, and they have features on established artists and DJs. Track-it-Down offers the same styles of music as most other Dance Music sites, but they don’t mention the number of releases they have per genre. Styles of music include Trance, Hard Dance, Electro, House, Breaks, Techno, Psy-Trance, Hardcore, Drum & Bass, and Lounge. You don’t have to be a member for all the features on Track-it-Down, but if you want to make a purchase you have to register requiring credit card, billing address, and email information.
Track prices can be displayed in numerous currencies but their prices are not cheap. MP3s encoded at 320 bps are on average $2.83US/track, and WAV forms are not usually available, but when they are, they sell for $4.72US/track. They support the ‘big three’ credit cards.
The Sample player offers good quality clips up to 2 minutes long. Unfortunately, the player is integrated into the page with flash and is not independent from the content, so navigating within the page resets the song on the player. On the plus side, there is a play-list so users can load several tracks to preview without losing the one that is currently loaded.

[B]Click Groove – www.clickgroove.com[/B]

Click groove is an easy to use, well-designed digital download store. Their selection is quite wide offering a lot of music from the UK that is not available on other download sites. New releases are available weekly and you can find complete catalogues from many dance labels. Most recently, Nervous records made their catalogue available for download. One function on the site that is quite useful is when previewing a track, it tells you what other tracks were purchased by people who bought the track you selected.
Click Groove’s largest selection lies in Deep House and Tech House with 4634 releases. Here’s a listing of other styles offered by Click Groove with the number of releases in parentheses:
1. Deep/Tech House (4634),
2. Soulful/Funky House (2813),
3. Broken Beats/Nu Jazz (1773),
4. Nu Soul/Hip-Hop (1509),
5. Downtempo/Leftfield (1434),

…And the rest of the pack… Electro/House (1239), Funk/Jazz/Soul (576), Latin/ Brazilian/ World (369).
Membership requires a credit card, email, and billing address. You can check a box to have the option to receive weekly emails of new releases. All releases are 0.85 pounds for 192kbp/s MP3 and an additional charge of 0.43 pounds for 320 kbp/s. Click Groove does not have it’s own sample player. Users must use their own media player. The samples are 1-minute continuous clips.

[B]Kompakt – www.kompakt-MP3.net[/B]

Kompakt is a German based electronic record label that also sells MP3s on a separate site called kompakt-MP3.net. The site has a similar design to Bleep.com with a straight-forward, two column structure showing only a couple links to choose from: News, Back Catalogue, FAQ, How to Order, Imprint, and Service/ Newsletter. The first column shows the newest releases, and the second column has the album information and track breakdown. Kompakt offers minimal, quirky, experimental music with labels that mirror their style, but their sample player is so poor that it frustrates the whole listening process. Playing samples isn’t consistent where some work, some don’t play anything at all, and if you double click the track it will play on top of the one already playing. The site is easy to use and simple but when you can’t listen to everything you want, it becomes frustrating and ultimately leads to buying nothing at all.
When searching for music, you can only choose by label or artist. Genres range through minimal, micro house, techno, trance, electro, and experimental, but you must know your artists or labels to find a particular sound of music. There are approximately 200 labels and 1000 artists.
This is the only site that doesn’t force the customer to register in order to purchase music. There’s no membership, registration, or password required. Just click purchase and enter your credit card information. Payment methods include VISA, Mastercard, and AMEX. Tracks range from 1.29 for regular tracks and 1.49 for pre-releases, in Euros.
This site offers an excellent selection of German and European techno, but with a poor sample player, the listening experience isn’t worth the trouble.

[B]Bleep – www.bleep.com[/B]

Bleep is the online MP3 store for Warp Records, a label with the likes of Autechre, the Aphex Twin, Square Pusher, and Two Lone Swordsmen, to name a few electronic musicians. The main page has a similar layout to Kompakt-MP3 with a two-column arrangement but its more user friendly. The interface is simple and you can only browse through labels and artists, not genres of music. In the FAQs section, Bleep gives an interesting description of how they code the music available for download, “…high quality MP3s are encoded with LAME using the alt-preset standard variable bit rate setting, where it uses a higher bit rate for louder sections and a lower bit rate for softer sections, which adds-up to the best overall quality.”
Bleep focus on electronic, experimental, and ‘acoustic’ music. Numbers aren’t available but they offer a couple hundred labels and artists such as Ninja Tunes, PokerFlat, Trapez, Ghostly, K7, and many more.
Registration is similar to that of Beatport and DjDownloads: billing address and email, and when it comes time to make a purchase, your credit card information.
Bleep music offers the lowest price per track out of the bunch. Tracks cost $1.35 US per MP3 and you can also buy a ring-tone version of the track. Payment options include credit, debit, and Paypal. When you finally make a purchase there’s a cool ‘zipping’ option where Bleep zips the file (showing a nice animated graphic), and then allows you to download one entire file instead of individual downloads for each track.
The sample player is the best part of Bleep. You can listen to an entire track but only in 30-second intervals. The samples sound clean and are comparable to CD quality music.

[B]DJ Downloads – www.djdownloads.com[/B]

When you first come to DJ Downloads you’ll notice something familiar, nothing seen on the Internet, but more like a magazine called DJ Mag, a UK based Dance Music Culture monthly. If you read the FAQs section, DJ Downloads will tell you the same thing except that they just broke their partnership with DJ Mag. The site will continue to operate and shows no sign of slowing down, stating a growth rate of 20% per month, adding approximately 100 labels monthly. The home page offers ads on new releases and news about events, clubs, artists, and competitions. When choosing a genre the layout is simple to use but doesn’t offer any album cover-art like Beatport or Bleep, only track names with a short review from a recent customer.
At the time of the review, DJ Downloads had 1534 labels and 9860 artists in stock. Here’s how it breaks down into sub genres of dance music:

1. House (14394)
2. Leftfield (6666)
3. Prog & Tribal House (6594),
4. Tech House (5050)
5. Beats & Breaks (3359)

…And the rest… Techno (3127), Hip Hop (1210) , DnB (806), R&B (125), Electro (57), Trance (10), UK Garage (10), Hard Dance (6),
Membership is free and with each purchase you get to write a review of the track and have your review entered in a contest to win gift certificates. Tracks are in Pounds and cost 1.49 for 192 Kbps, and 1.99 or 320 Kbps. At the moment, no WAV files are available for download. DJ Downloads accepts all major credit cards, but not Paypal. The biggest downfall is that they don’t offer a sample player. You have to download each sample and use a media player for playback, which is time consuming and annoying if you don’t like the samples but have them stuck on your hard drive.