Beatport Awards
(and the changing face of beatport)

August Brown posted a piece this morning on the LA Times Music blog, with some background and op ed on Beatport and its Beatport Awards – taking place tomorrow.

It’s an interesting read, especially the bit about SFX Entertainment buying Beatport last year, firing much of its original engineering team and closing the San Fran office in a “bloodbath.” Oh, and that in SFX Entertainment’s first foray into lifting Beatport into “mainstream relevance” the site lost $1 million in the third quarter of its 2013 fiscal year.

Without getting into a debate about the pluses and minuses of EDM’s steady climb up the pop-music ladder, as a record label selling music on Beatport, of course we want the site to do well. We want Beatport to raise its status and become a driving force, selling dance music not just to longtime fans and professionals in the “scene” but to those who, as of right now, are “into” electronic music but buy exclusively on iTunes, listen on Spotify, and ask, “Beatport what?”

In Brown’s article he explains that the Beatport Awards should be looked at as a more relevant and legitimate alternative to the Grammy’s EDM nominations. He’s right there. And we like that fans have a say and get to vote for their favourite songs and artists for the awards.

Beatport is aware of EDM’s “tribal” element, which is quite unlike the rest of music in that genres and sub-genres of EDM each have their own “tribes.” Sometimes though (and maybe too often) you can swap out the word “tribes” and replace it with “cliques.” What happens then? The Beatport Awards move further away from being an authentic judge of the year’s best in electronic music, and dangerously close to becoming a popularity contest. Then trend kicks artistic merit to the curb. What do you think?