Audiojack has shared an open letter to Beatport’s CEO Robb McDaniels, asking the digital store to let the artists set the price tag on their creations.
It’s no secret that the EDM industry is not going through its best moment. There are no events taking place, streamings are not likely to catch large audiences, and club gigs are not possible due to the coronavirus pandemic. At this point in time, income from released music is one of the only sources of income that many artists have.
Electronic music is a niche boutique industry, music buyers are mostly other DJs and passionate followers of the scene. From a DJ perspective we’d have no problem paying a higher price for the music we play to support the artists to keep doing what they do – in fact we’d welcome it. DJing isn’t about having a large quantity of cheap music, it’s about honing and sharing a personal collection of high quality music.
Audiojack
The music group addresses this issue as a crucial problem for the industry. Audiojack focuses on Beatport as it is the major digital store for electronic music tracks. While this controversy takes place, Beatport keeps signing deals like this one with Twitch. In addition, Beatport favors the artists that release large amounts of music to earn money, but the quality does not count when you need to get to a minimum payment.
Audiojack Replies To Fans In Beatport Dispute
The Facebook post went viral and many followers shared some questions with the artists. Here are some of the most interesting questions asked, and responses directly from the duo:
Regarding using Bandcamp, Traxsource, or Juno Why
“Yes we’re big fans of the Bandcamp model, but the irony of everybody telling us to go on Bandcamp is that WE ARE ALREADY ON BANDCAMP! We sell less than 1 track on Bandcamp for every 200 we sell on Beatport. Since this post went out we have sold the grand total of 0 tracks on Bandcamp. Maybe in the long term, this might be a solution, but for now, Beatport is where most of our music is bought, and by a long way – 80% of it, which is why we targeted them specifically. Here is our Bandcamp page, please support our music here: https://gruuvlabel.bandcamp.com/
Our music is available in all the shops you mentioned and more. Please see attached a chart showing where sales on our Gruuv label have come from so far this year. Bandcamp isn’t listed as they don’t go through our distributor, but the share of the pie would be so tiny you might not even see it. Some months sales haven’t covered their $25 fee, although they’ve gone up notably since lockdown.”
Have you guys thought of selling your music on your web page?
“Yes. Our album will be released on Crosstown Rebels next year, so we can’t make that decision yet. After that it’s possible we will delete all social media, remove all our music from digital shops and become largely internet invisible, with our music only available via our own website. It’s something we’re considering…”
Audiojack also shares their opinion about the way that the Beatport shop should work. They also said that Robb McDaniels still did not state a reply.
If you want to check the full conversation, make sure to visit the Facebook post here.