Beatsource Names A-Trak as Board Member

Beatsource, the new digital music service for open-format DJs, has added A-Trak to its board of managers.

Beatsource is a joint venture between Beatport and DJcity. It was announced in February.

A-Trak said in the press release:

“Genre-specific stores don’t reflect the DJ landscape anymore. The open-format DJ community has needed a home where we can find all the music we need, curated by like-minded people we respect. Both Beatport and DJcity have been vital to the health of DJ culture for many years, and I’m honored to work with their teams to bring some great products to market.”

He added on Instagram:

View this post on Instagram

Here we go! I'm excited to join the board of managers at @beatsourceofficial, the new venture between @beatport & @djcity. There are some challenges that need to be met to improve DJs' experience in shopping for music. On one hand there is curation, and Beatsource will be an open format store. The idea of genre-specific stores is dated. Beatsource is built by Beatport + curated by DJ City's trusted team, followed by DJs around the world. On the other hand there is tech: as the music industry fully embraces streaming, DJs will need solutions to play songs from lockers where their song library is stored offline. This new technology opens the door to a bunch of other advancements: new types of promo pools with tracked plays; even tackling the problem of performance royalties for songs played by DJs. There is a lot at hand here. By joining the board, my role is to give input that represents the entire DJ scene. I'm happy to be involved!

A post shared by A-Trak (@atrak) on Aug 19, 2019 at 4:25pm PDT

Beatsource President Brian “DJ Quickie” Wong says:

“He is absolutely the perfect fit to help our organization as an advisor. We all know him as one of the greatest DJs ever and as a passionate advocate for the open format DJ, but it’s his creativity in business that is going to be so valuable as our company innovates and leads the DJ world into the streaming era.”

The public beta of Beatsource’s download store is set to launch in September. Its streaming service, Beatsource, is expected to release at the end of 2019. Based on Beatport’s patented technology, the streaming service will integrate the Beatsource music store into DJ software and hardware and will include offline streaming.

McDaniels recently spoke with Music Week about the future of Beatport and DJ streaming.