Following on from our story about this earlier this week, we can confirm today that Beatport has acquired DJ-focused streaming music service Pulselocker, and looks set to relaunch the service under the Beatport brand in Q3 2018.
The developments to this story surfaced on Billboard earlier today, and have been confirmed by both a statement from Beatport’s CEO Tobb McDaniels, and the existence of a page on Beatport’s site where existing Pulselocker users will be given advice on what happens next (the page is at beatport.com/pulselocker).
Beatport’s CEO statement
“Pulselocker spent years developing an innovative solution that provides DJs with the flexibility to access the content they want when they want it – all through the DJ software they want to use – while providing copyright holders with the security and tracking mechanisms to calculate royalty payments.
“Beatport is committed to delivering the best tools to create a more seamless and interoperable user experience for our massive ecosystem of DJs, and Pulselocker accelerates our timeline to deliver just that type of product.”
Pulselocker was kind of like “Spotify meets DJ download pool”: You had cloud access to millions of tunes, and could make playlists and so on – but it differed in that you could also play those tunes directly from within your DJ software, and make them available offline from there, too.
This meant you were effectively subscribing to a practically unlimited record collection for your gigs (and didn’t need internet when DJing). It was available in Serato DJ, Rekordbox DJ, Virtual DJ and other DJ platforms too =- but folded earlier this year, leaving users high and dry.
Would you sign up for this were it to relaunch under Beatport’s brand? Let us know your thoughts below…
Phil Morse
