The Lowdown
BPM Supreme is an easy to use and well-stocked record pool aimed at DJs that need chart and open format music. If you require more underground tracks, this service is not going to suit your needs but for mobile and wedding DJs it looks great.
Record pools have always been a useful tool for working DJs, and this was especially true in the heyday of vinyl DJing. With music now being distributed, sold, and consumed online, digital DJ download services have filled in as de facto replacements for record pools. In this review, we are going to take a closer look at the BPM Supreme DJ download pool. Let’s take the plunge…
Video Review
First Impressions / Setting up
The design of BPM Supreme is contemporary, which makes general navigation of the site easy. You have four tabs at the top of the page: Top Downloads, Radio Charts, Staff Picks and Newest Releases. Clicking any of these will take you the relevant page, showing the top five tracks from each different genre.
All the latest chart music is covered, as well as 80s, 90s and 2000s classics from different music genres: country, hip-hop, dance, rap, rock, latin and pop. If you are looking for more niche, underground tracks, BPM Supreme isn’t the right record pool for you.
In Use
Looking for a track is easy: use the search function to type in a track or artist name, and you can easily filter results by versions, BPM, and release date. It is quite bizarre that you can’t move around the site by clicking artist names, for example. If you see an artist you like, you will have to manually type the name into the search bar at the top of the page. This is the only thing I found wanting with BPM Supreme.
Preview player
BPM Supreme’s preview player allows you to preview the entire track from start to finish. The quality of the previews is reduced to save bandwidth, and as a result, the player loads tracks pretty much instantly (quality is not noticeably compromised).
There is also a useful drop down menu that pops up, showing alternate versions of the playing song, along with buttons to download the track individually or add to your crate, ready for batch downloading. Downloading is simple, just a click will automatically commence the download and all tracks are in 320kbps MP3 quality.
Music videos
BPM Supreme includes music videos at no additional cost to the standard subscription charge. This will please VJs and might even tempt those who fancy giving it a go to do so. Most of the videos here come with similar download options to the audio, including: clean / dirty edits, intro edits, and quick hits. Videos are downloaded in MP4 format at 640×360 resolution.
Premium membership
There is also the option of premium membership to BPM Supreme. This comes in at US$29 and the only difference between premium and standard membership is that with premium, you also get a DVD pre-loaded with the latest hit songs and video delivered to your address once a month.
This is reminiscent of a traditional record pool, and makes sense for DJs with poor connection speeds or those who want physical backups on discs. The music and videos on the DVDs are conveniently organised into folders and tagged, ready to be “dragged and dropped” into your DJ software of choice.
Conclusion
BPM Supreme is an easy to use and well-stocked record pool aimed at DJs that need chart and open format music. At only US$19 a month for unlimited downloads, it offers great value, and that includes music video downloads as well. The addition of artist links on the site would make browsing and digging around much easier. The only other con is if you require more underground tracks, this service is not going to suit your needs as it caters more to top40 chart DJs.
Overall, I would recommend BPM Supreme to any mobile or wedding DJ looking for a record pool. It would also be of use to beginner DJs who can sometimes struggle to find a single source to download their music from.
