The Lowdown
A new site for discovering DJ music, thanks to its specialist recommendations. Since it’s still in its infancy, some genres have shallow search returns and it’s not without a few bugs. Still, could develop into a handy tool for crafting DJ playlists and checking out new music.
In Use
The interface at first seems cluttered and rather clunky, but getting used to the way the page is laid out takes only a few seconds. After the usual sign up procedures, you can begin to make full use of the site. On the upper right is the search field, and typing in an artist or song brings you a list of the available tracks that the site pulls from YouTube. On the left, you can find buttons for your Buy List (you can purchase from iTunes, Juno or Beatport), your Viewing History and Playlists that you’ve made.
Typing in the search field lets you scour Moretrax’s database of tracks, and clicking on one of the choices brings up a window that streams the song from YouTube. You can then save it to a playlist, purchase it through any of the music shops or search more songs from the same artist.
The essence of this entire service, however, is the “Related” button at the lower right, which brings up another window with track recommendations based on the Moretrax algorithm. Click on any of the choices, and the cycle begins again. Wash, rinse repeat.
This is where you determine whether the site is for you or not: Your recommendations come from the DJs and music specialists behind Moretrax, which may or may not be to your liking.
If you’re a club DJ that plays house/trance/ EDM, Moretrax will suit your preference, as evidenced by a quick search we did using anyone in the Top 10 of the DJ Mag Top 100. The results are plentiful (Tiesto alone has 3000+), and there are some pretty cool Related tracks that get recommended. However, the site does have the occasional oddball, such as this one:
It was nowhere near the track I had searched (this sounds more like an R&B track), and when I clicked on the iTunes and Beatport links, this is what I got:
Not only did the site send me to the wrong searches on both music portals, but the results had nothing to do with the YouTube video I was watching in the first place!
What if you aren’t a club DJ, and you tend to play more indie-pop/college radio tunes? Moretrax still has you covered, although the selection isn’t as deep:
Conclusion
Of course, the site is still in its infancy and we’re quite sure that all of these small bugs will get sorted out by the Moretrax team, but it’s not yet at the stage where we’d recommend dropping all your music digging habits altogether for it. It relies on the music being on YouTube, too, which of course not all tracks are, and even then music won’t appear unless it’s also on the Moretrax database.
Despite these issues though, we think the team behind this has a potentially good service on its hands. By positioning itself as a DJ service, Moretrax can potentially serve with its market more effectively than general music services, but ultimately it’s up to DJs whether or not they would use the service.
As for us, we certainly recommend that you sign up and give this a try (it’s free after all) because things should only get better for the site from here on in, and any good music discovery system can benefit from having a mixture of sources, curated and algorithm based. Right now, I think the best way to approach this service is to use it as an augmentation to your current music research methodology.
