Beatport raises prices up to 20% starting yesterday

As inflation rose over the years, Beatport has stayed in its lane by not following the trend from 2005. However, for the first time in 18 years, one of the leading streaming platforms in dance music has raised its prices. The price hike was announced a few days ago but had just been implemented yesterday, August 14, 2023.

Beatport has stated “We operate a revenue share model and pay the majority of our revenue out to artists and labels” and with rising economic factors and the need to keep rolling out tech improvements, there was no other choice for the company.”

They also mentioned that this decision was made with the contribution and input from artists and labels.

A rise in revenue share aims to provide a boost as well as improve customer experience. Low royalty payouts in music are (unfortunately) nothing new, with many streaming services pushing out profits to artists that don’t make ends meet — hence Beatport’s business model of making sure they are able to continue supporting artists through inflation and the rising costs of production.

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An in-house study by the company shows that Beatport did in fact have the highest streaming payouts compared to others such as Tidal, Spotify, Apple Music and Soundcloud.

Throughout the years, Beatport has improved its tech through the expansion of services, new features and products. Some of these include DJ charts, music discovery tools and playlists.

In addition to increasing the prices, the company will also be allowing purchased tracks to be re-downloaded up to five times without time constraints. Users will require a Beatport subscription and will have 48 hours to download those purchases.

However, users have found it ‘convenient’ that Beatport’s need to increase prices comes at a time when other platforms have also increased their costs — platforms such as Spotify, Hulu, Disney+ and Netflix which went through a large crackdown on password sharing.

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The price breakdown is listed below with stark differences from each currency. Those paying in AUD will have an increase of 20%, while GBP prices will be up 15%, USD up 13% and EUR up 7%.

USD
General catalogue: $1.49
New Release: $1.69
Exclusive: $2.49
Lossless fee: $0.75

EUR
General catalogue: € 1.39
New Release: € 1.59
Exclusive: € 2.39
Lossless fee: € 0.75

GBP
General catalogue: £ 1.14
New Release: £ 1.30
Exclusive: £ 1.86
Lossless fee: £ 0.75

AUD
General catalogue: AU$ 2.09
New Release: AU$ 2.29
Exclusives: AU$ 3.09
Lossless fee: AU$ 0.80

Via: Beatport

Miki Kitasako is Mixmag Asia’s Social Media and Content Producer, follow her on LinkedIn.