Beatport Acquires Sounds To Sample
Beatport has acquired UK-based Sounds To Sample, a sample/loop online download service. The move confirms that Beatport is currently gearing up to offer their own branded sample service in the near future, a logical progression from merely offering song downloads.
Sounds To Sample joins the ever-expanding Beatport family of services, which include the Beatport online store, the Beatportal blog, and the newly launched fan membership service BeatportMix.com. Sounds To Sample
will allow Beatport to extend their market reach into a new niche by selling copyright-free audio samples and loops for use in productions.
“Beatport has always been about helping DJs create unique performances and mixes. With Sounds To Sample we are very excited to supply content that goes one step deeper into the creative process by providing the building blocks producers use to make original tracks. This is an amazing opportunity for Beatport to expand and offer a more complete level of service to our community who are involved in all facets of music innovation,” said Beatport CEO Matthew Adell. (Wait…isn’t Jonas Tempel Beatport’s CEO? Apparently not – more on this below. —Ed.)
Sounds To Sample launched in 2007 as one of the first online sample download resources, a market that has exploded in the last several years. With a list of labels that range from Sample Magic to Sony, Sounds To Sample’s current library includes half a million samples from a variety of genres that include house, soul, hip-hop, funk, rock, and pop.
The Future: Although this is an adroit move for Beatport and a natural extension of their core market, you have to wonder why they needed to go out and purchase an existing store instead of just cutting deals with the copyright holders, like they do with record labels. However, it appears that they intend to begin producing samples and loops in-house, and the buy out was a nice way to create an instant library for a quick launch.
The other interesting aspect of this release is the first public quote from Matt Adell, Beatport’s new CEO. As mentioned above, Jonas Tempel has reduced his role at Beatport and is now the “Chairman,” but we’re getting some chatter that Tempel’s original core team has been moving on from the online dance pioneer…we’ve reached out to Mr. Tempel for his take on the matter and are awaiting an official statement. Stay tuned…
While you contemplate the future of Beatport, you might as well load up on 5 GBs of free sounds from Sounds to Sample.
