Beatport Beta

No sooner had I mentioned it last week in my Round Up feature than what else should show up in my inbox than an invite to check out the brand new, flashless Beatport site. Now, I'm sure it's just that they're working through all of their users so as to not crash the site, but I'd like to think it was somehow good karma!

So, off i hurried to register for my invitation code (go here is you're keen) and dove straight into a new world of html Beatport, here's what I found...

Home is where the heart is

Or at least that's how the saying goes. Now, I'm not a big fan of change, but Beatport was well overdue an upgrade so it's good the look and feel is so much more magazine looking than the old technological interface.

In today's modern world the Internet is a very clever thing, if I type something in Google the ads will change to catch my attention and so the fact that Deep House hit home early on was a winner. Likewise Robert Owens is a good start, and like all good adventures there's some mystery too with Simko and D-Nox making me at least think of checking them out. The search field and genres are big, too big, I think meaning you need to scroll down to see all of the content on the page. And it gets more frustrating when you select a genre and go on to play a track or two.

Back to the old scroll

There was a time on the web when popular theory had it that the more info there was on a page the better. Google's changed a lot of that as far as I know in recent times, now sites with more pages fair better on search rankings, so I was a bit puzzled as to why the guys at Beatport had gone for the lengthy scroll - in fact, as you can see from my patched together image, to get to the very bottom of the page was three entire pages of info and I'm on a 27" monitor, if you're on a smaller laptop or an iPad you're set for some serious amount of scrolling!

Layout wise I really like it, cleans and simple, very clear where things are from here. Although I did find going backwards wasn't well mapped on the navigation and I often reverted to the back button. In fact there's very little navigation at all - unlike the breadcrumbs (as they call them) on the old site.

From here my usual routine would be to flick through the new releases, check out what labels that don't support um have stuff out and then add them to the play list.

The Player

And away we go, the player opens and plays from the very top of the window,with the bank of tracks in the play list accessed via the drop down menu on the far right.

Now here's a nice little innovation. The new functionality includes key commands for navigating the previewed track and entire play list.

Key Commands

I got the feeling the site was much more geared around you spending a lot of time listening in detail to a lot more of the music, which sounds good to me and obviously makes good business sense to Beatport. If there was one thing I often found about the previous Beatport was that the preview clip you had wasn't enough or didn't reflect the entire track very well. Now with two minute previews and the track loading almost instantly things look to be heading in the right direction without compromising the tunes to pirates.

My Beatport

This section has had an overhaul too. Now accessed from the tab on the left margin it opens to show the artists or labels you follow and a date of their last release. Nice detail but I'm nowhere near disciplined enough to remember when I was last looking for tunes.

Clicking on a selected label or artist takes you to a screen more akin to the one the old site used to give you to add options of who to follow once you'd purchased music on the site.

I'll admit I got a bit confused at this point, but I'm sure with a bit more trial and error on my part it'll come to be much more valuable than the genre homepage. Why? Well from here I can play tunes or add them to the play list from a more defined list of things I'm following and of course buy them.

Drilling into the releases

It's nice to see a bigger sleeve artwork picture, especially as I remember tracks much more by what they look like than their names. This release only had 6 tracks in it and I had to scroll down again to see number six on the list.

Now I've not tried reducing the font size to see if that cures it, but by now I was a bit fed up of the scrolling around. I should point out that everything scrolls under the player panel, so it stays with you all the time - again, I took this as a sign Beatport were designing this to focus me on the music much more than previously.

Another thing worth mentioning I think (but not shown on Drumpoets release) is that under the Release Date, Label, Cat No bit (far left) some release have a kind of press release - which I liked. It gives you a bit of background and info on the release - as long as the labels and distributors use it correctly and don't start telling me what the music I'm listening to sounds like it could be a good feature.

Social connections

Whilst the site's only a Beta they've not hooked up the functionality fully, meaning a Facebook share posted this on my profile page.

From this little glimpse I think it's fair to say the full site will post a sleeve image and a player of some sort under the title - here's hoping they stick with the way it was with the old site and you can play it within Facebook - something that Soundcloud seem to have moved away from or Facebook have blocked of late. From a usability perspective it's better to allow users to stay within their current site to preview and then jump away to purchase, than have to leave your current site straight away - (if you ask me, which they haven't!).

And finally the money shot

So, once you've explored the site, checked out a load of tunes and popped a select few in your cart comes the moment of pain - paying for them. 

Nothing much to report here, all as you'd expect it. I use the Beatport Downloader app or at least I used to, so I'm hoping that's going to still work as it suits my methods of importing tracks and getting them tagged up ready for Traktor.

Taking a leaf out of Amazon even at this last moment the new site is suggesting tracks you might like to buy. The 'Recommended' tracks at this stage were not really my kind of thing, with links to releases from Toolroom, Aus, Sheeva and the like - which maybe is deliberate - try and get me to venture into new avenues. Like I said I don't like change much so stayed clear!

So, what's the verdict?

Like all good sites, I'm sure the new Beatport is a work in progress and the more we use it the more it'll learn about us, making it better and more in tune with our wants. I'm a little disappointed they've not integrated the Beatportal side of things, at this stage anyway. If the drive is to get us listening to more music I could easily have coped with more content to browse while I play. Load up the play list and read the latest news - maybe I should copyright that idea quickly! 

I did find the scrolling a bit frustrating (I may have mentioned it already?), but the design is nice and fresh, much more user friendly despite the My Beatport seeming a bit of a beast at first glance. Likewise the DJ Charts bit was a bit scary, and the new look artists pages are perhaps a bit less impressive than they were.

The move away from Flash brings Beatport into the modern era, and I'm hopeful they'll be able to build from here given that they can now add things easily and without a total rebuild as they would have had to with the old site. 

I do think more content is needed to give you something a little extra. The artists pages are a perfect example - a little bio and links there would wipe Resident Advisor off the planet and enhance the digital presence of producers around the world - maybe they're working on that right now while I check out their feedback forum to see what everyone else is saying.