So Beatport is releasing pre-order early released tracks. The buy icon is usually orange instead of green and you can put them in your shopping cart and buy them but you can’t download them till after the release date.
Headache #1 : You can’t put them in your hold bin. So let’s say I have 20 tracks to purchase and 10 of them are presale. I have to buy them all or I have to delete the pre-order tracks (tip: Take a screenshot and go back later and search for them and put them back in your shopping cart again)
Headache #2
Some of the “presale” tracks are already available. Just search for them and boom ! there they are. Ready to buy and download right now.
It’s great for promo (You can post your purchase links ahead of time), but is a headache from the buyer standpoint. Go to genre, choose tracks, then select “today” in order to get only purchasable releases that came out today (Last 7 Days, Last Month, etc. to go further back).
Just release the track and start making money. Preordering in the digital realm is completely pointless for users, and greedy for labels. I’ve hated it in the games industry for ages, and now I hate it in the music industry. At least in games there’s an argument that theres lag between the time a game is feature complete and when it’s ready… that’s time you can get people preordering. It doesn’t take a month to get a track ready for release.
We’ve seen an uptick in sales since pre-orders became available on Beatport and Amazon. The average user builds a cart over a few days then checks out all at once rather than checking out every day.
Again, I see the consumer frustration, but it works going both ways.
If I have a gig this weekend and the tracks in my cart are not available till after the gig why would I buy them?
I’m sure a lot of people delete them and only purchase the available tracks. Then they might never go back in and buy them. The anti-hold bin feature is just bullshit.
Like I said I take a screenshot and then try to go back and find them again. But so far I have yet to even do that because in the meantime I’ve found a bunch of other great tracks. And having to look up screenshots and search is rather cumbersome.
