Why pick Beatport over iTunes?

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
1

Why pick Beatport over iTunes?

So I’m sitting here trying to decide where would be the best place to buy my music from and a big question popped up.

Why would anyone pick beatport over iTunes?

Are there advantages to this when it comes to djing/producing?

2

Better quality. iTunes sells tracks at 256 kbps, I believe. Beatport has tracks at 320 kbps. Beatport is worth it if you’re serious about DJing.

3

Itunes encodes with aac which, from my understanding, is at least as good as a standard 320. People generally pick beatport because of selection of underground tunes and the interface layout with searching by sub genres. Not sure If you can search that way in itunes, but If you can find a track for cheaper, go for it.

4

Gotcha, so there would be no issue trying to produce or dj with tracks from itunes?

5

Nope. Same tracks, different quality.

6

What kind of stuff you’re after? if you’re after underground/electronic stuff definitely check Bleep/Boomkat/Digital-Tunes/Surus/Juno, much better alternatives to BP and iTunes

7

The search function in iTunes sucks. You really need to know what you’re looking for. Beatport also allows you to search things you weren’t specifically looking for. You can spend literally days on beatport digging for tunes.

8

i buy lossless.

9

The biggest thing that keeps me coming back to beatport is the interface. It’s just so much easier to find what I’m looking for, both because of their search filters and because of the mybeatport section. While you certainly shouldn’t limit yourself to just beatport if you want a good selection of tunes, there are plenty of advantages that make it my first stop every monday.

10

You don’t produce with someone else’s music :wink:

11

dont dj with itunes music 256kbps is a freaking joke and its whats wrong with the music industry

12

There’s nothing wrong with the VBR AAC encoding (actually >256kbps peak) used for Itunes music. Noone can hear the difference between that and a CD.

13

  1. Beatport has a much larger selection.

  2. Beatport offers lossless files.

14

I can hear the difference. I swear everytime I download from them it sounds distorted and im not about to blast that over a good sound system. I mean if your playing at parties or a whole in the wall bar who cares, but anywhere respectable dont be using such bad quality. And they need to start offering better quality downloads imo

15

“Good” sound systems do not exist in DJing and other live music performances. Loud != good.

16

beatport isn’t your only alternative to itunes. check out juno and djtunes also.

17

I’d go beat port if I wanted loseless but if I’m looking for MP3’s and they’re cheaper on iTunes I’ll definitely buy off of there.

18

For what its worth, I have also seen it claimed that 256 AAC is equivalent to 320 mp3. I think it was in an article on Digital DJ tips about file formats. I have no idea if that’s true, as I have never purchased anything from itunes.

19

It’s not hardcapped at 256kbps btw. I have an Itunes track here that’s at 274.

MP3 and AAC tend to level out at high bitrates though.

20

I’ve heard this too and honestly, I can’t hear a difference between the two… If anything I think the 256 AAC has a crisper sound.