Beatport updates platform to include new sub-genres

Following the promise to focus on its core MP3 sales business, Beatport has updated its platform to include new sub-genres to allow users to find the music they love more easily.

When perusing the online music marketplace, one might now notice the future house, big room and dance labels, which have all been added to the genre database. This will mainly affect the overall house genre that these new classifications pertain to.

Terry Weerasinghe, Senior Vice President of Music at Beatport, recognizes that this was a necessary change to its existing platform: “It’s been our number one feature request for many years and we are now delivering on our promise. It’s not a step that we’ve taken lightly.”

As classifying sub-genres can be extremely difficult, Beatport linked up with an independent group of artists, DJs, A&Rs and label owners in order to ensure the proposed changes represent the current state of the dance music industry.

Weerasinghe also believes this recent update will allow new labels to get recognized as Beatport re-categorizes over 500,000 tracks: “Labels like Suara, Drumcode, Soma and Ostgut Ton are all having fantastic years but we’re hoping that this change also helps give exposure to more new and upcoming labels like Acido, Les Points and Whities.”

Beatport has also revealed that more sub-genres will be added in the future, but what those are remain to be seen.

Harrison is Mixmag's East Coast Editor. Follow him on Twitter here