The tagline of Amateur’s House clearly states that I write about the stuff in dance music that others won’t. And here’s another one of those subjects that affects music producers all over the place, yet the dance music press seems curiously reluctant to cover.

Websites that, in exchange for a subscription, give away the music of artists and labels without having the rights to do so. One of those is House Music Record Pool.

Run by someone called Dominic Lewis, (otherwise known as DJ Sky Trini) the site claims to be “an online digital record pool, providing access to pre-release records, effectively playing and promoting new songs, getting the songs to ’break’ or catch on in your market”. Whoever wrote this stuff either doesn’t speak English very well, or they’ve done a weekend course on mastering word salads.

For those DJs who cannot be bothered actually paying for music from the stores, they offer three subscription packages. Starting from $25 per month, and go all the way up to $200 per year, they claim only to be available for “DJs” – yet there is no explanation as to how this rule is enforced or what they categorise as a DJ. Anyone stupid enough to hand over their money, perhaps?

Sky Trini poses as a person who loves “house music works”, according to his personal Facebook page – whilst seemingly denying one of his favourite labels the chance to make some money by selling over 500 acapellas in a single pack. Or his recent boast that he’ll sell you the entire Traxsource top 100 in any number of categories for just $20.

The website has no details on whether its services are legal. Are the artists and labels whose music is inside the record pool adequately compensated for the use of their music? And how do they obtain all this music that hasn’t been released yet? How many subscribers does this service have? How much money does he personally make from this service?

House Music Record Pool have been contacted for comment – they have not yet replied at the time of going to publication…

By The Editor

Editor-in-chief at Amateur’s House.