A while ago now, your favourite blog spoke about Beatport Link. There appears to be money to be made in streaming – certainly not for the artists, but plenty for the labels and plenty for the streaming platforms themselves. Hence why Daniel Ek is worth billions and the average songwriter is broke.

So it’s no mystery why Beatport are getting into the streaming game. Indeed, I strongly suspect a number of other digital dance music stores are looking closely at how they get on. But the question I posed, because I simply couldn’t work it out, was – who is Beatport Link actually aimed at?

Well, a quick look at the terms and conditions of Beatport Link’s service reveals a clue. It turns out it doesn’t cover you for using it in nightclubs – that requires a public performance licence…

This leaves one or two interesting dilemmas. Such as how this policy would be enforced. Let’s say a DJ uses Beatport Link in a nightclub and it turns out this venue has no public performance licence. How would Beatport know the user had used the service improperly?

It also results in a situation where you could use Beatport Link to practice your DJing at home – but later potentially discover you don’t have a copy of a certain track you were hoping to play. Strictly speaking, you can’t actually use Beatport Link to record a set to post on Soundcloud – because they don’t have the licences required for this purpose. Again, how would Beatport stop it?

The simple truth is they can’t – and they probably know it. Either way, I just don’t see this streaming service becoming dance music’s own Spotify…

Someone somewhere is benefitting from streaming. But whom? It’s certainly not the artists whose music is on such services. They’re being paid a pittance for the use of their work. And it’s not even really the listeners – who only have access to that music so long as it’s available on their streaming service of choice.

No, streaming ultimately benefits the people behind the streaming companies – yes, I’m looking at you, Daniel Ek, – and the major labels, who make around £1million per hour from it. Now, Beatport has always been a bit more about the money than other dance music stores – not something I mind too much, because they’ve always been more open about it than others.

But even I have to ask questions about why exactly they’re now promoting a Beatport streaming service – and who’s going to benefit from it. A monthly subscription to the platform will cost $9.99 – the reason why that’s always the price is explored here, by the way – and lets you stream as much as you like from their store. Perfect for DJs with super fast internet and a strong wifi connection.

However, how many nightclubs are going to have super fast internet and strong wifi connections? Given that dancefloors are designed with the primary purpose in mind, it doesn’t somehow make sense to install a wifi point in there for the best signal – yet if this kind of streaming is to become normal in the DJ booth, that’s what’ll have to happen in a lot of clubs.

I honestly don’t know who Beatport are aiming this at. Perhaps there are far more bedroom DJs out there than I give credit for, and it might work nicely for some of the younger ones – those who don’t know anything other than streaming.

But for everyone else? I’m yet to be as convinced as Beatport apparently are…