Announcing the NEW Beatport

Announcing the NEW Beatport

16 May, 2011 | 2.21AM

• Written by: Beatportal
• Filed under: Music News: access, beta, codes, new beatport, public beta

By now you’ve surely heard the news: change is in the air at Beatport. Specifically, we’re rolling out a brand-new version of the site: new features, new design, and a new platform that’s going to make Beatport faster, smarter, and more flexible.

Not long ago, we launched a Private Beta, and we’ve been hard at work addressing feedback and folding suggestions into the site. This week, we’re opening up the Beta and giving our community the first shot at getting a piece of the action.

We’re releasing codes every hour on beta.beatport.com. Check back often, as they go quick! Plus, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for more chances to get in to the #newbeatport. We’re also giving away invites each day to people who purchase on the site. We’ll email random users each day with access codes.

So what’s new? Read on to find out.

For starters, we’ve abandoned Flash and moved over to HTML5, making Beatport accessible across a much wider range of devices; the shift also addresses serious usability issues for our visually impaired customers.

We’ve overhauled search and implemented a cleaner, brighter layout, with vastly improved sorting and filtering options to allow you to drill down to exactly the track you’re looking for. Discovering new music has never been easier, with the BeatBot recommendation engine just a click away, no matter where you are within the site.

Like what you hear? Want to promote a release of your own? Share on Facebook or Twitter in just two keystrokes.

Previewing tracks takes on a whole new dimension with the addition of graphical waveforms; use keyboard shortcuts to navigate your playlist on the fly. And we’ve added BPM and key information for every track. (As you can guess, automated BPM/key detection isn’t perfect, so we’re keeping a channel open for the Beatport community to correct us when we’ve got it wrong. Crowdsourcing, baby!)

That’s just the beginning: as we continue to develop the new site, we’ll be rolling out all kinds of new features.

Nervous about change? Don’t worry, the original Beatport.com isn’t going away just yet: both the new and the old sites will be available for some time, allowing you to switch between the two, as you like.

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• Get your access code at beta.beatport.com