Finding/Buying Music / DJ-Pools & Itunes

This topic has 5 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 9 years, 10 months ago by Bahstid.

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May 19, 2016 at 3:47 pm #2397041

Karlton Bethea
Participant

DJ Navigator,
Just a couple of questions:

1. What type of music do you play/like?
2. What’s your budget per month for music?

I find that different pools have better selection than others dependent upon your musical tastes. For example “beatport” caters to house heads (like me), but also offers a category for pop, hip hop, etc. They are just not as large as the house category. “Juno Downloads” is all about house/electro, DJ City is about the hip hop, and so on. Search around, you will find a sight that suites your needs. I subscribe to a few sites to meet my needs. To discover new music, try the download pools, going out to hear other DJ’s play and ask questions!

Karlton..

“If Music Be The Food Of Love, Play On”
-Billy Shakespear

May 19, 2016 at 4:45 pm #2397091

DJ Vintage
Moderator

iTunes and BeatPort will sort you for most kinds of music, including plenty of remixes. Compared to the old days of 15 to 25 dollar for a 12″, the current pricing between 1 and 2 dollars a track is still almost for free.

As for quality. iTunes sells you 256kbps AAC, qualitywise this is equal to 320kbps MP3 like you can get from (for example) BeatPort. Some even claim a slight advantage for AAC, but this is something I never managed to establish, despite various blind listening tests. With iTunes and BeatPort you can be reasonably certain that the quality you order is that actual quality. This may not be true for all DJ Pools. Even a 320MP3 might just be a recompression of a 128MP3 “original”.

If you can get it (BeatPort offers it at a premium), always get losless (WAV or FLAC) as your original files. After/during prepping them make sure you save them as either 320MP3 or 256AAC for actual playing out.

Keep your WAV/FLAC/Other format originals separately, so you can always go back to them. In light of recent experiences with Apple’s Music service, I’d opt for an external backup as well, far away from the clutches of Apple.

May 20, 2016 at 12:15 am #2397261

Gideon Nielsen
Participant

Thanks guys, will look into Beatport more.

Carlton Bethea,
I haven’t really set a budget monthly yet, I probably should…
Since I am new I guess that buying 20-30 tracks should do it, as I need to practice
the fundamentals a lot.

I still have yet to really know the genres and the exact differences, although
I like a lot of different house genres and progressive stuff.
Artists include Eric Prydz, Pryda, Deadmau5, Kygo, Avicii, a lot of the 120-130
but also like random tracks here and there in a variety of other genres.

—-
Do I need to change anything in Itunes if I download an ACC-file if I have put
it on MP3?
And… When downloading and buying any files, does Itunes keep the files within Itunes,
so they are safe on the computer?
– but should I still save the actual files in a folder on the computer too besides the
backups?

May 20, 2016 at 12:18 am #2397271

Gideon Nielsen
Participant

I really like Nigel Stanford, Worakl and Ryan Farish as well and they seems to be no where to be found but Itunes.

May 20, 2016 at 4:22 am #2397301

Bahstid
Participant

It tends to cater for more underground tastes (and needs some work on the interface) but I’ve been using https://www.digital-tunes.net/ for most of my purchases recently.
Giving them a shout for 2 reasons: Firstly they don’t overinflate their prices for buying lossless (same reasonable price regardless of your choice of format), and also like the fact that they’ll zip up all your tunes into a single download file for you rather than making you have to click each file for download.
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