Last night, we caught wind of a new Tumblr page, Beatport Banned Tracks, which does nothing but post tracks that are said to have been banned from Beatport. While there was much discussion between the EDM Internets last night regarding what this Tumblr could mean, we hit them up to see if they could shed some light (we also hit up a rep for Beatport, looking for official word from them). We have a feeling everyone was hitting them up, though, as today they dropped a new post entitled "Important. Please Read." So we read it.
In this post, Beatport Banned Tracks confirmed that they were not affiliated with Beatport. They say that they have an automated system that "monitors tracks / Top 100 in all genres on the Beatport website," letting them know when something has vanished (they then confirm it themselves before posting it, apparently). One thing that many questioned was the "restricted by territory" note on the pages of these "banned tracks," and explain it this way: "Because Beatport like to come across as being politically correct. We have enough friends around the world who can double check as to whether or not a track has been restricted for all territories before we post it."
BBT also says that Beatport usually bans tracks for two weeks, after which "the label can redeliver a track & it will be available again on different link. Thats why the old link still shows up as a banned track even though it is available again via a new link." How they know any of this information, or why they started tracking these releases, is not addressed. One thing they might need to start addressing is the comments, which already has the likes of Big Beat talking about speaking to lawyers. It also looks like, based on the comments, that they could be pulling "vanished" tracks that have more than just copyright issues among them?
It'll be interesting to see how this one plays out.
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