A new streaming music service called Pulselocker has launched, targeting EDM DJs and fans. Pulselocker is the brainchild of industry veterans Ben Harris, Alvaro Velilla, and Josh Goltz. You may be more familiar with Harris’ fomer gig as a member of Dirty Vegas, while Velilla formerly worked with the world famous club franchise Pacha. The trio built the online service with aims at creating a more sustainable consumption method for DJs.
At first glance, the user interface and functionality seem remarkably similar to other streaming services like Spotify and Rdio. Indeed, users may freely stream content, discover music, create playlists and purchase the music that they want to hold on to. What sets this service apart from others is the ability to “rent” music to your personal locker. The service is paid for in a subscription based model, which has tiers from $9.99 per month for 25 tracks to $59.99 per month for 1,000 tracks.
Users may swap tracks in and out as they please and once saved to the digital locker, users may sync up their rented tracks to Traktor or Serato. The software restricts access of rented content to their officially supported DJ platforms. Currently, Traktor and Serato are the only DJ platforms officially supported, but I’m guessing you can look for others to be supported in the future. There is no telling what kind of impact Pulselocker will make on the industry, but it is refreshing to see new methods of music delivery and monetization. With the opportunity to monetize music via streaming, downloads, and rentals, there is a good chance that this could be a huge win for producers. Pulselocker is steadily bringing on more labels and distributors to their service, but DJs may still opt for other services offering larger catalogues and exclusivity. The company is growing their catalogue, recently agreeing to a deal with Merlin, who's 20,000 labels and distributors Make Up about half of Pulselocker’s 4 Million tracks currently offered. For DJs looking for an affordable alternative to purchasing tracks (or pirating them,) this may be the ideal solution. Then again, fresh and timely music matters more in EDM than anywhere else. Whether or not the service is highly adopted will most likely be determined by their access to new and exclusive tracks.
It’s an exciting time for an industry driven by technology, and Pulselocker has pushed things forward by offering a service that benefits producers as well as consumers.
Brandon Cook is the Cofounder of Topple Track, a leading content strategy and anti-pircacy company specializing in EDM. Topple Track helps artists, labels, and music distributors protect and monetize their digital content.
