Beatport Affiliate Temporary Cancellation Email

Beatport Affiliate Cancellation Email

The venerable Beaport, according to some the most popular DJ download store in America, continues to amaze us with their extraordinarily piss poor vendor support and customer service skills. Sure, we love the service, but they don’t seem to love us–the DJs, blogs and web sites that have helped them brand their service and become the first, succesful dance music download store on the Internet.

On October 20th, Netmix received a cryptic email from Beatport’s affiliate support department notifying us that we had been temporarily removed from their affiliate program. The email implied that we had done something wrong and our partnership is now terminated

All of the Netmix mix shows in the Podcast section have links to purchase titles through Beatport. Without prior notice, Beatport made a decision to shut down the program, without notifying us (or anyone else for that matter) in advance.

As you can see from the emails we have posted above, first we received notification of termination with no explanation. We replied to that email and received the second one, which simply confirmed everything.

If Beatport knew they were shutting down their affiliate program, didn’t they consider it would make sense to do it in phases? They should have let blogs and web sites know that they were going to terminate the service in 30-days time to give their partners (and I use that term very loosely) enough time to remove hard links to titles.

This is especially true in the case of a new DJ culture site, ILOVETHATTRACK.com, which provides DJs with the ability to upload play lists and link titles to services like Beatport for their fans to purchase and download. It must be a stunning blow to their revenue model. Maybe they have some side deal with Beatport to link up to an API or something, but after testing the site tonight, all the Beatport links are broken.

It’s got to be pretty devastating to a new service that is dependent on a partner like Beatport. Just pull the plug and lave ILoveThatTrack’s team high and dry to figure out something overnight. It’s not easy to make a wholesale change to your web database that pulled in and hosted all of those links. It will take days if not weeks and real, hard dollars to remove Beaport from their system, or switch to another service that may not have the same catalog.

This is why I’ve never been a big fan of the affiliate model. Your partner can pull the plug at any time and leave you holding the bag after you’ve invested time, resources and real dollars into building a business that depends on that ongoing relationship.

The company gets all the benefits of your partnership, especially in the form of marketing and promotion of their brand name, as well as the long term customers you’ve pushed into their system. Since you’re not taking the transaction, that customer is never really yours. Although ILoveThatTrack is a great service we hope succeeds, they’ll never be able to build a real business on the affiliate model for this very reason. You can see that dependency on affiliate partnerships as a revenue driver is a risky proposition. They’re going to have to go out and build a music service of their own to fulfill their customers expectations, if they haven’t started already.

It’s just another example of Beatport having absolutely no clue when it comes to relationship building with its partners. The perception is now that they’ve reached a certain level of success, let’s turn off the program that helped get tens of thousands (if not millions) of dollars in FREE exposure and good will through hundreds of web sites from around the world, without any prior warning.

One Beatport executive told me that there were a variety of problems with the affiliate program and it was costing the company more than it was making. Okay, we understand. You need to shut it down to ensure that you’re not spending more than you make.

But, the good will that has been squandered by just turning if off overnight is the same mistake that company after company has made with supporters, suppliers and vendors for hundreds of years. Has anyone at Beatport gone to business school? Don’t they read Seth Godin’s or Guy Kawaski’s blogs?

It’s part of the ethical code of running a business that you notify your partners well in advance that you are going to make a major change to your business model, which will affect their revenue and their content IMMEDIATELY. You must give your partners time to prepare. Beatport did not, and for that they deserve a letter grade of “F” for failure.

What’s worse is, not only did Beatport shut it down, but in our mind slapped all of its partners in the face by telling them that they’ve been removed from the program for negative reasons, without any explanation whatsoever. That’s real warm and fuzzy for ya! A great way to run a business in this day and age. Kick the people who put you where you are today.

Every time a company goes out and makes poor judgments like this one, they can’t expect to go back to the same people for support in the future. Why would anyone want to help you now? They’re probably laughing right now reading this, but I say to them, look at GM and Ford. Two of the greatest car companies in the world are on the brink of collapse, all because they refused to see the future.

Whether something is working on not, you have to ask yourself, is it in my best interest to shut the program down without any prior notification? Or, should I let everyone know what the deal is before I pull the plug? The way I work, I think letting people know is the fair and right thing to do. The way Beatport is run, it seems like a very few in that organization care about their customers or their partners. And that’s what the dance music industry never learns, which is certainly the subject of a future post: How come the dance music industry can’t get out of it’s own way?

It’s all about Beatport and no one else. That’s a lonely road to travel as your competitors chip away at your lead. Sounds like an election we just had.

– by Tony Z.

As you can see from the Netmix blog updates and sidebar, I mainly use Twitter as a quick communication tool that resides somewhere between the world of an IM, an email and a blog post depending upon how you look at it. It’s the world of “micro-blogging,” a form of blogging that takes place in around 140 characters or less.

Surely, many early adopters of Twitter know about Pownce and its other competitor, Jaiku. Although Twitter is extremely popular, Pownce takes the strategy one step further by allowing file sharing and video posts.

I’ve found that on Twitter, the network I’ve built so far is mainly DJs who are early adopters and web development industry folks I like to follow whose kernels of insight I generally find useful to add to my knowledge base. I’ve been a little afraid of Pownce after getting a few invites this week from spammers, which I don’t seem to get as much of from Twitter. However, I’m willing to give Pownce a shot, mainly to distribute my mix shows to a built-in community; much like I do on Facebook. I’d like to see them add a similar Flash audio player to Pownce in the same way Facebook recently enabled which has allowed me to simply post a link to my mix on someone’s profile page, where they can play the show (hosted on my server) immediately without having to download it. That’s a pretty neat feature of Facebook, which MySpace or Bebo have yet to implement.

Pownce was co-founded by Kevin Rose, a co-founder of Digg.com, the popular bookmarking site. So, it’s got some leverage behind it. Oddly enough, when I was in San Francisco for Web 2.0 Expo, Digg folk were using Twitter. That seemed to be the main form of communication. Twitter is having its fair share of issues with the Ruby On Rails framework it relies upon. Over the past week, the site has been hit with a number of outages. If that continues, look for Pownce to become quietly take the lead in the space. Twitter has got to get a hold on their issues. One of the main architects at Twitter, Blaine Cooke, recently broke with the company and word on the street is that they are going to build out the next version in PHP, which should be more stable and scalable, which depends on your viewpoint, but I’ll leave that up to the experts to figure out.

On the Powce site, you’ll find a set of Tools & Apps already being implemented to interface with other services like TypePad and even Drupal, two popular open source CMS platforms. And, you can add most of your social networks to the sidebar as well as web sites you want to promote or be associated with.

For me, Facebook is far and away a better platform to promote my DJ work. The group features are much cleaner and the simplicity of the interface is what continues to attract me to the site. I’m on another 60 or so social networks anyway, so why do I prefer Facebook over the others? It seems as if Facebook is now becoming the spot for a higher level of discourse than MySpace. On Facebook, there seem to lengthier conversations taking place, whereas on MySpace you have short bursts of promotion and it’s difficult to add friends of friends because of the lack of AJAX technology that makes clicking around in Facebook a bit more intuitive than MySpace. I think these new, micro-blogging services will bridge the gap somehow.

Jaiku’s website seems to still be in beta mode. You’re allowed only so many invites and at this point, it all has to be done by email, unlike Pownce which provides tie-in to all the major services, including Facebook and Gmail among others. The interesting take-a-way from Jaiku, is that the site allows you to add RSS feeds from a variety of services, as well as importing you blog postings via RSS, which allows for the ability to micro-blog your main blog postings. You can also set up Groups around a common theme, which should help build the community. I added DJs and Tech House to see who would join the party, which would make it easier to find and follow others.

All the services allow you micro-blog to your IM account. That’s a neat feature, but once I don’t use much at this point. I’m sure my friends don’t mind following me outside of IM, but inside IM would probably get annoying after a while. I mean…who has the time? LOL. If you have time for Twitter, then you have time for just about anything that comes down the road.

But I could be wrong and have been before. It’s just what I feel I’m getting out of it for me that counts the most.

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Okay, so the last few days have been slow on the Netmix front. Reason: I’ve been finishing up some homework for the end of the semester at NYU, where I’m taking classes towards a degree in Digital Communications and Media. Trying to consult to clients, get my DJ career back on track, go to school and be a great boyfriend to my girlfriend, Missy, certainly doesn’t leave a lot of room for much more. However, since I’m enjoying the independent freelance life and am between projects, it’s given me some downtime to think through some new ideas I’m putting in the pipeline.

First, I launched a splash page for my Product Development consulting company, NetmixMedia.com, which will also develop internal projects that I’ll cover to follow. NetmixMedia will specialize in Information Architecture, Usability and People-centered design of Web 2.0 sites and applications. I’m working with a LAMP, Flash, Flex and Ruby developers to execute exciting media projects for our clients. We just finished up a blog-a-zine project for a major media company and wrapped up a fix for a project for Pepsi Cola. The next project starts up in a few weeks and we’re fielding calls from a number of other organizations. Feel free to contact me with your RFP at info@netmixmedia.com.

Going out to Web 2.0 in San Francisco was incredibly inspiring. I also just joined a new Facebook group, Ultra Light Startups, which held its first meeting this week at the offices of Rose Ventures, a angel investment firm that operates Angelsoft, a web site that helps angel groups organize and search for new projects to invest in.

I’ve been working lately with a great group of guys who manage an offshore team and we’ve been discussing the opportunity to work together to build some cool applications for the DJ market. I’ve got a couple of things in mind that I’d love to launch in an “ultra light” kind of way and I’m looking for DJs, developers and other web savvy DJ culture oriented individuals who want to join in the fun and work together to bring this project out in a “Twitter-esque” manner. I’m already talking to some friends in San Francisco and a few here in New York. It’s exciting to have that bug again and I’m gearing up to bring the idea to market.

The domain I’ll be launching that will service the DJ market is DJGig.com. It’s not live yet. It’s in the planning stages now and there are a few hurdles to jump over before I get it up and running.

The second domain is EroticDisco.com. That’ll be a web site featuring the world’s hottest (as in looks and sex appeal) DJs. I may keep it all female or I may decide to open it up to men as well, to serve the both the ladies and the gay market. It’ll be tough because men who love to look at women won’t necessarily want to see male DJs on the home page, so it may have to have a dual entry page so we can keep things separate and cater to both audiences.

So, all you hot (looking) female and male Djs out there who want to submit photos or video, the rules will be no nudity (want to keep this clean as I can possibly keep it while pushing the envelope, of course) and the shots must be highly stylized and be in a nightlife environment. It’s about DJs and nightlife, so it has to be in that setting only. No bedrooms, no street shots. Nightclubs and lounges are the only acceptable environments.

As the blog grows, I will be producing a calendar and possibly a digital movie release for download. All entrants will have to sign agreements and once we select the top photos or videos for the calendar and digital movie release, we’ll negotiate licensing fees.

I’m just waiting on the designs from a young, talented designer from New York, Ann Li. Once those are approved, I’ll be integrating the theme into Wordpress and off we go. Stay tuned for more on this and other news.

Peace,

Tony Z.

So, I’ve been trolling the Expo floor looking for music industry compatriots. Nada. Nill. Nothing. I haven’t seen one person I know from the music industry here at the O’Reilly Web 2.0 Expo.

Now, I know we have our own conferences and agendas, but this Web 2.0 Expo is about SOCIAL MEDIA! One would think there should be record industry folk, artists, managers and other music industry people trying to learn and understand Facebook application development, how Open Social is going to transform their online promotion efforts, what cool mobile and web applications are in the works. Companies that showcase here don’t showcase at Music 2.0 conferences and vice versa.

I call for a convergent strategy. Music 2.0 folks should embrace Web 2.0 product development so they can learn how long it takes, how much it costs, how things go viral, the power of blogs and search and all the other intangible factors that going into making the 2.0 world such a force. They should be reaching out to the technology folks here to understand the power of the medium. I mean, how many folks do you know Twitter each other to meet at parties in NYC? Not many that I’m aware of. They may use it, but being out here you get the ethnographic viewpoint of why Twitter is so powerful. Artists should be using Twitter. DJs should also use Twitter to announce tracks they are playing, as they are being played. There are all sorts of uses.

I learned a lot here and will bring it back to NYC for much discussion. There is a Web 2.0 Expo scheduled for NYC in September. Maybe everyone’s holding out until then?

Oh…I almost forgot. The one company I met with, MixMatchMusic.com, are currently in beta. They’re building an online sequencing tool for musicians and DJs to produce with. It’s a software as a service online application. Their competitors are companies like Jamglue.com and SpliceMusic.com. They’ve got a bit of a different angle on it. I got an invite to the private beta and will let you know what I think in a future post.

Okay, so I promised myself I would blog about the O’Reily Web 2.0 Expo yesterday. Well, promises never last, or do they? I dunno. What I do know is that I’m exhausted from the following:

1. A 3-hour delayed flight Monday night on US Airways. Why I chose that airline is anyone’s guess. To make matters worse, I had the window seat in the last aisle behind the lavatory. Not a good look.

2. Getting 5 hours of sleep and hitting rush hour traffic on the 580 into the Bay Bridget. Fortunately, I made it through the tolls and go to the Flex workshop on time–with muffin and tea in hand.

3. Multiple workshops yesterday and then running to the Castro to pick up business cards from ClubCardPrinting.com, who did an excellent job by the way!

4. Not eating a thing between lunch and 12:30 am. So busy, I forgot to eat.

5. Heading to the Clearspring and Digg parties after the workshops with Jeff Roberto from Friendster and then standing outside of Mighty in the rain, all while waiting for a taxi to get back to the garage where I’d left the Ford Escape I should have driven to Mighty in the first place.

One of the top things I learned yesterday about blogging: make top five and top 10 lists, which have a higher probability of showing up in search results.

I’m headed out to San Francisco for next week’s O’Reilly/TechWeb Web 2.0 Expo. I’ll be arriving in San Fran on Monday night and attending the conference, workshops and trade show on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I hope to be able to blog and Twitter my travels and experiences all week, so stay tuned.

I’m actually looking for a last minute DJ gig in San Francisco on Tuesday or Wednesday night. I have my Ableton set up and would love to do a guest slot somewhere. So if you know of any cool parties that are going on, please let me know!