As a label owner, I get asked this question so often, and lots of people assume that the banners on Beatport are paid features. Luckily, or unfortunately, depending on how you perceive it, this is not the case. The banners are editorial, meaning that Beatport listen to the tracks, view the documentation that you or your distributor provides them, and make a judgement based on the quality of the track and your profile as an artist at any given point. You can increase your chances by making the release an exclusive on Beatport, however a number of other stores sometimes take exception to this and may not feature your release.
So, that’s all well and good, but what if Label Engine is your distributor, what can they do? Well firstly, we have an extremely good relationship with Beatport and you will see labels that we distribute getting features pretty much every week. We manage this by ensuring that we only work with labels that we consider to be putting out good quality releases, and also by manually checking every single track we upload for errors, thus reducing the amount of work Beatport has to do, thus keeping them happy. We also provide all our distributed labels with free access to our promotional system. This system allows you to send out each release to all of your artists plus any additional costs such as big name DJs or radio stations and ask them to provide feedback on the release. From this feedback we ask you to select up to 10 individual responses that you would like to send to Beatport, and also to provide any additional feedback you’ve received such as radio play, buzz chart positions, Soundcloud or hype machine plays etc. Provided you have done all this within the correct time frame (you must have selected feedback at least 2 weeks before the release date), we will send your feedback to Beatport and all other stores.
While this in no way GUARANTEES that you will receive a feature, by being consistent and putting out good quality releases that receive good feedback you will gain the attention of Beatport and will eventually get featured. Please note that we do not give priority to any label and we will not ask Beatport to give a particular release special attention. If your BIG release does not get featured please do not give up hope and stop investing in your label, Beatport deal with hundreds of new releases everyday and unfortunately some are always going to slip through the net. If your release is good enough it WILL make it into the chart and will get noticed.