Having only just blogged about Beatport’s new website being thoroughly overdue I came across an email from Beatport deep in a pile of unread stuff which announces that the new site is being launched on January 21st 2009! Hurrah!

Screengrab of Beatport's new interface

The teaser site has a “senses” theme (hearing, touching, tasting, seeing and smelling) and seems to hint that the new Beatport site will be the dogs knackers.  They say they’ve been listening to their customers and are promising lots of cool new features.  I hope so, although I’m not sure quite how I am going to “smell” my music…

As I write only the hearing part of the 5 “senses” is active.  It explains that the preview player has finally been overhauled to make it easier to browse music.  The video “tutorial” is a bit disappointing and sometimes mind-numbingly dull (”click the up arrow to go up…. and click the down arrow to go down…” – no shit Sherlock).

It looks like they haven’t gone for the “needledrop” style player that DJDownload has which is a crying shame because that is one of the best things about DJDownload and to be able to have a full track preview is incredibly useful.  However, Beatport in their infinite wisdom have stuck with a 2 minute sample.  Their “enhanced music player” (*cough*) does its usual scrubbing (jump the playhead about) and has been given a volume control (much needed) and a playlist (much needed).  Which basically means it’s now inline with how DJDownload’s preview player worked 2 years ago.  Hmmm… Beatport seem to have made the most important part of the site not so much “enhanced” but incredibly average!

So a rather disappointing look at the preview player to start with.  Hopefully the other senses will prove more impressive.

So checkout http://www.thenewbeatport.com for a teaser “trailer” and a sneak preview of the upcoming features of the new site.

Beatport's new player

Beatport's new playlist queue