Holy Recommended Batman!

Our new recommended feature has left me speechless and excited.

I take a lot of pride in keeping up to date with the music on the site. I thought that I had heard most of the tracks on the site that fit my taste (house, deep house, electro house). Then I decided to check out the new “Recommended  Tracks” feature that I found after logging in on the top right of the site near the ‘my account’ button and media player.

If you have made a purchase before with Play It Tonight we will personally choose and recommend similar popular tracks to you that you will like. If you haven’t made a purchase then nothing will show under recommended tracks.

When I logged in for the first time yesterday as a customer and checked the recommended section I was a little concerned that I didn’t recognize any of the tracks shown. I pressed the new ‘Play All” feature (which is also awesome) and started listening while I did other work. Surprisingly, the first song was really good and I had never heard it before. I thought it might have been a fluke and that the rest might be songs that don’t suit my taste, and there ended up being a few of those but the second song was even better and the third song rocked.

Of my recommendations from Play It Tonight, I would have bought 9 of the tracks. Thats 9 tracks generally from lesser known labels and artists that a) aren’t played as much by other DJs and b) I spent almost zero time to find because Play It Tonight did the work for me. Nine tracks is almost an entire short set!

I strongly RECOMMEND that you make a purchase so that you can see all of the hidden gems that Play It Tonight has to offer in the Recommended Tracks section! 

We are very pleased to announce the launch of Play It Tonight 4.0. The site features an entirely new look and a bunch of new features. Play It Tonight 4.0 is a major upgrade from the last version. We listened carefully to your feedback and implemented a lot of your ideas. Enjoy the new site, you helped build it!

Here’s an outline of the new features:

WISHLIST
YOUR # 1 REQUEST IS NOW A REALITY!
This is our most requested new feature! In your crate, you can now move tracks over to your “Wishlist”. This means that you can buy a certain number of tracks and keep possible future tracks in your wishlist. Move tracks back and forth whenever you want. Not sure you want to buy something this week? No problem! Move it to your wishlist so you can come back to it later. Need one track today? You can do that now! You don’t have to delete all the songs in your crate to buy one song, just move them to your wishlist, and buy the song(s) you want today.

FAVORITES
This exciting new feature allows you to add your favorite labels and artist to your “My Favorites” section. When you log in to Play It Tonight, there is an indicator showing you if there are any new releases from your favorite artists and labels. Clicking on this link takes to you a page where you see all the new tracks. You can add up to 4,000 labels and artists to your Faves.

RECOMMENDED TRACKS
Play It Tonight has designed software to recommend music to you based on your preview and purchase history. Click on the “Recommended Tracks” button to view the tracks we think you’ll enjoy.

PLAY ALL
At the bottom of Top 10’s, Top 100’s and Genre pages is a new button that reads “Play All.” By clicking on this button, the player will play EVERY song on that page, in the order that they are displayed. Sit back and enjoy the music. Hear something you like? Click on the “Buy” button in the player and that track will be added to your crate, and the music will keep on playing.

TOP 100 DOWNLOADS
There is a new button at the bottom of each Top Downloads list where you can view not just the top 10 most recently downloaded tracks, but the top 100!. This can be seen on every genre, every label and every artist.

NEW LABEL PAGES
Now you can view your favorite labels in a whole new light. The label landing pages showcase the 6 most recent releases, with the new option to view all label tracks, or all label albums. The top 10 downloads features a link to see the label’s top 100 downloads. A link to “Add To Your Faves” is on every label page as well.

NEW ARTIST PAGES
Now you can view your favorite artists picture & bio, along with their best selling tracks, along with the new feature of viewing all their tracks at once, or all their albums at once. A link to “Add To Your Faves” is on every artist page as well.

CHARTS
There is a newly designed charts section with charts from Big name DJ’s.

LABELS
The new labels page lists the best selling labels, both as a whole, and for each letter of the alphabet.

ARTISTS
The new artists page lists the best selling artists, both as a whole, and for each letter of the alphabet.

GENRE LANDING PAGES
The new genre landing pages showcase the best selling labels and artists within that genre, along with the top 10 downloads and a link to view the top 100.

“The music, In changes…” These are the lyrics from one of my favorite House Music tracks by Sandy Rivera.

Dan (my business partner in Play It Tonight) and I recently got into a discussion about dance music genres and at the time it got somewhat heated. “Deep house is such a dated sound” said Dan to me - the deep house DJ.

Strategy Original Mix

Joshua Heath

Salted 2007-07-24

7:06

$1.98

“Electro is played out man” I said to Dan - Vancouver’s biggest and best Electro house and tech house DJ.

Road Kill Cedric Gervais Remix

Dubfire

Toolroom Records & Traxx 2007-07-25

7:49

$1.98

Eventually cooler heads prevailed and we came to the agreement that in dance music, some genre is cool in some part of the world at any given time. It is all cyclical. I have been told that as a backlash to the minimal movement in places like Berlin, Deep House is “it”. Whereas over here in Vancouver, clubbers are still losing it to the tech and electro house.

After our coversation I thought about it some more and realized how great it is that the ‘in sub-genre’ changes so much . This almost monthly cycle of the cool sub-genre keeps things fresh and prompts creativity becuase the cool genre is always changing.

Furthermore, this phenominon does not happen in other genres of music. In the hip hop world there are different genres of rap music but there isn’t any changing. If you are a fan of underground hip hop, then you will listen to underground hip hop and that is it. When you go to hip hop clubs you hear mainstream rap and it sounds the same as the hip hope that was being played in clubs 5 years ago. I am not in the hip hop scene as much as some of my friends but it seems to me that the genres are static and that everything is stale. There is no new sounds, there is no “in” genre of hip hop. The radio dictactates what is played and that is considered cool (I guess the same could be said for Pete Tong and Dance Music).

In the end I am glad and excited to be a part of a genre of music that is constantly dynamically changing. It is exciting and refresing to hear new sounds and to hear songs that cross sub-genres but still rock the dancefloors. I look forward to the next cool genre this month and a new genre for the following month.

The music, it changes…

Every week I’m constantly impressed by the caliber of music being produced. On top of that, every week I find another 10+ artists that I’ve never heard of before that are creating freakin’ incredible tracks!

One of the greatest aspects of technology is the fact of how inexpensive it has become for a person to be able to produce their own music. 15 years ago you had to be signed to a big label who paid for your studio time, or have fat pockets of your own, just to be able to write a track. Nowadays, you can buy a laptop for under a thousand bucks and it comes with production software. You’re off to the races. Creative minds now have an outlet. Imagine all the musical geniuses overtime that had beautiful music in their head, and nowhere to get it out, just because they weren’t wealthy. Thankfully technology has cured this.

This ample access to ‘studio time’ has its drawbacks as well.

The industry is now flooded with music. Even within one sub-genre, there can be upwards of 500+ new tracks every week. The role of the DJ has become that of professional sifter. It takes hours and hours of preview listening to filter down to the tracks you like.

There are a few ways around this. For one, your favorite labels are only going to release music they feel is worthy. Checking charts of the DJ’s you like will also guide you in the right direction. Reading the recommended releases in our Newsletter and Blog will surely help too. Taking the time to read music forums about your preferred genres will have a global overview of what’s hot. We all have a formula that works for us. And at the end of it all, it’s a pretty good life listening to music all day long in search of your new favorite floor fillers.

My name is Sean Gallagher and I will be one of the contributors to this dance music blog. Since I will be talking about various different music industry topics I feel that it is important that you guys know a little about me before doing so:

I have Dj’d all around North America and Mexico for the past 6 years. I have been heavily involved in the music industry for the last four years from a business standpoint and produced for two.

I have played with some of the biggest names in dance music including:

Sander Kleinenberg
Max Graham
Andy Caldwell
Armin Van Buuren
Hybrid
Colette
Steve Angello
James Lavelle (UNKLE)
Scumfrog
Oliver Smith
Gareth Emery (GTR)
Miss honey dijon
Dayhota
Niklas Harding

Now I am the CEO for Play It Tonight http://www.PlayItTonight.com ; the world’s best dance music download store. On a daily basis I deal with executives at the biggest record labels in Dance Music including:

Defected
Om Records
Global Underground
Armada
Black Hole Recordings
Get Physical Music
Ministry of Sound
Toolroom Records
Little Mountain Recordings
Alternative Route Recordings
Southern Fried
Finger Lickin’
Stoneyboy Music
Nettwerk Records
Nordic Trax

I look forward to sharing any late breaking industry news and insights that come my way as we get deeper into this digital music revolution.

According to a recent court ruling, ISPs in Belgium are now being held responsible for any illegal file-sharing on their network.

The Brussels-based court of First Instance is demanding that Internet Service Providers in Belgium setup filtering technologies to prevent file sharing.

This ruling is currently only for USPs in Belgium but will shortly be enforced in other countries throughout the EU.

IFPI President John Kenedy said, “This is a decision that we hope will set the mold for government policy and for courts in other countries in Europe and around the world,” according to the Digital Music News on July 9th 2007.

If the filtering technology is not in place within six months (the rumored prescribed window), the court will charge a €2,500 ($3,404) daily fee against the internet service provider.

Is this the first step to the end of internet file-sharing? Or will this just be another useless step that internet users (music listeners and DJs) will find their way around?