| From This Week In Texas Music
A decade ago, the enterprising Henrichsen created a sensation in the dance music world when he started the popular CD compilation series Masterbeat in response to his frustration over the limited availability of the music he was hearing in clubs. Now, ten years later, with the market for dance music changing yet again, Henrichsen is at the forefront of new revolution with the launch of
Masterbeat.com, an online dance music resource that promises to place dance music at the fingertips of the iTunes generation.
GayWired.com: Brett, as someone at the forefront of the contemporary dance music scene, let me start off by asking what you think of the current state of dance music?
Brett Henrichsen: I personally think that it’s got a chance of making a comeback. I think now better than ever. About ten years ago, dance music really started to take a dive as hip-hop started to become very popular. General dance music, what we call dance music, began to go very dark, hard and tribal… and not very vocal. I think it kind of lost a bit of its popularity and luster. I’m noticing now that a lot of those DJs who went hard and dark are now playing happy, vocal music again. We’re starting to hear a little more of the dance type songs on some of the mainstream radio stations. So I’m hoping that all of these things are signs that we’re making a bit of a comeback. And we [Masterbeat] hope to be there to help usher it in. [Laughs]
BH: Yes definitely. I think it’s evolving. Dance music has always been evolving. It’s always changing. Like I said, a while ago, dance evolved into something a little more hard and dark and tribal. Now I think it’s coming full circle into something more vocal and energetic. It’s interesting that when dance music was going hard and dark, hip-hop was coming out. Now I think the two are converging. I think the crowd that liked dance music is starting to like the hip-hop sound and hip-hop music is starting to get a little bit more of a dance beat to it, so that’s helping
GW: Why did you decide that now was a good time to launch a dance music oriented site like Masterbeat.com?
BH: To be honest with you, I wanted to launch the site two years ago [Laughs]. In general though, the true answer is that the internet is taking over everything. We were primarily a CD company. We were a very popular dance compilation series that I created ten years ago basically out of the frustration that I couldn’t go out to a store and buy any of the music I was hearing in the nightclubs… [because] it was usually only released on vinyl for DJs. Now ten years later, I find that our compilations aren’t selling that much mainly because people just don’t buy CDs anymore. Things are really dramatically, increasingly going to the internet. We’re already hearing that iTunes is taking over the world. Nobody’s buying physical CDs anymore. Dance music is even more affected by this trend because dance music has such a short shelf life. That was one of the problems with CDs. By the time you got a song out, got it manufactured, got yourself a street date, got it distributed and got it on the store shelves, the hit was already over. So dance music always struggled with that. As I saw all of these things happening, I knew we had to reinvent ourselves or die.
GW: So Masterbeat.com was really birthed out of business necessity then?
BH: Yeah definitely. It was either reinvent or eventually go away.
BH: We’re trying to be the dance music version of iTunes. Where we’re going to differentiate ourselves is allowing labels instant access to the backend of our system where they can actually upload and put music into our systems themselves without having any lead time or street date or any waiting on us. When you hear a song at a club or on the radio we really want Masterbeat to be the place you go to get it. The second a song is out people are downloading it in some way. They’re either stealing it from a file sharing network or emailing it back and forth. We want to educate people that Masterbeat is the place you can go to get that song legally. Even though iTunes is an electronic distributor they still suffer from the old music paradigm in that they still have overhead and they still have a delay before the music gets online and they still deal with street dates. Again, dance music doesn’t work well that way. If we have a big hit climbing the charts, it’s a hit for few weeks and then it’s over.
GW: So it’s safe to say then that allowing record labels to upload music to the Masterbeat system directly without your input is something of a technological advance in and of itself?
BH: Yes. Labels will be able to log into our backend system, upload a song and have it available for purchase five minutes later, without waiting for anybody. They love that idea.
GW: That also sounds like a good reason for dance music fans to keep coming back to the site as well, right?
BH: Exactly. There could be something new in the system at any time. We’re also going to build into the system the ability for the labels to promote their music through the system so that when they upload something new they can actually use our system to help market and promote it by sending email blasts and things like that. We’re really trying to build an all-encompassing one-stop shop not only for the customers but also for the labels.
GW: Any Masterbeat.com exclusives on the horizon? BH: Definitely. There’s already a few right now. We were lucky enough to get some exclusives from some of my friends like
Tony Moran, who is amazing and has some of the best selling things on the site right now. We’ve got some of his exclusive, private vault type things. The big thing holding us back is finishing up deals with some of the labels. As soon as we have the rights to distribute the catalogs of the major labels, then we’ve got some unreleased bootlegs and White Labels we plan to get permission to sell.
BH: Yes. We went into beta launch—sort of a preview launch—on January 3rd with a limited number of labels and over the last few weeks we just added over a thousand new labels, so we now have almost 250,000 tracks in the system. In the next few weeks we’ll be launching the full mainstream version of the site which will have even more labels and more features.
GW: What does the future of Masterbeat.com look like?
BH: The long-term plan is just to be known as the one stop shop for dance music. We literally want to eventually start partnering with labels, magazines, charts and radio stations. Very soon there will be a system called Charts & Playlists where you can actually get the top ten charts of DJs. You will hopefully be able to go out to a night at a club, listen to your favorite DJ and then log onto our system and download their playlist from that night. That’s going to be another part of our backend where DJs and venues can put in the playlist from their party so people at the party can actually log in and play it. We really want to become a dance music community. Sounds like the party just got started right. For more information about Masterbeat, go to:
www.Masterbeat.com. |
GW: Do you hear the sound of dance music evolving?
GW: How does Masterbeat.com compare to other music sites in terms of how users download music? In other words, what separates Masterbeat from the pack? 
GW: But you’re fully live now then?