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Music Downloads Service from Resident Advisor

Digital music download service now available from online electronic music magazine Resident Advisor. RA publishes electronic music news, reviews and has become an immense resource for club nights, events and of course, their DJ charts; where each month, roughly 3000 DJs, from 80 countries chart 30,000 tracks. They’ve now enhanced this service by making digital music available to purchase directly from RA as MP3 or WAV music downloads.

Digital Music Downloads
Download Digital Music, New Service from RA

If a track shows up on an artist’s chart (and it is in fact available on digital release and been verified by RA) you will be able to preview and purchase the track directly from the chart page. RA has not let any insight into exactly what digital music vendor they have partnered with to provide the music downloads. The charts are powered by digital music dj software Traktor (more than likely just a sponsorship deal or organization/formatting engine for the dj charts). RA reviews are powered by online dance music store Juno, giving you the ability to preview tracks through the Juno Player and either add the release to your wishlist or purchase directly from the player. They also provide a link to the Juno Records (for vinyl releases) or Juno Download (for music downloads) pages to purchase directly from the Juno websites.

Music downloads purchased this way more than likely earn RA a commission for each sale. We’re assuming the new music download service directly from the RA charts may also be provided by Juno on a commission base – it just makes the user experience a little easier by not having to navigate to several websites to make a purchase.

In addition to the artists charts, RA says it will also be adding digital music downloads from account users favorite artists and labels in the coming weeks and months.  I think it’s a great addition to the site. Though, for me, purchasing digital music really comes down to the functionality of the website I purchase from. Can I store music for download later? How is the download process? How is the price? What music, artists, labels are available? How are the files named and what information is encoded?

Whether these questions can adequately be answered by RA’s new music download service remains to be seen. The RA site and system is undoubtedly a great resource for finding new music and connecting with the electronic music community and artists. This may just be a great opportunity for a few impulse buys – which I’m sure is what they’re counting on.

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