You may or may not have noticed this - actually, you probably haven't noticed it because it only happened a week or so ago - but I'm no longer reviewing for Beatportal, Beatport's online 'magazine'. Beatportal approached me last year to review for them. At the time, they were in start-up mode and said that for the first few months, there would be no money involved. Given that the Beatportal project was being headed up by a former colleague of mine from DJ Magazine, I agreed to work under these conditions. Once the project kicked in, I got paid for my reviews, albeit at half the rate one normally gets for print magazine reviews, which, as anyone who has ever reviewed techno knows, isn't a hell of a lot of money. But I felt I was doing it for the right reasons, and submitted my reviews, some positive, some critcial, but always constuctive if critical. Then, a few months ago, Beatportal asked me if I could submit reviews in a rolling format instead of in one go once a month as had been the case. I thought this was a good idea, even though I was a bit surprised when asked to only review releases that I recommended, eg, no more critical reviews. I was also asked to submit the reviews myself, in much the same way that I update this blog, something I had no problem doing. A few weeks ago, I got a strange email from my former DJ Mag colleague at Beatportal with the header 'Blogging for Beatportal'. I have the email somewhere in my mail folders, and to save my former colleague, who I still think is a decent guy, any blushes, I'll summarise its content. Basically, Beatportal were doing away with all of its reviewers, but wanted to retain my services and get me to blog for them, and pay me more. It sounded too good to be true. But here's the sting in the tail: they wanted me to blog from this site: after the first few lines of each post, there would be a link to the full text on Beatportal, where all manner of players and branded images could be displayed. Or to put it another way: Beatportal wanted to take over this site (or maybe just its content) and pay me the grand total of $500 a month (the fee I was going to get to blog for them) to do so. I politely turned down the offer and my former colleague expressed disappointment that I felt Beatportal was not an independent outlet. How could it be? It's owned by a company whose main business is selling music: surely all the glowing reviews I was encouraged to submit to Beatportal wasn't for the good of my health? I have always maintained that this site, like any good blog, should be independent. I don't run it to make money, so was I wrong to turn down the cash and allow it to be turned into a Beatport satellite? I feel I made the right decision - what do you think?
