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Sunday, February 22, 2009

Beatmaka.com underground music with attitude? Or music without underground attitude?

I have submitted or at least tried to submit some of my tracks into a music website
called beatmaka.com. In my humble opinion Beatmaka.com slogan really does not do any favor to real underground scene since their music is mostly imitating all mainstream like music out there. When you visit and listen to every second artist you are able to notice there´s anything underground or original music on this website.

Every track sounds produced into best clarity and listening but there´s no real artistic talents that can produce original music outside the commercial club sound.

It is almost like a bedroom producers edition of DI.fm

There you have it. Another music website without underground attitude. Whoring to the commercial sound. I had only 2 tracks on this site and I have deleted another today. Now I have only one track and not wanting to upload more since the preview panel except that you produce the sound to meet some club standard sound.
Well there´s some better sites that you are free to upload without panel judgement process. For example reverbnation.com and myspace.com . It really does not help producers to develop their music or creative process when the track must be 100% ready and "pressed".
So from the creative point of view all music uploaded this site must be perfectly crafted and made as a final product for mass consumption.
But does this kind of process kill the creativity? In my opinion, yes.

The review panel:

What Do You Do Exactly?
The main goal of beatmaka.com is to deliver a site with high quality content. We do everything possible to select only the best music without compromise. Our Review Panel checks each incoming track and assures that only the best ones get online.
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From my point of view they only kill creative talents without constructive critique
about the tracks. Most of the reviews consider the producing side of music not really about the composition of artistic aspect of the track itself.

For example here is a feedback of my track "Arpeggiator One" from year 2006.

Reviewer: Marc Hedinger
Recommendation: no

Review:
I think the idea of the track's quite good but the way it's produced's far from optimal. The structures of the melodies, harmonies are pretty simple.


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I don´t want to bash the reviewer since they only do their job. But there´s nothing constructive on this review as it comes to artistic side.
The track is pretty simple. Perhaps it´s meant to be, right?
However there´s positive feedback about the idea.
So back to the production. Ok, no problem. Perhaps I make a club track with sidechain compression and limit the sound in Cool Edit and the track will be accepted.
From my point of view the panel does not seem to understand that there´s also some other forms of electronic music than that commercial (mostly crap) dance music they might only probably like. It´s often called synthesizer or electronic music and does not need to be pumped up as loud till your ears bleed. Of course there might be some EQ and mastering to be made
to make the track as final.
However sites like this give really narrow point of view about the electronic music in general.

Ok. So that´s enough critique about the review panel.

It´s not that bad site when you want to listen to some genres like
Trance, Breakbeat, Drum and Bass and Dance.

Some of my favorites are Mechanik Project:
http://www.beatmaka.com/music/artist.php?id=4588


ps: to add the review header was:

Unfortunately we do not think that "Arpeggiator One" fits into our portfolio.

They are presenting music as theirs you can see? Not the artists but as like a labels artists.

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