You know you’re the EDM aficionado of your friend group if you’re constantly fielding the question of “How do you discover new music?” And more specifically, “What artists would you recommend that sound like (so and so)?” Dropbeat, the new free EDM streaming service optimizes the discovery stage of building your music library like never before.
With such a vast number of options out there for surveying and discovering new content, I was initially somewhat skeptical as to what Dropbeat could offer me that I couldn’t find already in another service. Yet, within minutes I was introduced to a slew of features that I can now no longer imagine being without.
Getting Started
Integrating Facebook with Dropbeat has a very practical purpose that streamlines the entire process of finding the music you want both quickly and efficiently. Immediately after doing so, you’ll find a newly created feed displaying strictly track related content from artists you currently follow on Facebook. Consider this your “base” from which you can listen to tracks by the artists you already like, all in one place. Exploring content here hones the accuracy of the discovery process in subsequent steps.
Recommended Tracks
When you play tracks in your personal feed or playlist, recommended tracks appear based on your listening history. Here you can discover and add new tracks to your playlist. This menu is particularly active updating sometimes with multiple new tracks after any given song is played.
Charts
Dropbeat has integrated Beatport Chart selections for the Top 100 plus all of the subgenre-specific charts into its interface. While perusing popular charts is not the most ideal method for discovering new music, Dropbeat has integrated all of this while supporting continuous playback of each song in full. Now instead of previewing these tracks on the charts, you can play them in full one after another if you so choose.
Channels
Perhaps most of your music discoveries thus far have come from a particular person or organization. On the channels menu you will find a comprehensive list with access to curated channels like Proximity, The Dub Rebellion, and many more. Selecting any one of these will bring you to an easily read dropdown menu sorting tracks by most recent. These channels can also be filtered by genre type for best results.
![\"proximity\"](\"https://edmchicago.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/proximity-e1438875529902.png\")
Hidden Gems
While Dropbeat does a great job of bringing all roads to discovery to one place there are several unique odds and ends that make it stand out from the rest. One of these features is the “drop button.”
Let’s face it, if you’re trying to ID a track you don’t know the title of, you probably know it by its breakdown. The drop button is a feature that directs you to a point just before the breakdown of the song, so you no longer have to guess. This recent new feature is not available on all songs, but when it is available I’ve found it to be strikingly accurate.
Not knowing a track title is a problem that similarly plagues fans of podcast shows and live mixes. Thankfully, Dropbeat has beautifully time stamped results for these track types. I tested the system with Eric Prydz\’s 2013 Essential Mix (Classic) and within seconds I had a full track list for easy following along with a banner displaying the currently playing track.
Although it is yet another name to be added to the long list of streaming services, Dropbeat\’s dedicated EDM focus makes it the obvious choice for all fans of electronic music. Dropbeat\’s streamlined interface successfully embodies the best features of its competitors while their innovative new features bring cutting edge ideas to the process of expanding your musical horizons. Check out Dropbeat now and follow along as they continue to expand on promising new breakthroughs in music streaming.
