5 of the Best Streaming Services for DJs
Top streaming services including Beatport, Music Worx, Tidal, and more.
Thinking of signing up for a streamer? The one you choose will largely depend on the genre of music you play. These are five of the best streaming services for DJs.
Best Streaming Services for DJs
As with personal music consumption, streaming services have taken over DJing. Of course, you can still buy music one record at a time – and if you’re a vinyl DJ, this is all that you can do. But for digital DJs working with laptops and standalone DJ controllers, streaming offers a way to get access to a lot of music for a subscription fee.
The good news with DJ streaming services is that most professional streamers aimed at DJs will work across a variety of software platforms. If you have a WiFi-equipped standalone DJ controller or CDJ, however, your options may be more limited, especially when it comes to general streaming services like Spotify (spoiler alert: none work with Spotify).
Which one is the best streaming service for DJs? That’s going to depend to some extent on the kind of music that you play. Here are five that you should consider.
Best Streaming Services for DJs: Advice
A quick word of advice. While streaming services can offer a lot of convenience, you’re taking your reputation into your own hands if you dare to stream while DJing. You never know when Wi-Fi is going to dip. Sure, the song will download before you hit play, but if the download gets interrupted… Thankfully, most services offer some kind of download option.
Best Streaming Services for DJs: Beatport
Beatport is the current king of DJ streaming services – as you’d expect from the massively popular DJ download store. By signing up for streaming, you get access to most of its catalog, which, if you know Beatport, includes pretty much every modern dance and electronic music release.
Beatport Streaming comes in three fancy flavors, Essential, Advanced, and Professional. They all give you full-length playback on the website and unlimited downloads of purchased tracks. However, the Essential level is not compatible with DJ gear. Those who plan to use Beatport tracks offline will need to pony up the $29.99 per month for Professional though. This lets you store up to 1000 tracks in an offline library. It also gives you the best audio quality at 256 kbps AAC.
With compatibility across most DJ software and some hardware like the Pioneer DJ CDJ-3000, it’s one of the best streaming services for DJs.
- Beatport streaming home page
Best Streaming Services for DJs: Beatsource
If Beatport is the one-stop shop for underground dance music DJs, its sister site, Beatsource, is for those of you working above ground. It’s got classic and modern dance hits from major labels, plus exclusive DJ edits like instrumentals, acapellas, clean edits, and more. Wedding and open source DJs, this is the site for you.
Ready to sign up? Beatsource offers the same compatibility as Beatport, meaning it probably works with the gear you have. There are two pricing tiers: Beatsource at $12.99 a month and Beatsource Pro+ for $34.99. Pricey, yes, but it’s the Pro+ level that gives you the offline library of 1000 tracks, higher sound quality, and access to those exclusive edits.
Note that Engine DJ OS currently does not support the offline library (this goes for Beatport as well).
- Beatsource Streaming home page
Best Streaming Services for DJs: Music Worx
Music Worx doesn’t get as much attention as Beatport, its main rival. A bit more underground, Music Worx focuses on 4/4 genres like deep house, although the catalog is growing all the time.
Music Worx also offers a streaming service. Stream much of the catalog (currently at millions of songs) to the proprietary Streambox application and then from there to your DJ software, either live or offline. Music Worx also offers its own DJ app, Mixworx.
The company offers a variety of streaming payment levels, with all of them allowing unlimited offline storage. However, to get sound quality above 320 Kbps MP3, you’ll need to go for at least the PRO FLAC HiFi tier at $19.99 a month.
- Music Worx Pro home page
Best Streaming Services for DJs: SoundCloud
OK, hear me out. SoundCloud may seem like an unusual choice as one of the best streaming services for DJs, but when you factor in all of SoundCloud’s exclusive, user-uploaded content as well as the major label songs that they’re adding all the time, it starts to look more and more attractive. Many DJs use this as a backup or alternative service.
While you could probably get away with going with the SoundCloud Go+ service for $9.99 a month, if you want the offline locker, you’ll need the SoundCloud DJ tier, which costs $19.99 per. Note that offline use is only compatible with rekordbox and VirtualDJ.
- SoundCloud Go home page
Best Streaming Services for DJs: Tidal
Among the consumer-level subscription services, Tidal has risen to the top as the one that DJs tend to prefer. This is because of the sound quality, for one – Tidal offers lossless HiRes FLAC streaming as standard – but also because it allows for DJ integration and even stem separation.
Who would benefit from a Tidal sub? If your DJ goal is the main room at Berghain, probably not you, but if your dance floors tend to be of the wedding and corporate party variety, Tidal is perfect for you. Be aware that there’s no offline locker, so make sure your WiFi connection is rock solid.
Costs $10.99 plus an additional $9.00 for the DJ extension add-on.
- Tidal home page
Best Streaming Services for DJs: Recommended Hardware
Lastly, if you’re looking for some DJ gear to get you started, these controllers should all work with the services mentioned here. Double-check with the manufacturer before you buy, though, as these things change all the time.
More Information
- All about DJ controllers
- All about DJing
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