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The Best Music Streaming Services For DJs In 2024 – Digital DJ Tips

The Best Music Streaming Services For DJs In 2024

Beatport

One of Beatport’s advantages is “offline locker” capability, so you can prepare tunes beforehand, meaning you won’t need internet at your venue.

Beatport, the underground electronic music store that has its corner of the market stitched up, also doubles as a streaming service.

Beatport works with all the coolest dance music labels, and has established itself as the place to buy electronic dance music.

Read this next: Beatport Streaming For DJs Review

Beatport allows you to stream most of its catalogue into compatible DJ software and hardware. To audit tracks and build playlists, you can either use the Beatport.com store (where you can listen to full tracks, unlike general users of the store), or you can listen through the Top 100s, Genre playlists and Curated Playlists, all available in the file tree in your DJ software.

Audio quality is 128kbps AAC for the basic US$10/month Beatport subscription (although don’t confuse 128kbps AACs with 128kbps MP3s – AACs at this bitrate sound much better), which is no good to you anyway as it doesn’t work with DJ software. For that you need Beatport Advanced ($15/month), although that’s still the same audio quality.

If you want better audio quality (256 kbps AAC) as well as the much-touted offline locker (for 1000 tracks – cool!), you need to upgrade to the highest tier, namely Beatport Professional (US$30/month).

Available in: Rekordbox, Traktor, Serato, VirtualDJ, djay Pro, Engine OS, DJUCED
Find out more: Beatport streaming website

Beatsource

Beatsource LINK
Beatsource does for mainstream music what Beatport does for underground electronic music, bringing open-format DJs a curated, DJ-friendly service with the same offline locker capability. Here it is running on a standard Pioneer DJ pro set-up, via Rekordbox software.

Beatsource is a DJ music store founded by Beatport and DJcity. DJcity is a DJ download pool and streaming service beloved of open-format DJs. If Beatport is underground and independent label-focused, Beatsource is mainstream and major-label focused. It carries genres like pop, mainstream dance, country, hip-hop, Latin, reggae/dancehall and R&B music.

Beatsource is all about curation. It provides busy open-format DJs with useful charts, lists, curated new releases and so on to make their lives easier. That carries over into Beatsource streaming, which is full of the same playlists you find on the store.

It runs on the same platform as Beatport, but there are only two tiers. Beatsource is $10/month, and works with your DJ gear (unlike the lowest Beatport tier), while Beatsource Pro+ is $35/month, and gets you the same 1,000 tracks offline as Beatport, but also exclusive DJ edits – instrumentals and acapellas, extended intro/outro mixes, transition DJ tools, radio-friendly versions and short edits.

Available in: Rekordbox, Serato, VirtualDJ, djay Pro, Engine OS, DJUCED
Find out more: Beatsource website

SoundCloud

SoundCloud gives DJs access to its unique library of user-generated music, but also to a sizeable amount of mainstream music of the type you’ll find on services like Spotify and Apple Music.

SoundCloud’s Go+ and DJ subscription tiers are an interesting proposition for DJs. They offer a decent chunk of the mainstream music that the likes of Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal and Deezer have – But also, they give you access to the rich stream of music uploaded by independent creators, which is a real differentiator from the other services.

I know of DJs who claim to only spin with music they find on the SoundCloud site, to remain upfront/”underground”. So being able to stream such music into your DJ software could be a great thing for you, if you too like being the first to new music that you can’t find anywhere else.

SoundCloud Go+ at $10 and SoundCloud DJ at $20 have one big difference: The latter lets you store unlimited tracks offline for DJing.

Available in: Serato DJ Pro, Rekordbox, VirtualDJ, djay Pro, Engine OS (Denon DJ standalone hardware)
Find out more: SoundCloud Go+ website

Tidal

Tidal – the mainstream music streaming site that offers hi-fi audio as one of its differentiators – is available in several platforms, including Serato.

This is the first of two platforms integrated into DJ systems that your non-DJ friends will have heard of. Tidal is of course the streaming service originally founded by Jay-Z. As well as offering standard audio quality, it also offers hi-fi audio, if you subscribe at a higher tier.

It is roughly comparable to the mainstream music streaming leaders Spotify and Apple Music. Maybe it is comparatively such a small player because there are few differentiators other than audio quality.

We find it to be fit for purpose, although it does have a poorer search function. We found you had to type the names of artists and tracks in exactly, whereas the main players are more forgiving.

In common with all the other platforms apart from those running on Beatport’s technology (ie Beatport and Beatsource streaming services), there is no offline locker or caching. That means you do need the internet to DJ with this. Also, if your DJ software has real-time stems functionality, you’ll find that doesn’t work with Tidal.

It costs $10 a month for the HiFi tier or $20 a month for HiFi Plus.

Available in: Serato DJ Pro, Rekordbox, djay Pro, DJUCED, VirtualDJ, Engine OS (Denon DJ standalone hardware)
Find out more: Tidal website

The stems issue

In recent times, some streaming platforms have introduced a restriction on using software’s built-in real-time stems functionality. Basically, the controls that allow you to make an instant acapella, instrumental, drum-only track and so on are disabled when using the platforms.

This is a limitation imposed by the record labels, not the platforms themselves, and it’s just something you’ll have to live with should your platform be affected. At the time of writing the affected platforms are Tidal and Apple Music, though we expect it to be imposed on all of them at some point.

Apple Music

Apple Music is by far the biggest name on this list, dwarfing all of the other services mentioned so far added up. It is second only to Spotify for number of subscribers, and reaches into over 160 countries.

That’s the good news. The not-so-good news (for most DJs) is that it is currently only available in one platform: Djay Pro. But if you do use that software, any version, this is now built-in.

Even better, because Apple Music is incorporated within Apple’s Music app (iTunes, in other words), which also is where you store your own music, if you set this up that way, you can have not only your streaming library but all your own music too, across all of your devices, as a bonus.

It costs $11 per month.

Available in: Algoriddim Djay Pro (all versions, all platforms)
Find out more: Apple Music website

Deezer

Virtual DJ Deezer Spotify
One of the issues with streaming services is that historically they’ve come and gone from platforms. This image shows VirtualDJ software and both Spotify and Deezer. Spotify got removed from the platform, but Deezer got added – and VirtualDJ is currently the only mainstream laptop platform with Deezer integrated.

Deezer is a pretty big music streaming name in Europe, coming out of France. Deezer is like Tidal in that it is a mainstream service roughly comparable to Spotify and Apple Music. Of course it is a minnow, but nonetheless established enough.

So no surprises about what you’ll find – roughly the same catalogue as Spotify, Apple Music and Tidal, same features, similar pricing and so on.

As with all the other platforms that aren’t Beatsource or Beatport, there isn’t an offline locker facility so you need reliable internet to DJ with it.

Deezer is $11 a month.

Available in: VirtualDJ
Find out more: Deezer website

Amazon Music Unlimited

A newcomer to the DJ streaming scene, Amazon music is nonetheless a fast-growing player in the wider music streaming world.

Amazon seems to want to have its hand in anything you buy, rent or subscribe to – and makes it easy to grab Amazon Music Unlimited, its mainstream Spotify-rivalling streaming service, especially if you already have an Amazon Prime account.

Therefore it may well be the obvious first choice of music streaming service for new DJs – if they have the right hardware of course, as this one is unique in only working with certain newer Engine DJ-powered devices. If you have one of those, and were thinking of going for Tidal, this one could make more sense.

Amazon Music Unlimited is $10 a month.

Available in: Denon DJ SC Live 2, Denon DJ SC Live 4, Numark Mixstream Pro+
Find out more: Amazon Music Unlimited website

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