We've heard rumblings about this for the past few weeks, but now it's confirmed: Beatport is reportedly being sold to SFX Entertainment for $50 million. According to the New York Times, who broke the news last night on its Media Decoder blog, Robert F. X. Sillerman, who heads up the burgeoning EDM entertainment consortium, is in the process of acquiring Beatport, the EDM-centric digital music store that was founded in Denver in January 2004 by Jonas Temple, Eloy Lopez and Brad Roulier with the help of Bad Boy Bill, John Acquaviva and Richie Hawtin.
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When Beatport first launched, there were 72 labels signed on with around 2,000 tracks in the database. Within a year, 700 labels had stepped up, the store was offering 20,000 titles, and the site had some 14,000 users. Like the genre it caters to, the company has grown by leaps and bounds. Today, Beatport -- led by Matthew Adell, who succeeded Temple as CEO in 2010, bringing with him experience from Napster and Amazon.com -- has over a million tracks among its offerings, which now also includes original content and has approximately 40 million users, according to the Times.If the name SFX Entertainment sounds familiar, it should. The company, founded in 1997, built itself up into the concert behemoth that eventually became Live Nation, when its promotions division was sold to Clear Channel Entertainment in 2000. In the past year, SFX has followed a template similar to its late-'90s empire building, steadily acquiring a number of other EDM-centric companies, including Voodoo Experience, IDT, Dayglow Productions and Disco Donnie Presents. There's been talk that Sillerman and company have their eye on Insomniac Presents, the promoter behind Electric Daisy Carnival, but right now, it's just that: talk.
No word yet on how, or even if, this purchase will have any effect on Beta, the award-winning, world-renowned nightclub at 19th and Blake that's owned by Beatport co-founder Brad Roulier. Keep an eye on Backbeat, though. We'll obviously have more on this story as it develops.
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