With acts like Avicii, Tiesto, and Afrojack opening up their sounds to create more radio-friendly tracks, it makes sense that SFX Entertainment would form a massive partnership to bring "EMC" (aka electronic music culture) further into the digital and terrestrial radio formats. Today it was announced that SFX has formed a marketing and content partnership with Clear Channel to not only open up options for Beatport to get more visibility on the radio, but to enter even further into the live event realm.
The initial plans find them first creating a nationwide DJ contest that will air live both on Clear Channel stations and on iHeartRadio's Evolution stations. The winner of this contest will get a spot during Mysteryland US 2014, a recording contract with Beatport, and a major record deal. There are also plans to create a weekly Beatport-branded top 20 countdown show that will air in a number of major markets, including Z100 in New York, Los Angeles' KIIS-FM, Evolution 101.7 in Boston, Q102 in Philadelphia, and on stations in San Francisco, Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, and Miami (among other cities). The third piece is the creation of a "live EMC event" to take place around Halloween 2014.
This will be interesting to see develop; we've seen positive responses to iHeartRadio's Evolution brand in Boston and Miami, and with EDM further seeping into the American mainstream, it was about time that there was a concerted effort to bring more focused EDM programming to the radio scene. SFX getting in on this by pushing Beatport could be an interesting way to a) further dignify the Beatport charts, which are seen as major marketing tools for producers and labels that consistently chart high, and b) potentially drive more eyes to whatever SFX is planning on molding Beatport into.
