What are the best house music mp3 websites?

Record digging – a thing of the past..

After a short internet/djing hiatus i realized i was out of the loop on where to find the best house music mp3s. What better way to get re-acquainted then writing a blog entry and sharing it with everyone.

It’s weird to think how things have changed… when I started back in 1999 it didn’t seem practical to use the internet as my main source for purchasing vinyl. There weren’t too many online record stores and very few included mp3 samples. Well that, and the fact I hated asking my parents to use their credit card, god forbid they knew how much of my McDonalds salary was going towards my new found habit black crack. At the time I was buying 20-100 records a month. I would spend hours on Planet X reviewing every release and adding all my favs to an ever growing .txt file. I would then write down my top 5 tunes for the week, drop that list off at my local record store (with a 5$ deposit per record, how ridiculous!!) and cross my fingers the “record would still be in circulation”. More often than not, the record would never come and I would get my 5$ deposit back =(

When I finally turned 19, my credit card application was approved and those local record deposits days were gone for good!! I continued to order online from juno, clubmusic.com, and htfr but made the switch over to cds and mp3s in 2004. I haven’t stepped foot inside a record store since 2003, how weird is that? With the internet and technology, djing will continue to expand to new unforeseen possibilities, creativity, and ultimately more accessible then ever before. This list below is not all vendors, but a list of sites I use on a regular basis to keep up with quality house music:

Here are my top 5 LEGAL mp3 stores:

• beatport.com – they are THE machine.. the mothership of djland mp3s, they cover pretty much every genre and have boot loads of exclusives. The only drawback I have on beatport are the region rules, some labels/tracks are only available to certain regions. It can be quite frustrating to locate top tunes and have them at your fingertips but have them removed b/c you don’t live in the uk.
• iTunes – pretty much every commercial song created regardless of genre will be available via itunes or their website. Only drawback, these files are available at 192kb, and unavailable within 320 kb or wav. Those standards are fine for the every day user, but for those playing through serato or cd in the club, you can definitely tell the difference.
• traxsource.com – niche house.. think Christmas and the biggest quality street chocolate container. If you like house music, this is where you will go when you die. They are based out of Miami too, I can’t wait to die.
• stompy.com – another great house niche site, i would classify them as less mainstream and with thousands of gems. More underground, but sickk.
• trackitdown.net – this site is based out of the uk (not that anyone cares where its based out of), but is quite popular in Europe.
• djdownload.com – this is another solid site, i would group djdownload and trackitdown in the same group. solid.

Feel free to comment and add any that you may use as well. Happy digging