Our mission has always been to provide a home for creative artists and labels to flourish, because your story is our story, and this synergy is the lifeforce of our store. We stand by the artists and labels we serve, because we genuinely understand what it takes to survive in today’s industry and have your best interests at heart, always.

We have created this article to help our amazing artists, labels and distributors achieve their goals on Traxsource. It has been designed as an accompaniment to our “Best Practices” document which we released a few years ago and recently refreshed.

1- CREATE QUALITY PRODUCTS

At Traxsource, it’s always about the music first. We suggest you spend the majority of your time, energy and resources releasing the highest quality music you possibly can. More specifically, we recommend that you pay close attention in the following areas, which we consider while choosing our featured positions.

QUALITY - Release only the highest quality tracks and songs.
MIXDOWN - Mix your songs to a high standard utilizing best practices. Do your homework and get help if you need it.
MASTERING - Find yourself the best professional mastering engineer you can afford, (this is a grossly overlooked step). If you need help ask us, we know people.
ARTWORK - Create high-quality artwork to go along with your music. People judge books by their cover and it’s the same with your music.
BRANDING - Your branding / logo should shine through all of your Artwork, making it consistent and easily recognizable to your fans.
REMIXES / REMIXERS - The right remix by the right person can make a release. Keep an eye on Traxsource to see who’s constantly topping the charts. Its 2019, and that hot new Remix just might be attainable, why not ask?

2. GENERATE A BUZZ

Once you have made a quality product, the most important thing for you to do is generate a “buzz” through marketing and promotions. This “Buzz” will “create a demand” for your product and makes our job of fulfilling the demand possible.

Brands who have developed the ability to create a demand for their artists and their music are clearly the most successful and often receive regular attention by Traxsource.

Put simply, our job is to fulfill the demand that you create. We do this by providing visibility for your products within the various featured positions and social media campaigns such as:

Weekend Weapons Chart Position
Hype Chart Position
Home Page Position and Banner
What’s Hot Listing
DJ Chart Listing
Upfront and New Release Listing
Genre Page Position and Banners
Genre Essentials Position
E-Blast Feature
Release of The Day
Album of The Week
Ones To Watch
Label Spotlight
Artist Spotlight
Traxsource Live / Sessions
and More

3. BUILD YOUR FANBASE

This responsibility begins and ends with you. You cannot invite your fans to your next gig, or to stream your new music, or to your Traxsource ‘Buy Page’ if you do not have any? With some consistent effort, you can easily build up your fan-base on social media’s and develop an active email list.

Additionally, we also suggest you collaborate with like minded artists and brands who already have a large fanbase, to help gain additional exposure for you and your brand. It's a process that takes time - the key point is to make this a main goal for you and your brand.

4. ENGAGE YOUR FANBASE

Engaged fans are the key to your success and this cannot be over emphasized. Passionate fans participate in your career and will steam or buy your music, show up at your gigs, buy your t-shirts and merchandise or do whatever you ask.

Additionally, it’s critical that you consistently incorporate Traxsource into your promotional efforts on social media, emails and where-ever else you market your products. Properly executed social media campaigns actively keep your fans informed and interested about you and your music / brand and lead to successful partnerships with Traxsrouce.

Share your Traxsource release buy links directly or with short-links

Create and share Traxsource DJ charts for every release (and even in between).
Create short videos to showcase your music with a visual twist!
Sponsor some posts! Spending a few bucks to get the reach you need can be a great investment in both your music and your brand.

5. FOLLOW ‘BEST PRACTICES’

It’s critical that you follow our "Best Practices" carefully. This contains helpful information on some of the key areas below:

Delivery Guidelines
Communication Tips
Pre Order and DJ Chart Tips
A&R Team Preferences and Contact Info
Entity Account Info
and Many More General Tips and Considerations to help you Succeed.

6. UNDERSTAND WHY ANY FEATURED POSITION IS A GOOD POSITION

Traxsource typically has upwards of 5,000 new releases per week. That can total 20k+ tracks on any given week and as you can imagine, there are not nearly enough Featured positions to show them all.

On average, the 'House' section alone has upwards of 500+ releases per week. The key point is that competition is fierce because there are far less Featured positions compared to the amount of releases.

Please Note:  Based on the facts above, any inclusion or featured position is a pretty big deal and means your release is positioned better than the majority of the 20k tracks that week.

As you can see, for us to have a successful partnership together it’s critical that your product is of a high quality, that you have built a demand for your product and brand, that you have engaged and mobilized your fan-base and that you are following best practices.

7. UNDERSTAND OUR PROCESS

We listen to everything, and then we listen again and again. We consider all the elements discussed above (like quality, art, sound quality, buzz, the history of reciprocal support, exclusivity etc.,) and we do the best job we possibly can to help position your releases where we feel they will have the most impact. We do this because it’s who we are and we love what we do.

Our mission is to showcase the hottest House music on the planet week-in and week-out. This is no easy task, and our A&R team have developed numerous proprietary systems which allow us to review all of your amazing music and effectively curate the thousands of releases submitted to Traxsource each week.

At the end of the day, we rely on our team's taste and unique specialized experience within each of their niche areas. We consider ourselves as a store with the heart of an independent label, and we recognize that many times we make the right decision, and sometimes we fall short. But we will always try to ensure our team are listening and positioning with their ears and hearts throughout the entire process.

8. MORE ABOUT THOSE POSITIONS

The main site refresh occurs every Monday morning at approximately 10am EST, with a ‘mini update’ every Friday called “Weekend Weapons”. Our goal is to feature a musically balanced offering of the absolute hottest music we possibly can, while equally showcasing each of our main genres.

We begin each site update more than a week ahead. Tracks chosen for Fridays Weekend Weapons directly represent what we believe will be the hottest Tracks next week. Our selections are carefully monitored and weekend performance is a huge factor in determining where your release will end up on Monday's update around 10am EST. This is why it’s important to promote things early on pre-order, and from the Friday release day, especially if you have received a coveted Weekend Weapons position.

Please note: Even if your release is not featured on Weekend Weapons for that week, it doesn't mean it wont get featured on main update on Monday and you can make an impact with your marketing efforts. We recommend you push all your traffic to the traxsource link to support a solid featured position.

9. WHAT TO DO IF YOU FEEL OVERLOOKED

If you're unsatisfied with your releases visibility and perhaps feel you were overlooked, we want you to know that we recognize we’re only human and sometimes, although rarely, we do miss things. Please drop us a line and let us know, we often make changes when possible.

That said, obviously not everyone can make it to the top featured positions. We strive to make sure our weekly update does truly represent the very best current music our scene has to offer (for that week), all in a balanced and meaningful way. The best thing you can do is to keep a good line of communication with the A&R manager of your genre that your release falls under and make sure you hit all the marks above on the next release.

10. WE ENCOURAGE POSITIVE FEEDBACK

Please don't be impolite or angry, we are only human and do make mistakes. We deal daily with a large capacity of music, artists, labels and loyal customers. Wherever relevant, simply ask us to take another listen as we’re always happy to do this.
Social Media isn’t the area or platform to complain. We have a process to help, answer questions and connect with our support team. If there is an issue, please come to us and give us a chance to check it out. We make changes when we’re wrong and aim to resolve with speed.
Please don't allow lack of a feature to deter your efforts, often it’s your promotion that brings your music to our attention, and importantly continue to raise your profile!
Aim to submit your releases or requests for a feature in advance. Right before (or close to) your release date doesn’t allow time for appropriate review, scheduling and support, remember we work a couple weeks ahead!
Never try to buy your way up the chart, we will clearly see the activity, and it never ends well.
We recommend that you read this document and our Best Practices more than once. Keep them bookmarked or downloaded to your drive and refer to them continuously. Repeating the steps to support your success we’d love to kick some ass together!
If you provide another store an ‘exclusive’ and then expect Traxsource to provide a valued featured position, this doesn’t inspire or ignite our community. We respect our customers and it’s worth noting they are avid music fanatics and they recognize what’s new and what is not.

BOTTOM LINE...

We are passionate about what we do. We are appreciative of everything you do, and realize that for us to have a successful partnership its important we understand each other. Please take this in the spirit it was given, to help you and us have a thriving and long lasting working relationship based on trust and mutual respect.

Since 2004, Traxsource has stood at the forefront of the Underground music scene with a music first attitude. We care about the music more than anything else, we are the last place on earth where your art shines above everything else. Where a brand new artist, on a brand new label can be shown the highest level of support without having anything else. We love finding and exposing new music, new labels and new artists to our fanbase.

We thank you for choosing Traxsource as your primary Music store and look forward to progressing our partnership together, hand in hand as the ever growing global HOUSE community is widely recognized for its long lasting contribution.

10 Keys To A Successful Partnership With Traxsource.