What Artists Should Know About Digital DJ Pool

A Color Theory fan and fellow artist told me about Digital DJ Pool way back in February of 2022. Since then I’ve been paying a monthly fee to get my new tracks into DJs’ hands on or before release day.

Don’t make dance music? Me neither, and I’ve never been a DJ — I don’t know my melodic trance from my future bass.

I categorize most of my original mixes as “electronica” for lack of a better option. Remixes tend to perform better, especially ones I can tag as “house” or “trance” with a straight face.

DJs pay $10 per month to download unlimited tracks as 320 kbps mp3 files. That’s less than competitors like DJ City, zipDJ, and BPM Supreme, according to Digital DJ Pool’s SEO-optimized compare pages.

I’ve never tried any of their competitors, so I don’t know how they stack up from a music promotion standpoint. I took a quick look at DJ City, and it looks like you have to submit tracks directly to their music director. So, different model.

I pay $7 per month for an Uploader Subscription plan that allows me to upload up to 10 tracks. I must have been grandfathered in at that price, as the current rate is $10 per month.

Digital DJ Pool — DJ View

Let’s start by exploring the site from a DJ’s perspective. There are four main pages plus search.

First up is New Music:

Tracks are presented in the order they are uploaded, which leads me to my first pro tip:

Try to upload first thing on Fridays, as the site gets the most activity heading into the weekend.

There are filters galore, including key, which I can’t decipher for the life of me! For example, my latest track is in the key of 9A. I always knew my music degree was useless.

Next up is Featured:

How do tracks get featured? I have no idea. I spot some big names though.

Then we have Trending:

You can buy your way onto this page, and I presume everyone does. More on that later.

Finally, we’ve got the Charts:

I’m not spotting any of the trending or featured tracks in the charts, which suggests unlike everything else, you can’t pay for chart placement.

And that’s how DJs find music to download!

Digital DJ Pool — Artist View

Now let’s look at the site from the perspective of an artist or label i.e. where the magic happens.

You might wonder if your track will languish in obscurity once it leaves the New Music page, but fear not! There are a panoply of paid prescriptions for our plight:

We can pay $10 to appear on the Charts (above the #1 slot) or on the Trending page for 24 hours. For $70, a ReSpin will resurrect your track with a release date rewrite, putting it back at the top of the New Music page. What’s old is new.

You’ll be pleased to hear that I tested each of these options without having to pay for it, as part of a case study I was invited to participate in. I’ll share those results below, plus insights from my most recent upload.

But first, an overview. I’ve uploaded over a hundred tracks to date. Here are my top performers, sorted by engagement:

Engagement refers to the number of times the track has been played, downloaded, liked, or commented on.

As you can see, the winner by a mile is “Two,” an eight-minute progressive house epic I produced back when I used to listen to Deadmau5.

Color Theory · Two

Let’s venture on over to the Insights page and see what stats are on offer:

Impressions is how many times the track has been seen on the site, Last Month Charting is where it ranked in its genre (progressive house) last month, and Peak Monthly Position is the highest chart ranking it achieved.

All of the promotions above were part of the case study. I had no control or say in what or when they did what they did, nor have I seen the study results.

They executed two ReSpins to put it back at the top of the New Music page, a Charts boost, a Trending boost, and I guess they included it in an email campaign.

It seems the ReSpins were the most effective, but at 7x the cost of a boost, I’d expect them to be!

It’s a worldwide phenomenon!

Most of the stats above should require no explanation. Reach is the number of unique users who saw the track, while Impressions is the total number of views.

Downloads strikes me as the most important metric, since DJs most likely have to download the track before spinning it at an event.

Next up, lots and lots of DJ avatars. 131 pages of them to be exact! That doesn’t mean they actually spun the track though. Rather, they played, downloaded, liked, or commented on it.

Digital DJ Pool doesn’t guarantee radio or club play, but how else would a radio station, club, or bar engage with the track? Unless there are dedicated account types for radio stations and clubs?

Last up, the track got a couple of generic comments. I’m not sure what to make of the club support, radio support, and guaranteed hit tags. They aren’t clickable, at least on my end.

Best case scenario, my track was spun by dozens of DJs, 13 radio stations, and 169 clubs and bars.

Worst case, 312 lonely mp3 files are languishing in cluttered download folders.

To give you an idea of what you might reasonably expect, here are insights from my latest upload, which hasn’t been released outside of Patreon.

No chart results yet, since the November charts won’t close for another week and change.

23 downloads isn’t much to write home about.

A lot of the same guys.

If these represent actual spins, that’s more than worth the price of admission!

Digital DJ Pool Conclusion

Is Digital DJ Pool worth $10 a month? If you’re working in a genre that’s at least dance-adjacent, I’d say yes.

Compared to what I spend on Meta ads, Spotify Marquee, and even SubmitHub, it’s a drop in the bucket.

That said, I’ve never once heard from any of these DJs directly. While I don’t suspect foul play, it’s possible that some “DJs” are casual listeners building personal music collections.

You can try out Digital DJ Pool here (there’s nothing in it for me), and please let us know how it goes in the comments!