Beatport will reportedly reintroduce the “Hard Techno” genre category on July 28th, 2020 after removing it in February.
Communications to that effect from Beatport Artist Relations have been shared by U.K. DJ and producer D.A.V.E. the Drummer (whose Facebook post has since been deleted). They promise that songs will be moved back into the category from “Techno (Peak Time/ Driving/ Hard)” and “Techno (Raw/ Deep/ Hypnotic).” The former will also be renamed “Techno (Peak Time/ Driving).”
“Giving the content it’s own page will allow users to more easily find the content and for the genre to have it’s own dedicated Top 100, enabling artists and labels to track the success of their tracks,” reads a passage of the announcement. “Given that harder sounds are the in-vogue side of techno at the moment, Beatport anticipate the genre will be received well by the community.”
Beatport had alienated hard techno artists and label owners when they consolidated all of the techno on their store into the two aforementioned genre categories. Competing with more commercial variants of the genre on a single chart hurt the visibility of hard techno purveyors like Dolma Records and Finder Records.
Beatport have not announced the return of their “Hard Techno” genre category t0 the general public at the time of writing.
