Commercial
Beatport has spent more than 20 years as one of dance music’s primary digital homes. Built by DJs and for DJs, the company helped move the culture from record bins into an online catalog that could follow artists anywhere. Now Beatport has given that community a physical address.
Beatport Live LA is a free monthly performance series inside the company’s downtown Los Angeles headquarters, located in the Arts District. The room is intentionally intimate. Artists who usually command festival stages and large clubs can play underplays in front of an audience close enough to see the booth, the mixer, and the choices behind each transition.
“We wanted a physical space where we could show up in person for the culture we serve and be part of one of the most important parts of the ecosystem: the events,” says Ed Hill, Chief Brand Officer of Beatport. “Downtown LA gave us that opportunity, so we built a place where people can hear incredible music and make a deeper connection with the community.”
From the start, the goal was not to recreate a festival environment at a smaller scale. Beatport wanted a room where sound quality, proximity, and community carried the experience. Since launching, Beatport Live LA has hosted aspiring local DJs as well as internationally recognized artists including SOFI TUKKER, Odd Mob, Beltran, SIDEPIECE, Aluna, and Kaleena Zanders.
“Part of our vision was to prioritize sound quality and connection over spectacle,” Hill says. “It’s not a festival stage or a mega-club, but rather a room where you can feel the music and see the DJs up close. That intimacy is the point.”
Turning a Stereo DJ Set Into a Spatial Performance
The collaboration between Beatport and L-Acoustics is rooted in a shared idea: remove barriers between artists and the music they want to play. Beatport has pursued that idea through its catalog, Beatport LINK, and browser-based DJ tools. L-Acoustics DJ approaches the same philosophy from the system side by challenging a long-standing assumption that a DJ set must remain a stereo object.
Announced in May 2025 and shipping this year, L-Acoustics DJ uses machine-learning source separation to split a track into component stems while it plays. Drums, vocals, and melodic elements can then be positioned and moved around the room in real time. The separation happens live from whatever the DJ cued approximately 30 seconds earlier, allowing artists to spatialize familiar stereo material without rebuilding their workflow.
At Beatport Live LA, an L-Acoustics DJ Controller and an iPad running the L-Acoustics DJ App sit beside the mixer. A visiting DJ can use the system during a first encounter, while an artist who wants to design a spatial set can treat the room itself as part of the instrument.
“Beatport built its business on giving artists tools that let them do something the previous format made impossible, and that is exactly what we set out to do with L-Acoustics DJ,” says Yann-Gael Gicquel, Director of Product Management, Spatial Systems at L-Acoustics. “A DJ walks into this room with the set they were already going to play and leaves having mixed it in three dimensions, without changing a single thing about the way they work.”
The relationship has already extended beyond the Los Angeles headquarters. In March 2026, Beatport Live and L-Acoustics DJ collaborated creatively during a three-day WMC pool party in Miami, bringing the spatial DJ concept into another live-event environment.
A 6.1 System Designed Around the Room
The Beatport Live LA system is anchored by two Syva over Syva Low arrays flanking the DJ booth, with four X12 coaxial loudspeakers covering the sides and rear of the audience area. Two KS21 subwoofers provide extended low-frequency impact, while four X8 enclosures deliver spatial sound to the DJ booth. The system is driven by two LA12X amplified controllers and a P1 processor, with the L-Acoustics DJ technology powered by an L-ISA Processor II core.
RAT Sound System installed the system. Lumina Production Services handles audio production for the series and supported the room’s first fully spatial show in January 2026, when Kaleena Zanders, SIDEPIECE, and Aluna performed.
“When we set out to build this space, we knew that the sound system would define the entire experience,” Hill says. “So, L-Acoustics helped us design a system that’s perfectly calibrated for the dimensions and acoustics of our space. We can achieve the kind of clarity, depth, and power that you’d expect in a world-class club or concert venue, but in an intimate setting.”
For artists, the room offers a rare chance to hear club music with precision and movement at close range. For audiences, it makes the booth feel less like a distant control point and more like the center of a shared listening environment.
“The response has been amazing,” Hill adds. “Artists keep telling us they love playing our room because the system sounds incredible, and the crowd is genuinely there for the music.”
The format is also building local continuity. “We’ve seen a real community forming around our music series, people who come back every month, who’ve made friends there, who treat it as their local,” Hill says. “That’s exactly what we wanted.”
Built for the Stream as Well as the Room
Beatport Live LA was designed as both a local venue and a global broadcast platform. Beatport livestreams the series in binaural audio, extending the spatial experience beyond the people who can physically attend.
“As a company, we’ve been livestreaming events for the past few years, so this was always part of the plan to include this dimension,” Hill explains. “Our community spans every continent, so if we were going to create a physical experience, we had an obligation to make sure it wasn’t exclusive to the people who happen to live in LA.”
The livestream strategy also turns each event into lasting content for Beatport’s platforms. A room that holds a close audience in Los Angeles can still serve a global dance-music community long after the night ends.
A Portable Standard for Future Cities
Beatport plans to continue building Beatport Live LA while treating it as a model for other cities. Hill describes Beatport Live as a global format: a portable standard of quality that can be deployed wherever the culture is active.
In that model, the sound system is not a technical afterthought. It is the foundation for everything else the room can become.”It’s the single most important variable in any dance music experience,” Hill says. “You can have the right DJ, the right crowd and the right energy, but if the sound system isn’t up to par, then people like me will be complaining from the middle of the dance floor, boring everyone to tears, which is no good for anyone.”
Project Highlights
Spatial Audio Control
- L-Acoustics DJ Controller
- iPad running the L-Acoustics DJ App
- L-ISA Processor II core
Loudspeakers
- 2 L-Acoustics Syva over Syva Low arrays flanking the DJ booth
- 4 L-Acoustics X12 coaxial loudspeakers for side and rear audience coverage
- 2 L-Acoustics KS21 subwoofers
- 4 L-Acoustics X8 enclosures for DJ booth spatial monitoring
Processing & Amplification
- 2 L-Acoustics LA12X amplified controllers
- L-Acoustics P1 processor
Project Partners
Installer: RAT Sound System
Audio production: Lumina Production Services
