2Advanced Rips Off Beatport.com
I have closed comments on this blog entry. I think all the parties involved have responded and do not want the mudslinging or finger pointing to get out of hand. I think everyone has valid points and I also stated my own preference below. If you have any direct comments, please relay them directly to the email addresses below for 2Advanced or Beatport. Thank you.
So I wrote this blog entry about how 2Advanced out of Orange County, CA copied Beatport.com’s GUI and IA, but, as it turns out, it was a client of theirs that supplied the completed IA. Eric Jordan, owner and visionary of 2A also happens to be in the music scene. I had assumed that because of this it was his own pet project, a new business endeavor. I was wrong.
Eric professionally responded to a post I made on plat4m.com, 2A’s blog, calling out the fact that MasterBeat.com is so so so so close to Beatport. See the examples below, click to enlarge, then read his response.
This one got sent to me by Beatport.com Support today:
Jtrcmca,
Not a lot of people understand what happens behind the scenes with these client projects, so I thought I would address your concerns.
The client (Masterbeat) came to 2Advanced with the entire information architecture completely documented from A to Z, and wanted to go head to head with Beatport. We had little to do with any information architecture other than making suggestions and coming up with some of the cool features for “Control”, the Masterbeat backend which allows artists to upload their tracks.
Despite the NUMEROUS suggestions we made to “do something different from Beatport’s UI”, the client inevitably came back to us with the following statements every time: “Well, Beatport does it like this…” or “I’d like to do something similar to how Beatport does it….”. Believe me, we gave a lot of push back, but in the end the client always wants what they want, and its their dollar. We walk a fine line between making our own recommendations and actually upsetting the client for not giving them what they want.
So, despite the clients natural tendency to ask us to emulate much of Beatport’s IA, I feel we did an excellent job in enhancing the functionality and making many improvements over Beatport’s UI. We will be pushing a new version up shortly for the client which has some really unique features. I think if you dig deeper, you will see that our interface is immensely more functional and has an attention to detail which Beatport lacks.
Eric Jordan
President / Chief Creative Officer
2Advanced Studios, LLC.
6 Comments, Comment or Ping
Jonas Tempel
Jason,
I posted a response on the 2A website, but I don’t know if it will see the light of day. My name is Jonas Tempel. I’m the CEO and one of the founding partners of Beatport.com. Previous to my role at Beatport I founded a design studio called Factory Design Labs, Inc where I was CEO and Creative Director. You can view Factory’s website here. http://www.factorylabs.com. I’m also have been DJing for over 17 years playing gigs and clubs all over the United States. You can see my current residency here: http://www.betanightclub.com and I tour monthly with Bad Boy Bill. As you can see, I’ve spent most of my professional career as a graphic designer, entrepreneur and an advocate for electronic music.
It important for me to comment on this issue and Eric’s response. First as a designer and secondly as the CEO of Beatport.
As a designer, like a lot of designers, I’m a big fan of 2A. I’ve followed the firm for quite some time and have seen them produce work that is consistently superior and forward thinking. As a designer, I’ve been influenced by their creative and have probably even tried to mimic some small part of their designs into designs of my own. Its natural to look around and become inspired by other people’s work. Its the nature of collaboration and a natural part of a designers career.
So, as a designer, I just can’t accept Eric’s response to your claim, which we both know is 100% true. And I say this with total total respect for the portfolio of 2Advanced and the career of Eric Jordan. But in my experience, no client ever tells a firm exactly how to design a project. It never happens like that. And, a firm like 2A would never let a client come in and sit down next to them and say, “we want you to rip off this design”. I don’t even know Eric personally, but looking at the portfolio of 2A and his career, it just doesn’t make sense.
So I’m left with this question. What happened? How does Masterbeat end up looking so much like Beatport? How would a reputable firm like 2Advanced simply put their creative integrity aside and just do the job. And then, go on the internet and tell the world that it really wasn’t them, it was the client “that made them do it”. And even worse, try to sandbag our design to justify their design. Not very classy or professional.
Was it the money? Does 2A need the money to have a crappy client boss them around and compromise the firm’s track record? I doubt it. But for the life of me, I just can’t figure out how this could happen. Seriously.
Now as a business man and the CEO of Beatport, I’m used to people ripping off our design. There is a Japanese website that you have posted above that ripped our style. And recently we became aware that another site called Clubport is launching a redesign that is a total rip off of our site. But I would have never guessed that 2Advanced would be one of the people. Never in a million years.
In full transparency, I contacted Eric about six months ago to talk to him about Beatport.com and doing some work with our brand. We were considering outsourcing a small part of our design but in the end we scrapped the concept internally and the conversation ceased. But can you imagine if 2A had taken our job? Wow. I’m sure they were working on the Masterbeat website at the time but never mentioned it to me.
I’ll give Eric a call and deal with this professionally. I didn’t even know that 2A did this website until today. I’ve seen the site and laughed at their design for a couple of months. But today I’m bummed out that one of my favorite firms is guilty of the rip. Sometimes things happen in the business world that just don’t make sense. This certainly is one of them.
Jonas Tempel
CEO/Founding Partner
Beatport.com
May 2nd, 2008
Tony Novak
Jason,
Having followed your posting and Mr. Tempel’s diatribe / resume response, I thought it would be wise to jump in with our 2 cents in this matter. In my opinion Eric’s comments have been taken largely out of context here, given that he was only trying to express that client’s desires ultimately dictate the final outcome of any given project.
So, to start, there is NO DOUBT in my mind that the overall functional variances between the two sites are so grossly significant that the assertion of “rips” or “copies” is just completely asinine. To the same extent, Mr. Tempel’s comments above and his recent ‘cease and desist’ letter sent to Masterbeat are more indicative of a neophyte businessman feeling the threat and fear in the face of competition.
Take it for what it’s worth that I have personally served as an expert witness dealing specifically with matters of intellectual property infringement over the past 10 years and can clearly distinguish inspiration and competitive improvement from actual blatant rips. Not a day goes by here at 2Advanced without some ‘real ‘report of a rip coming through our e-mail. In fact, we see so many examples that it makes it all the more comical to hear an accusation regarding Masterbeat (or 2Advanced for that matter) stealing from Beatport.
The issue at hand here is that so many self-proclaimed closet legal experts are making way to the internet trying to ascertain exactly what constitutes “stealing” or “copying” out on the web. Everyone has an opinion on the matter, and most of them are wrong. The simple answer is that if you take and reuse assets – one for one – you are indeed in clear violation. However, now take the concept of using visual references of a product (or several products) and building your own solution from the ground up – having only used your competitor’s in a market for reference and all the while intent on building a better solution. Is that stealing? No.
If today I decide to start a business to make a new cola soft drink… realizing that all of my products traits and properties largely have to be the same as the Coca-cola and Pepsi products and that I will have to rely entirely on differentiating my product through marketing… Have I infringed on the competition or should I be precluded from competing because another caramel colored carbonated caffeine beverage is just too similar to the competitors? Most would agree that it would be a greater crime to limit the competition.
The reality is that Masterbeat has a business plan that intentionally goes head-to-head with Beatport. Now just ponder that statement for a moment, because inherent to that plan you are absolutely bound to have visual similarities when you consider the overall simplicity of what is happening in their models. Afterall, there’s only so many ways to build an audio playback component. But, more importantly I would argue that you would be entirely remiss to discount the competitive strides made by others while designing your own.
Beatport (whom more than likely is the fuel behind these absurd assertions that Masterbeat and/or 2Advanced has stolen something from them) is simply playing games here with the Internet communities as they have been doing for months. Starting with Mr. Tempel’s own attempts a few months back to contact the 2Advanced Sales department in search of competitive intel when he first caught wind that 2Advanced was building Masterbeat’s site. Now, several months after launch, Mr. Tempel is throwing out ridiculous assertions of infringement and developing a façade in order to fight the battle that they are apparently ill equipped to handle at a competitive business level. And that is just sad.
Grow up Mr. Tempel. You have a new competitor in your market and they are serious and well backed. Put the games aside and deal start dealing with the business reality you now face.
Tony Novak
Chief Operating Officer
2Advanced Studios, LLC.
May 7th, 2008
Eric Fickes
Imitation is the highest form of flattery. Thank you 2ADV, and MasterBeat.
May 7th, 2008
Jason the Designer
Hey Tony
Thanks for taking the time to respond to this discussion. I do not want to speak for anyone here, or the status of their relationship to anyone else.
I think the root of Jonas’ comment goes to his personal relationship with Eric. As stated above however, I do not know really how close they are. I think Jonas was disappointed in Eric taking this job and letting it be turned into something so close to Beatport. I think he feels betrayed by a friend more than anything.
You are right from a legal standpoint; you didn’t ’steal’ anything out right. Flash and Flex are off-the-shelf software that anyone can take and use to create a media rich app.
My original take on it was that it looks exactly like Beatport. I am talking about the skin of it, the IA. That to me is a rip for sure. I at first felt disappointed in Eric and 2A that they didn’t live up to their normal bar of excellence by reinventing the market into a truly 2A piece. 2A became famous at first from their own website’s design. It was truly unique and still is. That is what I expected in this current project for Masterbeat, which is why I was so surprised when I saw it so similar to Beatport. Eric’s response to my original post on 2A’s blog tho stated that the IA was done prior to 2A picking up the project for development cycle.
There are slight differences, tabs for one, that I can see in using it. Whether it is an improvement over Beatport is something that time will tell if they can chip away at Beatport’s market share.
To me, Masterbeat pulled a Microsoft. Whether they will kill Beatport as Microsoft killed Netscape, we will see. Jonas is feeling the sting of a possible betrayal as well as the realization that Masterbeat was developed by a company known for its rock solid and cutting edge technology.
In my personal opinion, Masterbeat has stolen the look of Beatport, lacking any visual imagination of their own. I started using Beatport close to 5 years ago and I will keep using them in the future.
Jason
Sr. Interactive Art Director
Dailey & Assoc.
May 7th, 2008
Miscellaneous.
Tony Novak: “Grow up Mr. Tempel. ”
Wow, coming from a professional COO, just wow, no wonder 2A gets sued.
May 8th, 2008
Josh Jones
I wanted to comment here because there is some things being thrown around and I think several people need to be sure they watch what they say. I own and operate Level Four Storefront, LLC and have been building flash ecommerce sites for some time now and I noticed a comment above about a client of mine and the accusation is as such…
“And recently we became aware that another site called Clubport is launching a redesign that is a total rip off of our site. ”
It would seem to me that there is some pressure about having competition, Mr. Temple… I have built this storefront from scratch, this site does not even have an integrated audio player in it… and yet you have already called this Clubport site a “total rip off”… come on!!! This guy is using one of my regular storefronts to sell music… please explain to me how that is a total rip off? Or you need to apologize to this business owner that you really had no idea what you were talking about when you made that comment!!!
We are in the process of doing some redesign work, but it sells music, and if you think you hold all rights and reserves on that, you better watch what you say…
In my opinion, the 2 above sites are completely different… Look at the thousands of goods and services sold online… do you think that nike gets upset with addidas because it looks like addidas is selling shoes, showing shoes on peoples feet, showing poeple running in shoes… god forbid!!! clothing companies bickering about other clothing companies who sell cloths… and heaven forbid they look like they are all selling cloths…
The concept of selling music is going to have a lot of IA features that are the same, just mixed up, and I think the above designs show that… I could see the similar features if I build one for my client ( maybe I will! ) with an integrated player, playlists, client uploads, build your own mix compilation, search by all the types fo criteria you should be able to… maybe I’ll put it in a production state for any who wish to open a music store…
Josh Jones
Level Four Storefront, LLC
May 8th, 2008