Beatport’s The Block: Taking Electronic Music Live, Without Breaking the Moment

Electronic music has always been about connection — between artists, audiences, and moments that exist once and never quite the same way again. For Beatport, one of the world’s most influential electronic music platforms, that connection now extends far beyond the dancefloor. 

Over the summer, Beatport Live launched The Block: a high-spec, mobile DJ stage built inside a 20-foot shipping container. Designed to drop into major festivals such as Junction 2 and Creamfields across the UK — and soon the US — The Block appears in unexpected places, surprises audiences, and creates a unique platform for both emerging talent and established electronic artists. 

From the beginning, The Block was about more than sound.
It was about creating an experience that could live on — visually — long after the music stopped, extending the energy of the dancefloor to a global audience. 

A platform for discovering new talent 

The Block exists to create opportunity. Beatport runs DJ competitions to uncover new grassroots talent, reviewing thousands of mixes and selecting winners in partnership with festival organisers. Those artists earn the chance to perform on a dedicated stage, using the latest industry-standard DJ equipment, in front of thousands of music fans. 

Alongside competition winners, The Block also hosts surprise sets from high-profile and headline electronic artists — creating moments that feel spontaneous, authentic, and uniquely Beatport. 

Every performance is designed to be shared, streamed, and experienced far beyond the festival itself. 

A bold idea with a real production challenge 

The Block is compact, intense, and immersive by design. When opened, the container transforms into a fully equipped DJ stage complete with professional lighting, LED visuals, and high-end sound. 

What it doesn’t have is space. 

Traditional camera setups with dedicated operators — long the standard for live music — simply weren’t practical. The environment is dark, crowded, and constantly moving, yet the visual quality still had to match the energy of the music. 

Beatport needed a way to: 

• Capture performances without disrupting artists or the crowd 

• Operate reliably in low-light festival conditions 

• Keep the setup clean, discreet, and mobile 

• Deploy quickly across multiple locations 

Revisiting PTZ, with a very different result 

PTZ cameras weren’t new to the Beatport team. Earlier experiments had left them unimpressed, with image quality and operation falling short of live music production standards. 

The Block changed that. 

BirdDog PTZ cameras delivered a fundamentally different experience — compact, remotely operated, and built for demanding live environments. For the first time, PTZ became a genuine alternative to operator-based cameras, without compromising image quality or creative control. 

Inside the setup 

BirdDog cameras were positioned to maximise coverage while remaining almost invisible to the audience: 

• A front-facing camera integrated into the DJ booth grid for close, immersive shots 

• Side-mounted cameras capturing movement, crowd energy, and dynamic angles 

• A wider view to show the scale and atmosphere surrounding the container 

All cameras were operated remotely, giving the production team full control over framing, pan, tilt, and zoom — without stepping into the crowd or interrupting the performance. 

The result was a setup that was: 

• Fast to deploy and move between festivals 

• Unobtrusive for artists and audiences 

• Consistent in image quality across locations 

• Flexible enough to adapt to different venues and environments 

From the crowd to the world 

The Block quickly became more than a physical installation. Every performance is live-streamed using BirdDog PTZ cameras and broadcast across Beatport’s media channels — including Twitch, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. 

From competition winners stepping onto a major festival stage, to surprise appearances from established electronic artists, the streams capture the raw energy of the moment — not an overproduced version of it. 

For Beatport, the goal is authenticity: showcasing electronic music culture exactly as it happens. 

Looking ahead 

The collaboration between Beatport and BirdDog is set to continue, building on what’s already been achieved and exploring new ways of capturing live electronic music. 

As The Block travels to more festivals and new locations, BirdDog will remain part of the journey — supporting evolving workflows, testing new ideas, and helping translate the intensity of live performances into compelling visual stories. 

As electronic music continues to evolve, video is no longer an add-on — it’s part of the culture.
Projects like The Block show how modern live production can be mobile, discreet, and scalable, without compromising the atmosphere on the ground. 

This was just the beginning!