מאת shahar:kind of stagrne for an electronic music blogger not to know about beatport it's 1 of the dance scene's pioneers of online music sales anyway, this idea of buying your own releases isn't new. when a record company prints a record, they have to pay for every copy made to the copyright society ( such as israeli ACUM)these figures are the base for a gold/platinum status. no need to actually sell the record in a store.since record companies sometimes get copyright royalties, it makes it a very small investment for them to print the amount needed to gain gold status.this way, they gain the extra publicity, without even selling 1 copy of the album the actuall copies are being given out as promo or sold for a very cheap price (since they already made some royalties back) to show 'actuall' sales.as for beatport, you'll need more than a few 'friends' to buy your releases, as they sell very large amounts of downloads. actually they sell so much, that they did one time ( or more,)drop labels that did not meet their sales criteria, canceled their affiliates program and only recently dropped another 100 labels.