We love numbers and statistics here at Ears To The House. They tell us useful things we want to know, and we tend to get annoyed when they aren’t available. Not for us the old Homer Simpson quote of “People can come up with statistics to prove anything – 40% of all people know that.”.

But some statistics are more useful than others. Which is why we find ourselves questioning the details provided to us on Beatportal – giving us an insight into what sold on Beatport during July. As we already know, techno is now the biggest selling genre on the site – but the value of this insight is tempered by something.

We’ll see if you can spot what’s missing here. The biggest selling techno label on Beatport in July was Drumcode. The aforementioned Drumcode was also the most streamed, “Terra” by Jay Lumen was the best selling Beatport Hype track in the genre, and Adam Beyer was the most downloaded and most streamed artist.

Noticed what was missing yet? That’s right, the numbers. Drumcode sold the most units, but we have absolutely no idea how many MP3s and WAVs were bought. The streaming figures would be easy to provide, but aren’t provided. Nor do we have any idea how many downloads and streams Adam Beyer got in the process.

What’s the reason for this information not being provided? From a technical point of view, this wouldn’t be difficult – every single sale and every stream is logged. And as far as we can establish, there’s no explicit ban in place on Beatport publishing such information – Spotify frequently show how many streams artists have, and the majors don’t jump up and down in anger about it.

Beatport have been contacted for comment – we’ll update you if they reply…