The clean European license lasted about a month before a court put limits on it.
A German court issued an injunction against Beatport and Buma/Stemra. The order said Beatport could not make certain works from the GEMA repertoire available in Germany without GEMA's permission.
The problem was not whether Beatport wanted to pay for music rights. The problem was who had the authority to grant which rights in which country.
Buma/Stemra had announced a pan-European agreement that was supposed to cover Beatport across the European Union. GEMA said the Dutch organization could not license its German repertoire that way. The Mannheim court agreed enough to issue the injunction.
A similar dispute was happening with the British rights organization PRS. The internet store crossed borders easily. The licensing organizations were still divided by contracts and territories built for a different distribution system.
From the technology side, legal boundaries turned into product and operations boundaries. A track could exist in the catalog and be technically deliverable anywhere while still requiring a rule that stopped it in one place. That meant data, territory controls, support, and careful coordination with the people handling rights.
Beatport accepted the German order as final for itself. The larger European licensing argument continued.
This was a real company lowlight, even if it was not a server failure. The ambitious agreement announced in July did not create the certainty it promised. It exposed the fight underneath it.
The store could move a file across Europe in seconds.
The right to do it was going to take longer.