Best Juno Download Alternative for DJs in 2026

On Monday 1 June 2026, DJs and record diggers loaded junodownload.com and found nothing but a goodbye note. No countdown. No final clearance sale. No warning. According to Resident Advisor and DJ Mag, the store that had sold electronic music for roughly two decades simply switched off overnight, and its Instagram and Facebook accounts were deleted the same day, as gearnews reported. Some Reddit users said they had bought tracks just hours earlier, with no idea it was the last day.

If you are reading this looking for a Juno Download alternative, start here: the honest news first, then where DJs actually go next.

What happened to Juno Download

Juno Download launched in 2006 as the digital arm of London vinyl shop Juno Records, and was sold to a US company in 2013, according to DJ TechTools. Its farewell statement, quoted by DJ Mag, read: "It's been our privilege to share some of the most incredible music from the most amazing artists. But we're sorry to say, that the time has come to say goodbye."

One important clarification before you panic: the physical vinyl retailer Juno Records (juno.co.uk) is a separate business and is still trading. Only the download store closed.

The reason matters more than the date. Juno Download COO Lucas Garcia told Resident Advisor the store closed because "as streaming has become the dominant model of digital music consumption, artists and labels are now more connected than ever with their fans via social media and direct-to-fan services like Bandcamp, so the role of the music webstore is becoming less significant." MusicTech framed the whole closure around that single line.

It was a store admitting the webstore model itself was fading. That is the real story — and it sets up the only question that matters for working DJs: so what comes next?

What DJs are actually losing

Juno Download was never the biggest store. It was the deepest in the corners nobody else served. According to Decoded Magazine, it was prized for:

• Old UK hardcore, hard trance, jungle and dancehall that bigger stores skipped
• Drum & bass, hip-hop, indie and bootlegs in real catalogue depth
• Pre-2015 releases competitors often simply didn't carry
• A reputation for being noticeably cheaper than Beatport

Decoded puts the catalogue at 62,000+ titles with 700+ new releases weekly — treat those as approximate, single-source figures. On formats and price, Juno's own FAQ listed MP3 (up to 320kbps), WAV, FLAC, AIFF and ALAC, with lossless formats around £1.65 per track. We should be straight about this: that 20-year back catalogue is genuinely gone, and no new store can magic it back. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.

Where Juno pointed refugees — and why it's complicated

The closure notice directed users to Beatport and Traxsource, per gearnews. Both are real options. Both also illustrate exactly what diggers were trying to avoid.

Beatport: now the dominant gatekeeper

Beatport is the largest electronic DJ store, hosting 80,000+ labels and 400,000+ artists, per Decoded Magazine. The timing is striking: the same season Juno vanished, Beatport finished absorbing Beatsource, its open-format sister platform. Musically reported the migration began on 3 March 2026, folding roughly 14 million tracks under one roof, after which standalone Beatsource access is permanently terminated.

So in a single season the DJ download world went from "lots of stores" to "basically one giant plus a few specialists." The downsides DJs raise about leaning entirely on Beatport are real:

• It was pricier than Juno — the very gap diggers used Juno to dodge
• Entry-level streaming is rising: per Digital DJ Tips, the former Beatsource $12.99/month plan becomes Beatport's "Advanced" plan at $15.99/month
• The streaming tiers are rented, not owned — per Digital DJ Tips' LINK review, you don't own the files, can't edit metadata, and the personal-use stream isn't cleared to perform from

On a Beatport download sale, the rights-holder typically receives roughly 50–70% after Beatport's cut and distributor fees, per iMusician — there is no flat published figure.

Traxsource: curated, but narrower

Traxsource is a specialist store for underground house and techno, offering AIFF, WAV and MP3. It's excellent for what it covers and was one of the two stores Juno itself recommended — but it's deliberately narrow, and like Beatport publishes no flat artist-payout figure.

Bandcamp: the artist-first benchmark, with a caveat

Here's the irony: Garcia named Bandcamp as the thing that killed the webstore. Bandcamp returns 85% or more of digital sales to artists and labels — the highest mainstream artist share — per Hypebot, and artists set their own prices. But it's a general indie-music platform, not a DJ tool: no Camelot keys, no DJ charts, no crates. And its direction is uncertain after Epic sold it to Songtradr in 2023, a deal that saw about half of Bandcamp's staff laid off, per Rolling Stone.

So the choice on offer is a near-monopoly download store, a rented streaming catalogue you can't perform from, or an artist-first platform that isn't built for DJs.

The third path: own your files, pay artists properly

This is where we'll be honest about Dubrate. We agree with Garcia's diagnosis — and we're trying to be the conclusion of it rather than another casualty.

The webstore didn't die because DJs stopped wanting to own music. It died because the old model paid artists thinly and treated catalogue as something to rent back to you. Dubrate is built the other way round:

• Artists keep 85% (a flat 15% platform fee) — the same artist-first share Bandcamp pioneered, but built for DJs
• You own lossless files — WAV, FLAC, AIFF you keep forever, not a stream licensed for personal use only
• Every track is tagged with BPM and Camelot key for harmonic mixing — see our Camelot wheel guide
• Wallet top-ups remove per-download card fees, and you can buy pay-as-you-go or via subscription tiers
• Per-buyer forensic watermarking (beta) for leak protection
• Weekly Stripe payouts to artists

The differentiator versus Bandcamp isn't the 85% — Bandcamp already does that. It's the DJ-specific tooling and pure electronic focus: Camelot keys, charts and crates built for people who perform, not for indie bands. We're also not the only newcomer here — Volumo is another "built by DJs for DJs" underground store, and it's fair to mention it rather than pretend we're alone.

Where we're being straight with you

• Dubrate is new and small. Beatport and Traxsource have vastly bigger catalogues today, and that won't change overnight.
• We can't replace Juno's 20-year archive. That depth is gone; we're not going to pretend otherwise.
• *What we fix is the why*** — pay artists properly, let DJs own their files, and never lock the catalogue behind a subscription you can't legally perform from.

If that trade — a smaller but growing catalogue in exchange for genuine ownership and a fair artist share — sounds right, you're the DJ we built this for.

So where should DJs buy music now?

There's no single replacement for Juno Download, and you should be wary of anyone who claims to be one. For most working DJs in 2026 the realistic answer is a mix:

• Beatport for sheer breadth and new-release coverage
• Traxsource for curated house and techno
• Bandcamp to support artists directly on releases they've put there
• Dubrate for lossless ownership, harmonic-mixing tools and an 85% artist share

For more on this, read our deeper guides on where to buy DJ music in 2026, the Beatport alternative for DJs, and streaming versus owning your tracks.

Juno's closure was a warning shot about a model that stopped working for the people who make and play the music. The fix isn't to rent a bigger catalogue — it's to own what you buy and make sure the artist gets paid.

[Start digging on Dubrate →](https://app.dubrate.co.uk) Browse the catalogue, explore by genre, and keep the files for good.