Mikey Campbell
Apple Music and Spotify on Thursday granted subscribers access to unofficial, user-uploaded remixes, a first for the streaming services, thanks to partnerships struck with music rights management firm Dubset.
As noted by TechCrunch, paid streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify traditionally do not offer user-uploaded mixes and remixes due to licensing restrictions. Since the content is modified, record labels are unable to claim royalties and thus consider the practice a form of piracy.
Enter Dubset. Using proprietary algorithms, the firm is able to identify songs within uploaded mix and remix content, attach those tracks to publishers and labels, and distribute royalties to rights holders. The company takes a cut off the top for its services.
According to Dubset's website, the company is able to identify original master recordings with its unique MixSCAN audio fingerprinting technology, which scans uploads from DJs or other users. Resulting information is used to create a MixDNA track list and copyright structure to facilitate distribution management by rights holders, as well as collection of royalties from streaming music providers.
The process works well enough that labels are allowing Dubset to distribute tunes through streaming services, TechCrunch reports.
"Content owners have been very supportive. The publishing and label deals we have under license provides a large catalog to work with" said Stephen White, CEO of Dubset. "[This] allows some of the content that until now has only been on YouTube and SoundCloud to come to these great paid services where content owners will get paid!"
For now, Dubset offerings are limited to single-track remixes, one of the first being DJ Jazzy Jeff's remix of "Room in Here" by Anderson .Paak. The company is currently working to bring multi-song mixes and DJ mixsets to streaming providers.
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4 Comments
Good news. I'm interested to know how well this mixSCAN technology works. For example, it's perfectly possible to mangle samples beyond (human) recognition. How would this audio fingerprinting work with a sample that has distortion, delay, reverse, time-stretch etc effects applied? It's not unheard of for bands/remixers to get away with never obtaining a license for material they've sampled purely because it's been so skilfully mangled up (The Orb are a band who are brilliant at this).
This is huge news for music lovers. Over the years I've lost count of the number of unofficial remixes that I've heard, that never saw the light of day, that are much better than the original.
First off, this move by Apple/Spotify is not designed to benefit artists, it's designed to eliminate Soundcloud. They are currently attempting to eliminate every competitor, to finally reach this theoretical "X" amount of paying users. The problem is, anything can, and will happen between then and now.
The problem with mainstream music streaming services is they're driven by corporate doctrine. Whereas the music industry is a culture, which needs multiple platforms to operator for different artist needs. So while putting unofficial remixes on Spotify might sound cool at a glance, what people fail to see is these remixes will be paid by ads and subscriptions, which means more people will be eating at what little revenue there is. To give your perspective... Spotify lost 194 MILLION DOLLARS in 2015. When your business model works, it's practically impossible to incur those type of loses. They are playing the long tail game, and when you play that game, it's no longer about responding and building for market needs, and choose a submarket best to service, but using deep pockets to will a victory over every subset. Most people use Spotify/Apple for major label official releases, then go back to Soundcloud for independents. Wether Soundcloud is around or not, doesn't matter, the market will always demand an independent alternative at all times. So the idea for Spotify/Apple to try to strong arm every service out of existence just shows how detached from the music/dj culture they are. After all, people are already tired of the endless amounts of mediocre remixes on Soundcloud, now Spotify/Apple are going to water down their own catalogs and potentially annoy the users who use those services specifically for major label releases only. This is a classic case of trying to serve everybody. Spotify/Apple will never be the independent platform. They should focus on serving the mainstream / major label markets. Soundcloud is already damaged, looking for an exit, and as soon as Soundcloud goes down, there will be an even better free alternative replacing it, and it will be something that Spotify/Apple can't take down (maybe buy out) because they will have learned from Soundcloud's errors. They will fail.