Apple Music, Dubset Partner to Stream
Apple Music To Stream DJ Mixes, Unofficial Remixes, Mashups
Dubset Media Holdings has announced a partnership that will allow Apple Music to stream remixes and DJ mixes that had previous been absent from licensed services due to copyright issues. Thousands upon thousands cool mash-ups and hour-long mixes have effectively been pulled out of the underground and placed onto the world’s second-largest music subscription service.
Dubset is a digital distributor that delivers content to digital music services. But unlike other digital distributors, Dubset will use a proprietary technology called MixBank to analyze a remix or long-form DJ mix file, identify recordings inside the file, and properly pay both record labels and music publishers.
The proliferation of EDM and user-generated content has created a major sticking point: how can people stream user-generated remixes, mash-ups and DJ mixes on a service that otherwise offers only the standard tracks and albums it licenses from record labels? It’s a problem for these services, too. People that want to hear this kind of un-licensed content can look elsewhere. In fact, the IFPI estimates that 20 percent of Internet users worldwide regularly listen to some kind of unlicensed music services.
But licensing remixes and DJ mixes, both based on original recordings, is incredibly complex. A single mix could have upward of 600 different rights holders. According to CEO Stephen White, a typical mix has 25 to 30 songs that require payments to 25 to 30 record labels and anywhere from two to ten publishers for each track. The licensing has been done in-house at Dubset. Thus far the company has agreements with over 14,000 labels and publishers.
