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Apple Music announced today that it has created a process to properly identify and remunerate all individual creators involved in creating a DJ mix. Using technology from the Shazam audio recognition app, which Apple acquired in 2018 for $ 400 million, Apple Music is working with major and independent labels to find a fair way to distribute streaming royalties among DJs, the labels and artists that appear in the mixes. This is meant to help DJ mixes retain long term monetary value for all creators involved, ensuring musicians get paid for their work even when other artists repeat it. And, as one of Apple’s first major integrations of Shazam’s technology, it looks like the company has seen value in
Historically, it was difficult for DJs to stream mixes online, as live streaming platforms like YouTube or Twitch could report the use of other artists’ songs as copyright infringement. Artists are entitled to royalties when their song is played by a DJ at a concert, but dance music complicates this even more, as small samples of various songs can be edited and mixed into something unrecognizable.
Apple Music is already home to thousands of mixes, including sets from the 2020 and 2021 Tomorrowland digital festivals, but it’s only now that it is officially announcing the technology that allows it to do so, even though Billboard has it. noted in June. As part of this announcement, Studio K7’s DJ Kicks Mix Archives! will begin rolling out to the service, giving fans access to mixes that haven’t been on the market for over 15 years.
“Apple Music is the first platform that offers continuous mixes for which a fair fee is involved for the artists whose tracks are included in the mixes and for the artist making those mixes. It’s a step in the right direction where everyone is treated fairly, ”DJ Charlotte de Witte said in a statement on behalf of Apple. “I am more than delighted to have the chance to offer mixes online again. “
Image credits: Apple Music
For dance music fans, the ability to stream DJ mixes is revolutionary and can help Apple Music compete with Spotify, which dominates the paid subscriber industry as it goes beyond Apple’s grip on podcasting. Even though Apple Music has introduced acquisitions of lossless audio, spatial audio, and classical music, the company has yet to overtake Spotify, although the addition of DJ mixes adds yet another unique music feature.
Yet Apple Music’s dive into the DJ royalty conundrum doesn’t necessarily resolve the broader crises at play among live musicians and DJs surviving a pandemic.
While platforms like Mixcloud allow DJs to stream sets and monetize using licensed music, Apple Music’s DJ mixes will not include user-generated content. MIDiA Research, in partnership with Audible Magic, has discovered that User Generated Content (UGC) – online content that uses music, whether it’s a TikTok lipsync or a Soundcloud mix DJ – could be a gold mine for the music industry worth over $ 6 billion in the next two years. But Apple is not investing in UGC yet, as individuals cannot yet download their personal mixes to stream on the platform as they could on Soundcloud. According to a June Billboard report, Apple Music will only host the mixes after the streamer identifies 70% of the combined tracks.
Apple Music has not answered questions about the exact distribution of royalties, but it is only a small step to reinvent the way musicians will make a living in a digital landscape.
While these innovations help artists get compensated, streaming royalties are only a small percentage of how musicians make money – Apple pays musicians a dime per stream, while competitors like Spotify only pay fractions of a penny. This led to the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW) launching a campaign in March called Justice at Spotify, which demands a payment of one cent per stream that matches Apple’s. But live events are still a musician’s bread and butter, especially given the platforms’ paltry streaming payments – of course, the pandemic hasn’t been tour-friendly. To add insult to injury, the Association for Electronic Music estimated in 2016 that dance music producers missed $ 120 million in royalties on their work used without attribution in live performances.
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