After brokering a deal with music rights management service "Dubset," Apple Music and Spotify will now be releasing unofficial single-track remixes that would otherwise only be available on Soundcloud or Youtube.
According to TechCrunch, Apple Music struck a deal with Dubset in March, followed by Spotify in May. But the first set of remixes only started hitting the music-streaming platforms this month, starting with DJ Jazzy Jeff remix of Anderson .Paak songs.
For now, only single-song remixes are available in Apple Music and Spotify, but multi-song mixsets - usually longer than single-song remixes and consist of various songs from different artists - will soon come to the streaming platforms. Dubset is equipped to distribute royalties from those mixes and its deals permit them.
According to Macworld, Dubset pays royalties for songs in remixes by scanning a remix and noting down all the songs included in the mixset. Dubset then pays royalties to the original rights-holders.
TechCrunch cites Dubset CEO Stephen White as saying that about 700 million people a month listen to remixes of songs, making it a big opportunity. However, record labels bring them down because they do not get paid and consider it as piracy.
In this deal, however, Dubset pays labels a fair share to allow mixes to be played on Apple Music and Spotify, then royalty revenue from the platforms is shared with rights holders with Dubset getting a cut.
"Content owners have been very supportive. The publishing and label deals we have under license provide a large catalog to work with," TechCrunch cites White.
Macworld also mentions that this deal with Dubset will be a big blow to Soundcloud, which Spotify was eyeing to acquire. Since some of Soundcloud's music library also contains user-uploaded content which has no license to use the songs, it could be a cause of copyright infringement cases.
