Remixes they represent a gray territory in the vast and complicated world of music copyright. As is well known, the act of taking the sample of a pre-existing pipe and modifying it, creating something new, always involves paying a fat fee of royalties both to the authors of the music and the record company that holds their rights.
If you are a world famous DJ who takes tens of thousands to his shows whose main star is a USB stick, surely paying these fees will not be a problem; however, we all know that a good part of remixes more creative and interesting, they leave, in fact, young people without money in love with music in the dark of their rooms. In other words, they are absolutely unofficial and unauthorized mixes by the record companies, and, therefore, they will find it difficult to conquer the world through today's strongest musical dissemination vehicles: streaming like the Apple Music or the Spotify.
Therefore, this decision by Sony Music, one of the largest record labels in the world, may indicate a more enlightened path for remixes and its creators. The Japanese giant is, in effect, to allow the remixes unofficial music from your catalog, making life for amateur DJs much easier and paving the way for streaming receive this type of creation much more often.
The decision is intrinsically linked to a Sony agreement with Dubset, an startup of San Francisco with a very interesting proposal: the company indexes the entire music catalog of a record label and, by identifying the sample of any of the songs in such a catalog, makes the rights holder receive a share of the profits from that reproduction then, when an amateur DJ does the remix of a song from the Sony catalog, he can make this creation available on the platforms of streaming and, automatically, a portion of the reproduction profits will be passed on to the record label. Without payment royalties, without kilometer contracts, without lawyers.
Sony the first of the world's major record labels to sign a contract with Dubset and allow remixes unofficial members of your catalog; still, a very promising first step for the entire mix of mixers and amateur producers. It is hoped that, with the pioneering spirit of the American record company, other giants from the music world will enter the same boat which, if it happens, will be excellent news for everyone involved.
In fact, there is only one element in this whole story that is not celebrating the news: the SoundCloud. The musical platform, even with bad legs, is considered the unofficial home of amateur DJs and mixers precisely because it is kind of a land of no one where formalities such as copyrights or royalties do not enter. With the movement of Sony Music, it is very likely that these content producers will abandon the service to promote their creations on profitable platforms, such as Apple Music and Spotify. The result of this, however, is just the right time.
via TechCrunch
