So basically it looks like this: You can create your mashup, stream it on Apple Music, a % of the rolyaties go to the right people and you get something for your trouble WITHOUT jumping though a million legal hoops to get your stuff heard.
“Apple has announced a new partnership with Dubset Media Holdings to stream thousands of remixed songs and DJ mixes, both based on original recordings, that were previously unavailable due to copyright issues.”
The rise in popularity of the EDM genre has resulted in an increasing number of user-generated remixes, mash-ups, and DJ mixes of popular songs, and this partnership will help bring those underground tracks to Apple Music and potentially “all 400 distributors worldwide”
“Dubset will retain a percentage of revenue for providing in-house licensing and pay the DJ or remixer a share of that amount. Allowing everyone to make money on this content for the first time”
I gave this a good amount of thought, and think this is a step in the right direction, but there still seems to be some issues with this that are not clarified.
a Dj mix goes up. the artists within the dj mix are paid, along with the mixer, and everyone is happy. but what if another used made an identical mix, with the same playlist, because it was so successful. does that original user also get paid for that as IP? or does it use the same route as the original user?
what if there is a mashup of a remix that was taken from apple music? who gets a portion of that sale? is it the original unlicensed user and the original mixes? or do you again bypass the unlicensed user and you get a portion of those proceeds along with the original content creator.
if this is all algorithm based, im sure there is a way to get a portion of to proceeds based on manipulating how the algorithm operates
I think where this really works is that it simply makes things “Legal” for Live and Bedroom producers who would otherwise get their mix or mashups thrown off Soundcloud & Youtube for violating copyrights, and they get to make a few $ if their stuff is decent.
If you really intend making real money from a mashup, the proper way to do it would be to contact the labels and negotiate the usage of the samples, which should work out at a lower overall fee (depending on the Artist) - therefore bypassing Apple Music completely and just dealing with a label.
Sure, there will be a few people trying to game the system, but I cant imagine theres a huge amount of money to be made on a mashup in the first place. If an artist produces a track that is paying a large royalty fee though, a label are surely going to see what all the fuss is about. Which in turn should make it a decent promotion and talent scouting tool.
It will be interesting to see what happens next. Apparently, Dubset are looking at negotiating with others apart from Apple Music, so could be Spotify, Tidal, etc being added to the equation.