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Apple Music Now Uses Shazam Technology to Pay Rights Holders in DJ Mixes

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Apple has announced the creation of a process to properly identify and compensate individual creators involved in making DJ mixes that are streamed on Apple Music (via TechCrunch).

applemusic-dj-mixes-feature.jpg

The process reportedly uses technology from Shazam, and Apple is working with major and independent labels to work out a system whereby streaming royalties are fairly divided among DJs, labels, and artists who feature in the mixes.

Since the rise of streaming services, the job of paying rights holders whose music is used in a DJ mix has been a lingering issue. The rise in popularity of the EDM genre has also resulted in an increasing number of remixes, mash-ups, and DJ mixes that incorporate samples from other songs, making working out who should be compensated even harder.

Apple Music originally introduced DJ mixes and mash-ups in 2016 through a partnership with Dubset Media Holdings to identify and pay for licensed music within mixes. Now, Apple is using the Shazam technology it acquired in 2018 to identify and compensate everyone whose content appears in a mix.
"Apple Music is the first platform that offers continuous mixes where there's a fair fee involved for the artists whose tracks are included in the mixes and for the artist making those mixes," DJ Charlotte de Witte told TechCrunch on behalf of Apple. "It's a step in the right direction where everyone gets treated fairly. I'm beyond excited to have the chance to provide online mixes again."
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As part of the rollout, Apple is showcasing the thousands of mixes already available on the service within its dedicated genre section for DJ mixes within the Apple Music app. Studio K7!'s DJ Kicks archive of mixes will also start rolling out on Apple Music, giving users access to mixes that haven't been on the market in over 15 years.

The new technology will also let Apple Music subscribers see the names of individual tracks within a streamed mix, as well as give them the ability to skip or save the songs for listening offline.

Article Link: Apple Music Now Uses Shazam Technology to Pay Rights Holders in DJ Mixes
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2021/09/10/apple-music-shazam-pay-dj-mixes/
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If Apple was able to bring mixes to Apple Music while paying artists fairly, using a technology other competitors don't have access to, that would be cool and make me consider moving away from Spotify.
 
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Cool tech. How does that work going forward? DJs play tons of unreleased music. Do they only get paid once the music goes public or will recordings of music not yet music being stacked until Apple know who has the rights?
 
Does this mean producers can now upload any track using commercial samples without prior clearance of the sample because this tech now does all of that for them?
 
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triton100 said:
Does this mean producers can now upload any track using commercial samples without prior clearance of the sample because this tech now does all of that for them?
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Most likely no. This is identifying songs in mixes so artist can get paid fairly. Like Armin Van Buren does his A state of trance sets with 20 artists different songs.

Paying for the samples used in songs would require a phenomenal improvement to Shazam. Samples are sometimes a second or two long. Or they are so mangled that the original would never be identified. Very unlikely that Shazam identifies that..

However I know there is some service that DJs can use to pay for the samples they use when making their tracks.
 
triton100 said:
Does this mean producers can now upload any track using commercial samples without prior clearance of the sample because this tech now does all of that for them?
Click to expand...

Payment is not the only part of clearance. The rights holders also need to give consent for someone to use their sample in a song and Shazam can't do that for you.
 
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As someone who listens to a lot of artist mixes, A State of Trance, ABGT, Vonyc Sessions ext. This is great news, I'm sure the hosts of these shows will greatly appreciate it as well.
 
Apple really thinking ahead here. There will be secondary applications for talk show bumper music etc. this is a nice attribution model.

However, this Makes me miss the days someone could just sample something and that would be the end of it (except people would ultimately discover the source of the sample and instead “discover” and enjoy it). This is how I discovered Kraftverk, the klf, and many other artists.

This will keep lawyers at bay a bit. But it is really a capitulation to a lawyer-made problem.


Lawyers ALWAYS ruin all the fun. Entertainment lawyers especially are sniveling little pricks.
 
I listen to DJ mixes all the time. I was at uni in the 90s. Apple need to improve the access to these. You have to goto browse, scroll all the way down to categories, find DJ Mixes and there you go. Everytime!

Surely there's room for a favourite category option etc.
The above would give more money out then.
 
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Cool feature. Apple Music is subtlety adding these small features to help out artists. All while Spotify continues to burn artists.

Spotify, for all purposes complaining about apple using their user base as a reason to force apps to follow their strict rules is hypocritical if you think about it. Especially since Spotify uses their user base as a reason to strong arm certain artists in taking smaller fees or face a lower chance of their music getting listened to.
 
I wonder how this will work if the DJ already has a contractual agreement with the artist. It seems like there's a potential danger of Apple blindly wading into existing DJ/artist relationships and causing problems.
 
dumastudetto said:
There are things that Apple can only do, and this is one.

Sorry Spotify. no lawful DJ mixes for you.
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Except Apple's system is one of many that do the same thing. Google has a similar system that works with DJ mixes posted to YouTube, for example.

Apple's system sounds really tight. I'm glad they're doing it. As a fan of EDM, this will only expand the genre. Great news top to bottom. But I just can't stand Apple's constant, narcissistic need to pat themselves on the back about technologies that have existed for years.

Also, Charlotte De Witte has commented on her socials more than once that her relationship with Apple involves "renumeration"—meaning, she's paid to be "excited" about AppleMusic, a service that has traditionally lagged in its adoption of EDM genres from indie and self-represented artists since Apple strongly prefers working with represented artists (read: major labels only). She's an amazing DJ and single-handedly re-invented dark techno, but here she's a talking head.

Two sides to every story. Always. Read beyond the press release.
 
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jamcgahey said:
Cool feature. Apple Music is subtlety adding these small features to help out artists. All while Spotify continues to burn artists.

Spotify, for all purposes complaining about apple using their user base as a reason to force apps to follow their strict rules is hypocritical if you think about it. Especially since Spotify uses their user base as a reason to strong arm certain artists in taking smaller fees or face a lower chance of their music getting listened to.
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Spotify doesn’t make any profit , almost everything is already given to right holders , I don’t see how they could give more ?
Or I don’t understand how those things work?
It’s easy for a company like Apple and all its billions of $$ to say « you see we pay more »
 
alexe said:
It's not "dance music". If you have to leave out one of the three words from the acronym EDM, it definitely shouldn't be the word "electronic". If anything, it's "electronic music". The vast majority of all music genres is music intended to "dance" to.
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"Electronic dance music (EDM), also known as dance music, club music, or simply dance,"
 
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AhRiHmAn said:
Spotify doesn’t make any profit , almost everything is already given to right holders , I don’t see how they could give more ?
Or I don’t understand how those things work?
It’s easy for a company like Apple and all its billions of $$ to say « you see we pay more »
Click to expand...

I'm sorry if I wasn't more specific. I did not intend to bring up profit as I believe it is irrelevant. Just talking about the issue of using/abusing their widely popular platform to force acquiescence in whatever policies they initiate.
 
Good step in the right direction. But based on some of the comments, mashups like Girl Talk are still a long way off. Bummer as I miss that genre and his creativity.
 
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