This led the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW) to launch a campaign in March called Justice at Spotify, which demands a one-cent-per-stream payout that matches Apple’s. While these innovations help get artists compensated, streaming royalties only account for a small percentage of how musicians make money - Apple pays musicians one cent per stream, while competitors like Spotify pay only fractions of cents. According to a Billboard report from June, Apple Music will only host mixes after the streamer has identified 70% of the combined tracks.Īpple Music didn’t respond to questions about how exactly royalties will be divided, but this is only a small step in reimagining how musicians will make a living in a digital landscape. But Apple is not yet investing in UGC, as individuals cannot yet upload their personal mixes to stream on the platform like they might on Soundcloud. MIDiA Research, in partnership with Audible Magic, found that user-generated content (UGC) - online content that uses music, whether it’s a lipsync TikTok or a Soundcloud DJ mix - could be a music industry goldmine worth over $6 billion in the next two years. Though platforms like Mixcloud allow DJs to stream sets and monetize using pre-licensed music, Apple Music’s DJ mixes will not include user-generated content. Still, Apple Music’s dive into the DJ royalties conundrum doesn’t necessarily address the broader crises at play among live musicians and DJs surviving through a pandemic.
Artists are entitled to royalties when their song is played by a DJ during a live set, but dance music further complicates this, since small samples from various songs can be edited and mixed together into something unrecognizable. Historically, it’s been difficult for DJs to stream mixes online, since livestreaming platforms like YouTube or Twitch might flag the use of other artists’ songs as copyright infringement. And, as one of Apple’s first major integrations of Shazam’s technology, it appears that the company saw value in it. This is intended to help DJ mixes retain long-term monetary value for all creators involved, making sure that musicians get paid for their work even when other artists iterate on it. Using technology from the audio-recognition app Shazam, which Apple acquired in 2018 for $400 million, Apple Music is working with major and independent labels to devise a fair way to divide streaming royalties among DJs, labels and artists who appear in the mixes. Apple Music announced today that it’s created a process to properly identify and compensate all of the individual creators involved in making a DJ mix.
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