Dance music, especially in the form of DJ mixes, is an infinitely malleable genre and that is both its blessing and its curse: a blessing in the sense that music can be stretched and bent into exciting and innovative new shapes; a curse in the sense that ensuring rights holders get properly paid is a Sisyphean struggle.
In the analogue days, DJs or clubs were expected to fill in a setlist and hand that to PROs for payment (a system riddled with flaws and mistakes) or PRO staff would visit the club, take a sample of tracks played and try to work out payments from that.
These approaches could be prone to abuse (DJs loading their setlist forms with their own tracks even if they didn’t play them) or rely on glorified guesstimations where pro rata payments, arising out of necessity, took a broad brushstroke approach to something that was inherently complex and nuanced.
“Even when there is someone on the ground, the information they’ll get from a DJ will very rarely be accurate,” says Greg Marshall, general manager of the Association For Electronic Music (AFEM), on what has been a long-running issue for the sector.
As if this wasn’t causing enough headaches, the explosion of online platforms hosting mixes has only exacerbated the problems here.
Technology is, however, helping to automate this process – taking the onus off DJs to fill out forms and helping to more accurately identify a vast array of recordings being used in a mix.
“By its nature, the mix is a collection of songs that have been modified in some way by the DJ – and very often modified pretty extensively,” says Stephen White, CEO of Dubset Media, a company set up specifically to crack the nut of payments for mixes.
As the music in a mix is being pitched and manipulated in a variety of ways, a standard audio-recognition tool like Shazam or SoundHound can come unstuck here. To address this, Dubset created MixSCAN, a propriety technology that uses audio fingerprinting as its foundation but then layers more advanced technologies on top of that. White says they use pattern matching algorithms and heuristics to filter out the (potentially) thousands of results from the fingerprinting of any six-second segment in a mix in order to land on the correct one and, from that, pinpoint which rights holders need to be paid. This is a huge leap forward from the old ways of doing things.
Ash Howard, the dance music relationship manager at PRS for Music, outlines the different approaches that historically have been used to work out payment distributions for music in clubs and lists them in order of preference.
“We have census-based distribution where there is line-by-line reporting from the licensee that enables us to pay out every track that’s played. The next preferred is sample-based; so, for example, we might get one month’s worth of reporting that might cover three months’ worth of revenue. And the least-preferred choice is the analogy-based system where we’re actually using a different data set all together to pay out that income.”
For the past year, PRS has been using music recognition technology (MRT) developed by DJ Monitor in a select number of clubs in the UK.
“It’s a sort of pro-audio Shazam for want of a better term,” he says. “It’s a permanent installation in the nightclub with the permission of the venue owner or management and it effectively listens to everything that’s played in the club and analyses that music against a database of 46m sound recordings. It gives us highly accurate and complete music reporting from those venues.”
There are currently 32 devices in 19 venues in the UK (with multiple devices in some venues that have a number of rooms) and PRS aims to grow this to 50 devices by next year. “We haven’t completely flicked the switch and changed from one method straight to MRT,” he says. “There is not quite enough coverage of MRT yet to be able to do that. It is something we’re working towards. It’ll be a phased-in approach.”
He adds that PRS is separating clubs in the UK into two types and taking a slightly different approach for each. There are what they term “high-street chains” where multiple venues around the country “more or less play the same music” and so a MRT box in one can gather play data that can be mapped across to the others due to the relatively homogeneity of their music policy. Then there are what they term “the more specialist nightclubs” where a bespoke measurement system is required.
“Our strategy going into the end of this year and the beginning of next year [will be] adding new devices into the market and growing the pools of revenue that we are paying out using that data,” he says.
Marshall argues, however, there has been something of a pushback against the use of MRT in clubs and this is due to a mix of suspicion about the technology, legacy issues around the old ways of reporting and clauses in DJ contracts that put obstacles in the way of its widespread adoption.
“If you look back historically, the relationship between music licensing organisations and venues – particularly electronic music venues – has not always been particularly good,” he says. “They don’t feel that the music that is actually played is what their licence fee is being paid [through] to.”
“If you look back historically, the relationship between music licensing organisations and venues – particularly electronic music venues – has not always been particularly good,” he says. “They don’t feel that the music that is actually played is what their licence fee is being paid [through] to.”
– Greg Marshall, general manager of the Association For Electronic Music
He says AFEM has been working on an education drive here to fix this. “What we’re trying to do is highlight to the venues that this is the opportunity to address that [problem]. If they allow this tech to be deployed, this will ensure the licence fee goes to the correct artists and rights holders. The other concern and misunderstanding is that if they allow this tech to be deployed it will somehow cause their licence fee to go up. It is a misunderstanding.”
He adds that they are speaking to DJ agents to ensure they are getting on board with the moves by clubs and bodies like PRS, specifically addressing the non-record clause some DJs have in their contracts (to ensure their sets are not bootlegged or what they are playing is listed online). The MRT technology works on a recording of the set to be able to fully identify all tracks used and, despite assurances that this is a secure system, there is still wariness among certain DJs and their agents.
“We are just starting the process of talking with the bigger agents to see if they can amend their clause so it has an exception for music recognition technology,” explains Marshall.
Clubs are one part of the live DJ equation and the next frontier will be large-scale music festivals which are exclusively or predominately based around electronic music – a boom sector within the dance industry as a whole.
“Every festival has this pool of money sitting there,” says Gareth Jones, label manager at Anjunabeats, on this area of growing importance. “It’s just whether you actually claim it or not. We make sure that we absolutely do do that and encourage all the artists on our roster to also do that.”
PRS says this is a part of the live business it will be taking its MRT systems to. It began testing the technology at Creamfields in 2017 and has also run trials at SW4, Bestival, Boomtown and Field Day among others.
“We’re looking to really increase the scope of the festival area,” says Howard. “I think there are a few quick wins there. And there’s generally a bigger royalty as well, depending on the size of the event. The bigger the event, the more the royalties.”
“We’re looking to really increase the scope of the festival area. I think there are a few quick wins there. And there’s generally a bigger royalty as well, depending on the size of the event. The bigger the event, the more the royalties.”
– Ash Howard, dance music relationship manager at PRS for Music
Marshall points to the Netherlands as where the best practice in this area can be found, driven in a large part by the proactive stance of Buma/Stemra there. “If your track is played at a significant festival in the Netherlands, you are highly likely to receive a payment from there,” he says. “That’s because they’ve just got it covered.”
He adds, “There is a new way of licensing that Buma/Stemra in the Netherlands are the first to be involved with. If Buma/Stemra and their affiliated PROs’ repertoire is below a third of what’s being played at that event then the licence fee is set at a lower level. If two-thirds of what is being identified is Buma/Stemra repertoire then it is a mid-tier level of licence fee the event has to pay. If it is over two-thirds, it is a higher tier. This is the first rights organisation for festival events that I am aware of that is licensing based on how much of the music played is identified as being controlled by them. That removes the black box element [for unidentified income].”
The growth of online mixes is another area that is increasingly being addressed here, especially as the number of places they can be posted increases and takedown notifications become more commonplace.
White says streamlining online licensing for mixes was the impetus behind the founding of Dubset and he adds his company has been focusing on taking online mixes and ensuring they are cleared for use on the major DSPs.
“Apple Music has been by far the best partner here,” he suggests, adding that Dubset handles the Ministry Of Sound mixes that are exclusive on Apple Music. “They recently made DJ mixes and live sets their own genre. That is powered by us – so virtually 100% of the content there is ours. The goal has been around bringing DJ mixes out of the non-monetised or under-monetised sites like SoundCloud and YouTube and bringing them into the higher monetised subscription service sites like Apple Music and Spotify.”
“The goal has been around bringing DJ mixes out of the non-monetised or under-monetised sites like SoundCloud and YouTube and bringing them into the higher monetised subscription service sites like Apple Music and Spotify.”
– Stephen White, CEO of Dubset Media
To achieve this, Dubset has blanket deals in place with over 50,000 labels and publishers, covering over 45m tracks. They handle both the licensing and the payments so as to eradicate as many pain points as possible here.
He says there has been a significant uptick in revenues being generated and paid out as a result. “We are paying the underlying rights holders and we have been since the end of 2018. We’re making fairly substantial payments to the underlying rights holders for this content that historically they’ve never got paid for […] This is very much a get played, get paid model where we are heavily focused on making sure the underlying artists get paid for the use of their work.”
White will not say how much Dubset has distributed so far beyond suggesting that it is “high six-figures at this point” and is “projected to grow into the millions very quickly”. Everyone, however, agrees that the net benefits for all coming from better tracking and reporting are significant.
Jones argues that whole sector has become more tightly policed as the boom in laissez-faireuser-generated content mixes starts to wane.
“About five years ago, there was a bit of a change from the long-form DJ mixes being a little bit Wild West,” he says. “Everyone has started to get on top of their YouTube rights and SoundCloud rights and so takedowns started happening. Whereas in the past, you could just have a DJ mix on SoundCloud, those days are pretty much gone now.”
“About five years ago, there was a bit of a change from the long-form DJ mixes being a little bit Wild West. Everyone has started to get on top of their YouTube rights and SoundCloud rights and so takedowns started happening. Whereas in the past, you could just have a DJ mix on SoundCloud, those days are pretty much gone now.”
– Gareth Jones, label manager at Anjunabeats
He gives the example of the weekly Above & Beyond radio show and explains how that has found a new and monetised life online in the shape of a mix.
“We deliver that to Spotify, Apple Music and all the big official streaming services in the form of a mix compilation every week – which means you have to license a compilation’s worth of music every week from other labels,” he explains. “We’ve been doing that for the last three-and-a-half years. It was Armada Music who started that practice, working on a 50/50 royalty split between the label that delivers it and the label that provides the music. It’s not a master track upload; it’s as if it appears in a compilation mix.”
He continues, “While Dubset was looking into fingerprinting, we just jumped ahead and did that. That’s a solid revenue stream for a label like ourselves where we’re doing this every week and we’re getting 50,000 plays per track in the mix – and Armada is probably doing three times that.”
Despite improving technology and a proactive approach by key labels helping to increase earnings and also derive revenues from certain usage for the first time, there is still a need for education across the sector. This is to ensure that smaller acts, DJs and labels are aware of what they can do here to tap into these previously invisible or inaccessible revenue streams.
Marshall says AFEM’s Get Played Get Paid initiative that started four years ago was designed to tackle many of these issue head on. On top of this, it has just launched a metadata best practice guide to ensure rights owners are registering their works (and registering them correctly) so they can get paid properly if their music is used.
Even if the technology to identify tracks played in DJ sets or on online mixes is watertight, it will still be compromised if the metadata component itself is not in operational order. This remains the final major hurdle here and the dance industry as a whole has to pull together to ensure they all benefit and that on one misses out.
“We have to be a little bit careful with the way we talk about this technology,” says Howard. “Yes, it does automate certain parts of the process. And yes, it does give us more accurate and complete data. But the fundamentals are still there. You have to register your works. If you don’t register them, you’re definitely not getting paid.”
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