Official Spotify song remixing coming, so artists get paid (kinda)

It’s not uncommon for younger music fans to create their own song mixes for social media posts, especially on TikTok. The problem is that artists don’t get paid for these unofficial mixes, and that’s something an upcoming Spotify song remixing feature aims to (kinda) change …

The WSJ cites its own sources.

The audio streaming company is developing tools that would allow subscribers to speed up, mash up and otherwise edit songs from their favorite artists, according to people familiar with the discussions […]

Fans—particularly people in their teens and 20s—regularly manipulate songs for social media, adding their own flair and then splicing the catchiest snippets into viral dance challenges, tutorials and memes. But artists and labels don’t often get paid for those altered versions of their songs, which are hard to track and are often distributed on a range of platforms including TikTok and Instagram Reels.

The deal seems somewhat odd. First, it will reportedly require a Spotify Premium subscription to get any access at all to the feature. This means free users are likely to continue creating their own unofficial mixes.

Second, getting full access to the features may require an even more expensive ‘super-premium’ tier reportedly in development.

Finally, it won’t allow the mixes to be shared in apps like TikTok and Instagram – the most common usage – but only on Spotify itself.

The potential good news for artists, however, is that these remixes often take on a life of their own. When uploaded to Spotify and listened to there, the royalties go to the uploader, and not to the artist. That will change with official remixes.

Some artists are already responding to the remix trend.

Singer-songwriter Isabel LaRosa noticed the popularity of sped-up songs on TikTok and decided to release faster versions of her songs along with the original recordings. Fans have listened to the sped-up version of her most-streamed song on Spotify, “i’m yours,” almost as much as the original version. […]

Major artists have also begun releasing many versions of the same song to feed fan appetite for a diverse range of iterations, while ensuring they receive royalties from the tracks. At the end of February, SZA put out a new single, “Saturn”—plus four additional versions: live, sped-up, a cappella and instrumental. 

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Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash