Apple has made a deal with Dubset Media Holdings to bring remixes and DJ mixes featuring popular songs to Apple Music, Billboard reports. With the rise of electronic dance music, copyright issues have presented a major hurdle to bringing user generated mash-ups and hour-long mixes to streaming services. Dubset has solved that problem with a proprietary technology that analyzes a file and identifies recordings inside it to properly pay both record labels and music publishers for the song’s use.
Dubset CEO Stephen White said a typical mix features 25 to 30 songs that require payments to individual record labels and anywhere from two to ten publishers for each track. After a track is analyzed, the recordings inside the track are checked against the restrictions set by each song’s respective rights holder. Dubset has handled licensing in-house and currently has agreements with 14,000 labels and publishers, who are able to limit the length of a song used in a particular track, prevent one artist from being associated with another, limit the territories where content will be made available or even blacklist entire artists, albums or tracks. Once a track finally clears that process, the creator is notified and can approve it for use on streaming services. While Apple Music is the first service making tracks cleared through Dubset available, White promises more to come soon.