Bye Bye SoundCloud, Hello Apple Music?

Apple Music will stream DJ mixes, mashups, and remixes thanks to a partnership with legal DJ mix site Dubset. Will the SoundCloud exodus commence?

DJs who for years have become increasingly frustrated at having their mixes, mashups and remixes removed from SoundCloud have a new saviour, in the unlikely form of Apple Music. In a new deal just inked between niche legal DJ mix site Dubset and the huge Apple Music streaming service, DJs will be able to upload their work legally to Apple Music, and see it available worldwide to the service’s 11 million and growing subscribers.

This will be possible because of twin proprietary track ID analysis technologies used by Dubset called MixBank and MixScan, which will be able to identify bits of a song within other tracks, allowing the original creators, rights-holders and publishers to be compensated for the streams.

How Does It Work?

The way it works is that you submit a track or mix to Dubset, which analyses the audio and IDs the tracks included in it. When it finds a match, it checks the owners of the tracks and if there are any restrictions on them.

If the audio doesn’t get flagged, it goes through to the streaming service (Apple Music in this case, but there are more coming too, according to Dubset), and here’s the best part: not only do the labels, publishers, and original composers get paid, but also the creator of that remix, mixtape, or mashup.

In other words, for the first time ever in music streaming history, DJs will finally get a piece of the pie, although the size of said slice hasn’t been revealed.

Dubset’s been around for a while, but the major difference here is that by partnering with Apple Music (and potentially other streaming services in the future), the mix site and distribution service basically gets a giant platform with a millions-strong subscriber base from the get go.

For those who have been following, this is essentially what SoundCloud has been trying to do by tying up with Zefr (the track ID / content analysis technology behind YouTube), but is it too little too late now for the beleaguered streaming pioneer? There’s no word yet on when you’ll be able to upload your mixes and mashups, so only time will tell if this will be the final nail in the SoundCloud coffin…