Sony’s new licensing deal may change the way remixes are made

According to Digital Music News, the new startup Remix Hits has just closed a deal with

Sony Music that could change the way musicians and DJs create and distribute legal remixes using copyrighted material. The service will allow users to purchase “stems” — isolated parts of songs — for musicians to use in their own creations, which can then be released via the company’s Remix Hits Platform distribution service. The company, based in Nashville, says the platform works with an advanced audio identification technology that can detect copyrighted material at the stem level, even if it’s been “chopped, reversed, pitch shifted, time stretched, distorted, and compressed to extreme levels.” That’s a step beyond most identification systems, which can, for example, recognize vocals lifted from a popular song and used in a bootleg, but might not be able to detect those same vocals if they were heavily altered in some way. Through their licensing model, musicians will be able to purchase approved stems from Sony Music to use in their own productions. Stems are separated elements of songs, usually identified by type of instrumentation (like vocals, guitar, synth, or percussion). The musician can then legally release the material created with the purchased stems through the company’s Remix Hits Platform. Once distributed, a revenue share plan will split royalties between the musician and the original rights holders.                                                                                                                                  https://www.theverge.com/tech/2017/9/27/16375454/sonys-licensing-deal-stems-remixes-remix-hits