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Beatport opens uploads to all with focus on transparency

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Beatport recently updated its terms to allow anyone to create an account and upload original tracks. These songs can be monetized on Beatport’s platform, and the owner will receive between 5% and 10% of the total amount generated by a track.

The platform translates the proportion of Beatport’s total streams generated by one track into a percentage of pooled funds available for these user-generated uploads. The details of the per-stream royalty calculations are laid out for all to see in the terms of service. It’s a change that focuses on transparency for the Beatport community. Many of the critiques of streaming business models focus on a lack of information made available to artists and composers about how their payments are calculated.

There are additional restrictions in ownership; uploads must be previously purchased Beatport tracks or the user’s own content. The changes in options for uploading music makes Beatport a more direct competitor to SoundCloud, which has also made a specialty of remixes and mash-ups.

Anna Washenko

2 Comments

  1. So an EDM creative should be happy with 5% of what her wholly-owned work earns streaming on Beatport because Beatport is claiming to be transparent with their accounting? SoundExchange is pretty transparent too, and they (we) pay about ten times that to rights-holders. Apple Music and other on-demand services pay about 14 times as much, and even with labels siphoning off a lion’s share of those deals talent should see much more than 5%. Transparent reporting of really shitty payments doesn’t make the payments less shitty.

    From the HotSeat,
    Thomas McAlevey, CEO, Radical.FM

  2. This feature launched three years ago. Did you check into this at all?

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