Logo via Spotify
Spotify has publicized its plans to introduce a new remix feature, enabling listeners to edit the speed of songs and create mashups within the platform. In a report from The Wall Street Journal, the streaming giant clarified the intentions behind this update in development, pointing to a goal of responding to new listening habits among young audiences popularized by TikTok and ensuring that rights applications and streaming proceeds are accurately directed to the original artists.
With this new feature, Spotify users would receive access to a new studio of audio manipulation tools, allowing listeners to speed up, slow down, mash-up and “otherwise” edit their favorite songs. While the resulting files would not be available for export to another platform like TikTok, creators would be able to share and save their productions via a “virtual collection.” This feature will reportedly be available to all Spotify subscribers, while an expanded array of editing tools–and long-awaited access to 24-bit Lossless audio streaming–will be available for users willing to pay an increased monthly subscription rate of $19.99. Discussions and development on this possible service expansion are still ongoing.
This new editing feature continues the discussion of copyright protections for music edited for (or in the style of) TikTok, which recently came to a head with Universal Music Group’s decision to remove its high-profile stable of artists from the app. In recent years, the social app has seen a proliferation of sped-up or slowed and reverbed music–up to 38.03% of all music on the platform, per Pex–which at once consistently defines its highest-performing content and eludes the app’s copyright detection software with even the slightest manipulations. Spotify aims to counter this rights evasion by allowing listeners to stream and manipulate music as they like, while ensuring that all streaming payments continue to flow to the proper recipients, “appeal[ing] to young users, while generating new revenue for artists.”
Read the full report from The Wall Street Journal here. For more on Spotify’s recent decision to increase subscription prices in the U.S., U.K. and Australian markets in an effort to draw a profit from streaming, click here.
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