Spotify AI Remix Tool: Four Deals Signed, None Of Them By You

On Tuesday the 20th of October, Believe and TuneCore signed a licensing agreement with Spotify. It covers a tool that lets fans make AI remixes and covers of their artists' songs.

That is the fourth of these this year. Universal. Kobalt. Merlin, back in August, for its member labels. And now Believe and TuneCore. Every one of them says artists choose whether to take part. And not one of them was signed by an artist. Your consent just moved one level above you.

What is actually on the record

The announcement is on Spotify's own newsroom, dated the 20th of October: “Believe and Spotify Partner to Unlock New Opportunities for Artists Through Licensed Fan Remixes and Covers.” Not reporting about it — Spotify's own words.

• It covers artists and labels on Believe and on TuneCore.
• The tool makes remixes and covers of songs that already exist, rather than entirely new works.
• Streams of those remixes pay royalties to the original artist and the rights holders behind the track.
• Spotify plans to sell it as a paid add-on for Premium subscribers.

Participation is voluntary, and it is voluntary twice. Believe and TuneCore first ask whether you want to be considered for AI programs at all. Only artists who say yes are then shown the Spotify partnership, and they decide again. Music Week and Hypebot both reported it the same way: agreeing to hear about AI opportunities does not enrol you in anything.

The mechanism is the story

Spotify is not asking you. Spotify is licensing from whoever holds the agreement above you.

On the 4th of August, Spotify announced the same kind of deal with Merlin — the licensing body that represents independent labels, and which says it covers about 15% of the global recorded music market. Merlin's own announcement says the agreement “enables artists on labels under Merlin's Spotify agreement the option to participate”.

Artists on labels. The option runs through the label.

Merlin's chief executive described it as giving “our members' artists the choice”. How a member label passes that choice down to one of its artists is not written anywhere public that I could find.

So there is a chain:

1. Spotify.
2. The body or the distributor that licensed to Spotify.
3. Your label, if you have one.
4. You.

Believe and TuneCore have published a switch at the artist end. Merlin has published that a choice exists somewhere. Those are not the same thing.

What this does not mean

This is not a scandal and I am not going to dress it up as one. These are opt-in deals. Nobody's catalogue is being fed into a remix tool on a default setting. If you never click anything, nothing happens to your songs.

Credit where it is due, too: a two-step opt-in is more than most of this industry offers, and Spotify's announcement says every remix links back to the original track and artist.

What is not published is the rest of it — a launch date, the price of the add-on, the royalty rate, or how the money splits between the person who made the remix, you, and the rights holder. And I cannot tell you what your own distributor has signed. I am one person in Brisbane reading press releases, the same as you can. The only way to know is to ask them.

Three things to do this week

1. 1Trace who licenses your recordings to Spotify. If you go direct, it is your distributor. If you are on a label, it is the label, and possibly a body like Merlin above that. Write the chain down. It takes ten minutes and most artists have never actually done it.
2. 2Ask them two questions, in writing. Have you signed Spotify's fan-remix licence? And what is my setting right now? An email with a date on it is worth more than a memory of a dashboard.
3. 3If you are on Believe or TuneCore, screenshot your AI settings today. Not because anyone is going to change them behind your back. Because in twelve months you will want to know what you agreed to, and when.

And one wider thing. Search your distribution agreement for the words licence, sublicense and derivative. The clause that made this possible was already in there before any of these deals were announced.

Where droplr comes in

Every one of these agreements is about your recordings, and your recordings sit inside somebody else's licensing chain. That is simply true, and nothing I build changes it.

What does not sit in that chain is the direct line to the people who listen to you. An email address is not something a third party can license. Nobody signs a deal in August that covers your mailing list.

That is most of the reason I built droplr. It does three things: a pre-save link that turns into a smart link on release day, a download gate, and the fan list that comes out of both. Every address is visible on the free plan, exporting it to a file is from A$12, and the whole list downloads on any plan if you close your account.

I built it on my own. One person in Brisbane. Start free at droplr.fm — three releases in any rolling twelve months, and no card.