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Business News Digital
Spotify launches DJ Mixes
By Chris Cooke | Published on Friday 1 October 2021
Following the news last month that Apple is using its Shazam technology to boost the number of DJ mixes on the Apple Music platform, now Spotify has announced a new DJ mix section within its app called, well, DJ Mixes.
Says a Spotify statement: “Dance and electronic music fans have long enjoyed custom mixes from their favourite DJs as a signature listening experience exclusive to the genre. Today, DJs in eight markets around the world are sharing their own mixed-music content, in addition to high-quality compilations, directly on Spotify through its new DJ Mixes, which the company is beginning to test out”.
The eight markets, by the way, are the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand. And the new DJ Mixes section within the Spotify app launches with new mixes by DJs AmyElle, Adam Beyer, Shingo Nakamara, MOTi and Noisia. The DJ Mixes tab also collates a number of existing mix albums available within the Spotify catalogue.
Licensing DJ mixes for streaming can be a challenge, which is why the streaming services have not generally had an extensive selection of such mixes to date, and plenty of mix albums released in the CD era are not officially available to stream.
Apple’s dabbling in this space includes using its Shazam technology to identify tracks in any one mix – and then working with its music licensing partners to get the all-clear to use those tracks in a way that means both the artists and labels behind the original tracks, and whoever’s doing the mixing, can both benefit financially.
Quite how Spotify is handling all that isn’t yet clear. Though, given that when I played the AmyElle mix this morning there was a slightly glitch between each track, maybe they should focus on fixing that technical bug first, before figuring out what audio ID and licensing shenanigans is required to process and clear DJ mixes at scale.
