A week ago, DJ media seemed ready to celebrate based on one interview. SoundCloud’s founder went on record and promised that all DJ mixes were safe on the platform, and that takedowns would cease. But Soundcloud’s official blog has finally responded with a bit of backpedaling.
DJ Mixes Safe on Soundcloud – Too Strong a Promise?
Soundcloud’s latest blog post makes it clear that the platform isn’t taking a stand against hyper-aggressive copyright laws. Instead, they’re just trying to allow DJ mixes while also allowing “creators” to issue takedown notifications:
“Today, through a number of agreements with labels, publishers and other partners, there are far fewer takedowns of various forms of content – including DJ sets – shared on SoundCloud. It’s clear from our conversations and agreements with the industry and creative community as a whole, that enabling a place for all forms of creativity to live is important, and that SoundCloud can be that place.
With that, it’s important to note takedowns are at the request of creators. While the agreements we have in place across the industry have greatly lessened the likelihood of takedowns, as a creator driven platform, we respect all creators, and therefore we respect the rights of all creators who request to have their content removed.”
SoundCloud, if you’re reading this, there are a few questions that DJs still deserve the answers to (we’ve emailed questions to your press email multiple times and no response):
- What will happen to old DJ mixes that were taken down at the request of distributors (not independent creators or labels)? Can DJs reupload without fear of getting strikes on their account?
- What specifically has changed in Soundcloud’s content policy that now allows DJ mixes to be uploaded?
- What are the specifics of the “agreements we have set in place across the industry” you mention in your blog post? Don’t users, who are subject to those agreements, deserve to know?
- Are DJs not also “creators”? Curation is also an art, so don’t mixes deserve equal protection?
We’re still running a test of DJ mixes that were previously taken down – all 11 still are up after a few days. But with this latest post from the company, we’re not so sure how it will shake down. Instead:
P.S. I think the whole taking down DJ mixes on soundcloud is pretty inconsistant, mainly because i never had a problem with releasing any dj mixes
idk if this could help, but try setting the copyright to ‘creative commons’ instead of
‘All rights reserved’ hope that helps
Not to mention that Google is planning to buy Soundcloud. and DJ mixes might be Google’s first target…
This is quite a useless statement from Soundcloud. The only thing one can basically get out of this that in future it might be better to upload sets with tracks from major distributors as those are likely covered by contracts. Quite funny as using big name tracks was the big risk thing in the past.
If something useful should come out of this at the very least Soundcloud needs to stop closing accounts after three “strikes”. Or they need to provide a way for DJs to check beforehand if the tracks in a set are acceptable to upload in a set. But they really cannot expect DJs to determine themselves which tracks are covered by Soundcloud’s agreements (which we don’t even know) and which are not and put all the risk on the DJs who face termination of their accounts.
Soundcloud please fix at least that. I have already more than three strikes and I don’t know how my account survived that but I live in constant fear that my account is getting deleted next time and with it the followers, likes etc. I worked for hard and built over a longer time. I actually like Soundcloud (if it weren’t for these problems) and I happily pay my pro unlimited account every month.
Please Soundcloud, you can make this work. For all the DJs who have not yet left you.
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