DJ mixes are now legal on SoundCloud, ad-free and without fear of being removed for copyright claims, one of the popular streaming service’s founders has just said in an interview. If this is true, it will remove a huge obstacle and a massive bugbear the DJ community has had with SoundCloud for many years.
Also read: The SoundCloud DJ Mix Changes: What You Really Need To Know
Eric Wahlforss, the streaming service’s co-founder and CTO, has been speaking with German website Groove about the introduction of the premium subscription service SoundCloud Go, as it rolls out to more and more countries. In one particular section, he speaks about what it means for DJs*:
“Previously, because you could only legally upload DJ mixes to SoundCloud if you had the rights to all the tracks in the mix, at the instigation of the owners of the rights we had to take down mixes with copyrighted material.” he said.
“During the negotiations for SoundCloud Go, we achieved agreement with collecting societies like GEMA in Germany, making these problems a thing of the past – even for users who do not subscribe.
“This means that DJ mixes are now legal and problem-free on SoundCloud. So this is a very positive news for DJs. Furthermore, mixes should not be interrupted by advertising.”
* The translation into English is ours, you can read the original German version here.
Our first thoughts…
While this, if confirmed, would be a massive dose of common sense, and of course we would welcome it 100%, the pain is still going to be hard to bear for those DJs who’ve lost mixes, or even whole accounts, sometimes ones which took years to build up.
We couldn’t find any independent confirmation of the story, although it looks legit. But as SoundCloud Go is not a brand new service (it’s been launched in the USA since March) and as rules may different from territory to territory, we’re holding our breath until we truly believe this is happening globally. It’s a fast developing story, though, so watch this space…
Too good to be true? Have you actually had a SoundCloud mix taken down recently? Got any more details on this you’d like to share? Please do so in the comments…
Phil Morse
