A recent study by tech company Pex has found that there are over one million tracks on streaming services that have been “manipulated” by being either sped-up, slowed-down, or modified in some other way. The study revealed examples of such tracks on Spotify, Tidal, and Apple Music, including Lady Gaga’s “Bloody Mary” and Childish Gambino’s “Heartbeat,” with 25 million and 19 million streams, respectively. However, the majority of these “manipulated” tracks do not have legal licensing agreements, resulting in original artists losing out on royalties from the streams.
In an interview with Music Business World, Pex CEO Rasty Turek commented that there is “a huge following of people trying to essentially enjoy content like this. Nightcore mixes, and so on.” He also stated that “proper attribution should be required,” pointing out that the responsibility of attribution lies primarily with the services and platforms hosting the music, not with individual artists.
Spotify, among other platforms, have been trying to combat this problem of infringement on their service, as well as shifting royalty allocation practices. As we reported earlier this month, about a quarter of all music on streaming services did not receive any plays in 2023. Spotify’s recent policy change requiring all songs to have a minimum of 1,000 streams in order to earn royalties has also been met with criticism.
The European Union has recently called for changes in the streaming business in an effort to increase royalty payments and better allocate metadata to help make artists’ works more visible. These efforts may lead to the end of the unauthorized distribution of manipulated tracks that are currently diverting revenues away from rightsholders. The problem is certainly one that needs to be tackled at the platform level in order to ensure that it is the original artist who benefits from their own body of work
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