Well so I decided to give Beatsource a go in a live setting at a gig. They’ve seriously been coming on pretty strong with great content lately.
So I spent hours preparing playlists to integrate into my existing ones as my show last night was even more open format than usual. Was feeling pretty good about it! Then…… of course……
Get to the venue (a new one for me, of course) and my cell hotspot is at (you guessed it) zero bars. No service.
So I see the venue has a guest (but password protected) WiFi. I’m like great, I’ll just login to that! Nobody knows the password. Nooooobody. They only know the private one that they can’t and won’t give out. : /
Not only did it validate my usual, pretty hard-core belief that if I can’t download a file it ain’t happening for me, I absolutely can’t imagine some poor soul who is new to this showing up for a gig thinking he/she is golden only to find out they’re dead in the water.
Thankfully I still had my usual prepared USB drives ready for action so it went great, but in the back of my mind I was pretty bummed.
So for me, any online service on Denon gear is absolutely useless until we get to store those 1,000 songs offline, which is a shame because like I said, I feel like Beatsource has been really been kicking lately.
Just sharing my story and hopefully that offline locker option is on the horizon, soon. Maybe?
Content streamed with your Beatsource Streaming subscription is intended for your personal use only. Use of Streaming for public performance purposes will require additional licensing, which is not included as part of your subscription.
Someone should really alert the Beatsource marketing department! How many people have been fooled into thinking this is ok?!
Straight from their site……
Play any gigin any genre.
DJ any type of event with our expansive catalog of open-format music. Whether it’s a house party, festival, corporate gig or wedding, you’ll be covered.
Honestly I don’t understand why to pay $35 for low streaming quality and additional have this limitation in the Terms & Conditions ?
My understanding was always that the venue is responsible to pay any fees for an event. A DJ should not need to care on this, only bringing music to make the crowd happy.
It’s all a very gray area. Yes the venue is supposed to be responsible. And also it used to be as easy as filling out the proper ASCAP and BMI logs (in radio we just used the program logs from the computer so it was easy)…. Though that also wasn’t 100% because lots of songs got played that weren’t on the logs. But I digress. Checks were written and everyone was happy.
But also times have changed and labels ain’t what they used to be. So many songs don’t even have proper label support but they’re happy with streams so they get paid there and then maybe sell some merchandise or get ticket sales.
I do (for the record) play at quite a few places that are big enough to be mostly covered. But again. There’s no 100% anymore. Things are much too fragmented.
Most of us here aren’t playing to crowd sizes on a regular basis to trigger any worry for these guys.
We can also be counted a pretty darn cheap promotion. Often too cheap. lol
So Again Let’s bring this back around. Denon let’s get this fixed!
They state it’s okay as long as it’s legal in your territory and you have the other stuff like public performance etc.
“It’s up to you to know your own local laws” basically.
5. Prohibited Use of Beatport Streaming
Content streamed with your Streaming subscription is intended for your personal use only. Use of Streamingfor public performance purposes will require additional licensing, which is not included as part of your subscription.
This makes absolutely sense. So if I would use songs streamed from Beatport to publish on Mixcloud, Mixcloud would be responsible for licensing. Same for YouTube since they would remove the mix if there would be something unexpected. If I play on a “bigger” event the venue would take care. Only if I would play as a mobile DJ in front of a crowd on a wedding than it would be me who would have to take care. And than the same would apply if I would have bought the song or if I stream it. I think, like this it would make sense.
All depends where in the world you are. Coubtry by country is different.
See there lies a problem too do i work by english rule in say germany or german rule…??? Its a minefield that is completly unnecessary… the industry needs to unify this licensing making it the same across the world…
In the UK at least, the “personal use only” small print is taken care of in the same way that the small print on records, CDs, tapes etc has been taken care of. That is to say, a venue has a PPL license and therefore all those records, CDs etc which say “for personal use only” can be played.
This is something that I checked with PPL/PRS/MCPS at the time when pro-dub license was being ironed out and rolled out.
Also, the whole personal/private/public thing was discussed with the same bodies and it transpires that if you’re doing a party for a wedding, or a birthday etc and all the attendees are invited family and friends then that’s not classed as public performance, it’s still private/personal. Only if you’re in an “open to all” pub (bar) or a pay on the door venue, it was considered “public” performance.
Non UK parts of the world could be different of course
No reason to think that streaming service small print should be any different in terms of legalities.
Actually no it’s not. The PPL license covers records, CDs, tapes etc. (the copyright wording on those is different to streaming T&Cs) but it doesn’t cover the use of streaming services like Spotify.
Direct quote from their site: “there are rights in recorded music that PPL does not manage, an example of this being the on-demand streaming of specific tracks (e.g. Spotify)”
This is why for example Spotify has a completely separate service for use by businesses, called soundtrackyourbrand, which is licensed for use in public - and costs a lot more.
It’s also why Spotify discontinued availability in DJ apps. It’s a can of worms. All of it. They didn’t wanna try and wade through it, so they got out. And they wanted to keep the labels as happy as possible.
No offence but I’m sticking with what PPL/PRS told me directly.
There’s a good chance, well it’ll be 50/50 that it’s either right or wrong. I’ve been visited by someone at a hotel gig a few years ago, at 9pm no less, who was checking Pro-dub licenses, but whether or not they’d hope to find anyone streaming a 4 minute song during a 15 hour wedding? I doubt it.
The verbatim quote from the PPL site is not evidence enough?
Thinking back - did streaming services exist when ProDub started? I’m not sure they did.
Also, I remember DJs getting different answers from PPL and/or ProDub depending on who they spoke to - so IMO it’s best to go with the statement that’s actually published on their web site.
