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Comment by dkobia | Hacker News Reader

It has been an especially tough time for DJs who as you can imagine are severely affected by Covid19. A game of copyright whack-a-mole has been going on across other platforms for a few years now (SoundCloud, MixCloud, etc.), exacerbated now by a move to live streaming over the last few months.

Live streaming has been a great way to avoid getting tagged for copyright infringement vs a pre-recorded upload which can automatically be scanned for violations, so it is easy to see why this was a problem for Facebook. They basically brute forced a solution to avoid legal responsibility.

Via SoundClouds guidelines: "The best way to avoid copyright infringement is to ensure that you don't use anything created by someone else. Simple as that.". It has just been hard to find an equitable balance between original music creators and mix creators. "Fair Use" is such a gray area here and is barely defensible.

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I watch a lot of live DJ streams (and have done some myself), and basically right now everyone is either using Twitch or Mixcloud.

Twitch - doesn't enforce any takedowns when you're live, but will mute you after the fact in clips/etc. Very gamer-y, but has friendlier chat features, emojis, and some meta-games around unlocking them. Also has support for hosting (showing someone else's channel in your own for a period of time) and raiding (relocating everyone in your channel to someone else's), which are key for people that want to do multi-artist events.

Mixcloud - smaller, but actually has a licensing deal so muting is far less common. Chat is primitive (no @'s, limited emojis). Streaming quality is good, though.

Facebook - basically a non-starter as they'll mute you live. Only really works if you're playing a literal live show with a band, where you're making noise that the algorithms won't pick. Reach is obviously much bigger, as the platform will shove live videos in your face if people have already liked your fan page.

> Mixcloud - smaller, but actually has a licensing deal

Interesting, can you explain how this works? Is there a way for DJs to look up which songs are licensed while you're live-streaming?

No, but their licenses are very broad. Their rules are also fairly straightforward: https://help.mixcloud.com/hc/en-us/articles/360004031080

They use an interactive radio blanket licence

Correct me if I'm wrong: Twitch will delete any stream after a couple of days. So Twitch is a no-go if one wants to build a library of past shows.

This is actually wrong, you can choose to have your streams recorded and placed in the 'Videos' tab on your profile where others can watch them forever.

Couldn't you simultaneously do the twitch stream, but also record and host the shows elsewhere, if you wanted that library of past shows?

I see this with a lot of folks - they stream on Twitch and then the audio shows up on Mixcloud/Soundcloud, and sometimes the video on Youtube later on. You get the fun of watching it live, but then also enjoy replays later on.

The web has been quite unempathetic when it comes to DJs and the music culture that surrounds it. The key difference between mix DJs and other types of music is that the culture around mixing is made by and for DJ sets. The music makers want their music played by DJs on radio, in clubs, in livestreams, at house parties, that's why they made it in the first place. A blanket ban on music means even cooperative parties can't belong.

Same goes for platforms with automated copyright checking. Enough music makers get caught up in labels that don't get this either, that you'll almost always have three or four tracks striked out of your recording making it pointless to upload.

There has never been any money in live online DJing, it's done for fun and the love of it. So it just feels like petty fun policing.

> The music makers want their music played by DJs on radio, in clubs, in livestreams, at house parties, that's why they made it in the first place.

Presumably musicians that want this release their work under a license that allows it.

Unless they’re under the yoke of Sony, Universal or Warner..

Just kidding, those three companies have been granted a state guaranteed monopoly over enough of human culture to be able to bully other entities like YouTube, Spotify or whatever, into accepting onerous terms.. (think youtube automatically (and legally) stealing ad money and giving it to these companies, for a video of a person playing historical scores on a recorder. Or Spotify accepting that the money you pay them will get rerouted to famous artists you have never listened to)

Musicians often don't know what they're signing up for, and sometimes labels change their mind about how to manage their catalogues anyway. There are a lot of great labels that do all the right things for artists and DJs, but it's a big industry with lots of players.

> Presumably musicians that want this release their work under a license that allows it.

Vast majority of musicians have no clue about licensing or copyrights or/and do not care, be it permissive public ones or strict ones.

If the artists don't know or don't care, then neither should end users.

Most musicians are effectively end users. A relatively small fraction of musicians are actually involved in the production and sale of commercial recorded music.

I think that’s too broad a definition and renders the term near useless (someone who can play an instrument regardless of skill).

In this case I’d regard musician as someone who derives significant portion of their income from making or playing music or at least puts in a significant time into becoming the above (practice, learning and playing).

Also, Facebook actively downranks you if you post a link to other video/livestreaming tech (Youtube, Twitch) instead of uploading content directly to Facebook. This is unethical, and infuriating when you upload directly to Facebook and they play gatekeeper on things that are often not even copyrighted at all. I once had a video of me playing Beethoven muted. I wish more people would make noise about it.

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