Beatmixed

As printed in Earplug:

Following a series of high-profile crackdowns on digital DJs earlier this year, UK royalty collection society PPL has finally created a Digital DJ License, allowing DJs to play mp3s off laptops or computers when DJing in clubs, pubs, and other UK venues. For £200 a year, DJs can copy up to 20,000 tracks onto their computers for DJing in public and keep a backup on a separate hard drive. The licenses are available directly through PPL or one of its dubbing operators, such as digitaldj.co.uk. Unfortunately, indicating the labyrinthine complexities of UK copyright law, the license still does not cover DJs who burn music onto CDs for playing in public. And in further restrictions, DJs are still prohibited from recording their own DJ mixes. Another prohibition bars “edit[ing] or alter[ing] the track (including combining two or more tracks to create a new track)” — a regulation that, taken at its most literal, would seem to fly in the face of DJ culture’s most basic tenets. PPL has promised to start enforcing the license requirement in the “near future,” though it offers no indication of how it may allocate royalties to interested artists on an equitable basis.

What a nightmare. I especially despise the clause prohibiting “edit[ing] or alter[ing] the track.” Do these people not understand that a DJ is not a jukebox and that much of the DJ art involves creatively manipulating the songs being played? In any case, my heart goes out to my DJ friends across the pond who have to deal with this. Good luck.