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Much like Soundcloud, Beatport will now allow anyone to create an account, upload and monetize their original tracks and mixes on the streaming music service. But the amount of income that artists will make is miniscule.
According to its terms of service, the company will pay a royalty of just 10% of the amount actually received by Beatport. Each play or stream will pay a royalty of 5% of the amount that it receives based on "a pro rata share (a fraction, the numerator of which is the number of plays/streams on the Website and Beatport branded channels and the denominator of which is the total number of plays/streams on the Website or Beatport branded channels) of funds made available for the payment of streams on the Website or Beatport branded channels."
Confused yet? A unique feature of Beatport is the track information section where it shows the BPM (Beats Per Minute) and the Key of the track, according to Route Note.
UPDATE:Beatport sent us this clarification:
"The 5% revenue share noted in the T&C refers to user-generated content, specifically mixes created by Beatport users. It is what users, not artists, will earn per stream if they upload mixes containing tracks they didn’t create or own rights to. So if a Beatport user creates a mix comprised of tracks written and performed by other artists and uploads it to Beatport, that user would earn 5% of any revenue generated from the subsequent stream.
The labels who provide to Beatport the tracks contained in such mixes will be paid for the stream per their licensing agreement with us, and they will pay artists per their respective contractual agreements, which is far more than 5%. Key phrase in the T&C here: “Any payment made to the uploading user is independent of those contractually agreed upon with participating labels.”
It’s also worth noting that Beatport is paying users this 5% out of our cut of the agreed upon split with rightsholders."
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