Harderstate - Hardstyle & Hardcore Forum

Hello everyone,

Just a few quick questions hopefully someone can help me out.

So 1 of my goals is to play hardstyle music in clubs starting off in Belfast (this wont be for a while yet as I am a beginner but that is the ambition) however I have been reading about licensing and copyright and I am a tad confused.

By buying and downloading a track from the likes of beatport etc would I have the rights to use this track in a commercial environment? or do I need to obtain permission from the artist/label as well as the purchase?

If a track has been made available for free on soundcloud would I have the rights to use this in a commercial setting also?

Any guidance on this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

it's usually the organizers who have to pay royalties - not the dj's. You can basically play anything really.

The moment a dj actually have to pay royalties is for putting up dj-mixes online. This is why Soundcloud is taking down dj-mixes - they won't pay anyone. Mixcloud however will pay the artists (so you don't have to when you use their services). Of course most people don't care about this and upload the mixes on filehost sites and that's fine too in most cases. It's a bit of a gray-area really.

Thanks for getting back to me. I agree it does seem to a bit of a grey area and when reading online about it I find it hard to understand. I guess I'll just buy my tracks and play whatever until I am told otherwise.

Thanks again for your advice

K