Communicating remixes and remixers

Remixing an existing sound recording into what is often called a remix is a common way of creating new music. Remixes comprise of significant portions of the existing (“original”) recording, augmented by new material. Remixing is a common way to rework original recordings often seen in contemporary dance music and is also widely used in hip hop and rap music. 

There is no one way of communicating such remixes but there are three different common approaches, depending on the contractual relationships between the two artists (the remixer and the remixed artist) and the record company/companies releasing the music:

• The remixed artist (i.e. the artist headlining the original recording) is considered to be a main artist whereas the remixer is not;

• The remixer is considered to be a main artist whereas the remixed artist ist not; or

• Both artists are headlining the remix.

Below are the key data points for these three cases for a hypothetical original recording called “She Loves You” and recorded by Desmond Jones. The remixing is done by Martha Dear. The data below is using the ERN-4 structure but the principle also applies to other DDEX standards.

The three approaches are presented here with the most common case first.

Remixer as the main artist

In this scenario the remixer is a main artist on its own. In this instance they are the “brand”.

Remixing as a collaboration

In this case the remixer is contracted to create a collaboration and therefore (s)he needs to be highlighted as a DisplayArtist – alongside the original artist

 Note that some record companies may decide to not signal whether a re-releasing artist is a remixer if the new recording is deemed to be a collaboration.