Hey gang, some more news to bring you.. In a nutshell, big big news for all the Producers & Remixers out there, and tbh, even bigger news for the “Stem Scene” as a whole. IMO.

You see, Simon Cowell looks like he`s come up with a cunning plan that may accidentally majorly promote the long overdue commercialisation of stems/multitracks/remix stems ect, and, with a bit of luck, that will bring stems much more into the mainstream view. I mean just mentioning the word “stem” in a new venture by some major players counts. Goes without saying that Syco is onboard with the stems thing. And Tik Tok are. And Universal are. In a word. Wowzers.

Even Samsung has gotten in on the act.

Details about this are a little bit thin on the ground but reading between the lines, this project is more W.I.P than half the pages on CR lol, so we might have to go thru a lil learning & growing curve before we find out where this is all going, but upto now, I see a zero downside to the stem rational even if this new venture falls on its ass, so I`m calling this “whatever it turns out to be idea” a winner from the off.

At this point, Im just going to suggest to you guys to just go Googling for more info cos, otherwise this post will be the longest ever news post on CR, so probs be best to just borrow a few lines on a few things Ive picked up on reading half the morning to give you quickly the rough breakdown.

So how does this all work ?

“The initiative will see legendary producer Max Martin and his hit-making team of Savan Kotecha and Ali Payami, releasing 60 seconds of a new single exclusively on TikTok on Oct. 26. As soon as the song drops, the community will be able to access the ‘stems’ (the individual components of the song like drums, bass guitar and vocal parts) through the StemDrop page and [users] can create, record and share their own versions”.

“The StemDrop Profile will also provide TikTok users and creators a window into the StemDrop process, as new versions of the track from around the world are curated weekly by each of the individual songwriting teams as well as TikTok, Syco, Republic Records and Universal Music Group. TikTok music curator Ari Elkins, singer-songwriter Astrid S and Your Boy Moyo will act as global ambassadors for StemDrop and host daily content on the @StemDrop channel on TikTok”.

“The first song is written by Swedish record producer, Max Martin, who has worked with big-name stars ranging from Britney Spears to Bon Jovi”.

“StemDrop is expected to drop a new song roughly every ten weeks, though Cowell has not revealed who he has lined up to work with on each tune.”

All good uh? And awesome for the greater good too. Lets just hope the stems are all HQ WAV`s & not lossy MP3s 😉

Really do think this could turn out to be something groundbreaking.. cos all the elements are there for it to blow up.. Imagine if this thing kicks off and there`s weekly brand new totally real official stems sets flying about all over the place ! oh wait.. erm.

Think about it. There`s ideas embodied in this whole thing I really kinda like. There`s going to be it seems (in the long run) that many new artists with brand new songs to share are going to be getting on a platform now proven to find or make a hit or two, which now, automatically, becomes a vehicle to promote or grow any (Universal) song. Very clever. And with stems lets not forget.
Its happening guys. Reckon the majors are properly clocking on to the potential of “remix stems”. Because that is literally what is coming. All official like.

“We`ve come such a long way from that mocked up “Spotify Stem Player” already, yet, we`re still so incredibly early.”

So great to see a major like Universal get in on the stems fun. Theyve found an excellent way here to just get some stems out there if nothing else, which we have seen is generally a good thing however you slice it. There might even be the odd classic to mix once in a while too. Who knows?

Just wait till there`s hundreds of new mixes uploaded daily to that Tik Tok page. This thing could go nuts. Just for scale on how nuts, I think the last Chainsmokers remix competition had over 7000 entries. Could be an interesting one to watch this “Stem Drop” thing.

Cant wait to see.

Further reading:

Variety
Reuters

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