Stems, Remix Culture and Listener Control

Long before anyone talked about adaptive music, fans were changing songs. DJs blended records, producers made bootleg edits, and artists started handing out the pieces of their own tracks to see what people would do with them. The common unit in all of it is the stem.

This article traces how listener control over songs grew, from official stem releases to real-time separation, and then turns to the question that decides what you can do with the results: who owns a remix?

What a stem is

A stem is a submix of one part of a song: all the drums together, the bass, the vocals, the other instruments. A full studio session can have dozens of tracks; stems condense them into a handful of groups that still add up to the finished mix when played together. With stems you can mute, rebalance or replace parts without needing the original session.

That makes stems useful for far more than remixes. Singers mute the lead vocal to practice or perform karaoke-style, musicians drop out their own instrument to play along, DJs blend the drums of one track under the vocal of another, and producers use them to rebuild a song in a new style. Each of those is a form of listener control, and each raises slightly different rights questions once the result leaves the room.

Official stem releases and remix contests

In April 2005, Trent Reznor posted the Nine Inch Nails song "The Hand That Feeds" as a GarageBand project on the band's website. Macworld reported that the track had been recorded in Pro Tools and converted so fans could open it, and quoted Reznor inviting people to tinker with his tracks, to create remixes, experiment, embellish or destroy what's there. He framed it as an experiment.

In 2008, Radiohead sold the stems of "Nude" on iTunes: bass, drums, guitar, string FX and voice, each priced like a single song. MusicRadar reported that buyers of the full set got a GarageBand project file, that finished remixes could be uploaded to a dedicated site for public voting, and that the band said they would listen to the best ones. MusicRadar also spelled out the catch: you would not have any legal ownership of a Nude remix you created, and releasing one commercially would need Radiohead's permission. Create Digital Music likewise noted that the band specified the stems could not be used for commercial purposes.

Those two releases set a pattern that many remix contests still follow: open access to the parts, with the rights to the result held tightly.

DJ tools: from stem files to real-time separation

DJs wanted the same control in performance. In 2015, Native Instruments announced Stems, an open multitrack format that packs four parts of a track (such as drums, bass, melody and vocals) into one MP4 file that still plays as a normal stereo track in ordinary players. FACT reported that producers and labels could make their own files with a free Stem Creator Tool, and that Native Instruments pitched the format as a potential revenue stream for labels, artists and digital stores.

Machine learning then removed the need for official stem files. In October 2022, Serato added Serato Stems to Serato DJ Pro and Serato DJ Lite 3.0, separating tracks into vocals, melody, bass and drums in real time, according to MusicTech. Real-time separation made almost any track in a DJ's library behave like a stem release.

Stem players for listeners

Consumer hardware followed. In February 2022, Kanye West said Donda 2 would be available only on the Stem Player, a $200 device developed with Kano Computing. Hypebot described its four touch-sensitive controls for adjusting parts of a track such as the vocals or the drums. Whatever you think of the release strategy, it put stem control in the hands of ordinary listeners instead of producers.

The rights questions

Changing a song for your own listening is rarely the issue. Publishing the result is. A few principles help:

• A song carries two copyrights. The composition (melody and lyrics) belongs to its writers and publishers, and the recording belongs to whoever owns the master. A remix of a commercial track touches both.
• Adaptation is an exclusive right. The US Copyright Office's Circular 14 says only the owner of copyright in a work has the right to prepare, or to authorize someone else to create, an adaptation of that work, and lists a musical arrangement of a preexisting musical work as a type of derivative work.
• Access is not permission. Downloading official stems, buying them or separating them with software gives you audio. It does not give you the right to release what you make with it.
• Read the terms. Each remix contest, stem pack and app sets its own rules on commercial use, credit and ownership, and they differ.

Where licensed listener control fits

This is general information, and if you plan to release something, check the specific terms or ask a music lawyer. It also points to a middle path between a fixed recording and an unlicensed remix: songs offered in several productions on purpose, with a clear license for anyone who wants to record their own version.

That is the approach on Starchild. Listeners can switch a song between production styles mid-song and adjust tempo and key while they audition, all inside the player. An artist who wants to record and release their own version licenses the song, with one-time licenses from $30 to $60 base; the Personalized Productions license ($60) includes every production style with instrumentals. What rights you get when you license a song explains the details, and pricing lists the options.

Sources

• Macworld: Nine Inch Nails releases GarageBand 2 project (2005)
• MusicRadar: Radiohead remix files on iTunes (2008)
• Create Digital Music: Radiohead remixing contest, full stems via iTunes and GarageBand
• FACT: Native Instruments' new Stems format lets DJs remix on the fly (2015)
• MusicTech: Serato Stems lets you isolate instruments from your music in real time (2022)
• Hypebot: Kanye West to release Donda 2 only on his $200 Stem Player (2022)
• US Copyright Office: Circular 14, Copyright in Derivative Works and Compilations