Time was that DJ Sneak would spend most of his time smoking too much, whinging that we should play everything on vinyl and arguing with people on the internet. Those were the days…

Nowadays, he spends most of his time… er, smoking too much and whinging that we should play everything on vinyl. Just about the only thing that’s changed is he no longer spends time arguing with people online – someone must have decided to hide his Twitter account when he wasn’t looking.

These days, he frequents his own website – and its operations are promoted very heavily on his Instagram page. Typically, he puts on some two or three shows a week, streamed through the site. The sets are done almost exclusively on vinyl and sources tell me that there’s so much smoking that they should come with a health warning. He usually charges people some $5 for entry and each show lasts between 4 and 6 hours, on average.

What isn’t so clear, however, is whether his streams – that are broadcast through FutureStream.tv – are properly licensed. Are the artists and labels whose music that he uses all paid the appropriate monies? The terms and conditions don’t exactly make it clear. Sifting through them. I noted two points in particular…

• Under category D, “The Service and Restrictions On Use”, it states “Your use of the Service must be for your own personal use. Unless you obtain FutureStream.tv’s written permission, you may not use the Service for commercial purposes”.
• Under category E, “Our Reservation of Rights”, it states “FutureStream.tv does not permit copyright infringing activities or the infringement of other intellectual property rights on the Service, and will remove all content if properly notified that such content infringes on another’s intellectual property rights”.

FutureStream have been contacted to ask whether Sneak has their permission to undertake commercial activity on the site and also to ask whether they pay musicians and such for the use of their songs.

As for DJ Sneak, he has not yet responded to my email on this question…