- Deezer and Universal’s Artist-Centric Model
- Rewarding User-Selected Music
- Challenges to the Current Music Streaming Paradigm
Universal Music Group and Deezer will jointly introduce a music streaming model designed to increase artists’ royalties.
Actively listening to artists’ music will earn them more than forced listening.
Songs included in algorithmic compilations will also generate less revenue compared to those chosen by users.
Later this year, Deezer will introduce the model in France.
This might affect the music industry, especially if Spotify or Apple Music change their revenue methods.
The deal would “better reward the artists and the music that fans value the most,” Deezer and Universal stated Wednesday.
It is a response to the oversaturated current paradigm of music streaming, which they claim “needs to be re-imagined” to encourage “meaningful engagement” between listeners and artists.
This includes the displacement of “non-artist noise content” – such as ambient background music. Which is popular among home workers – with Deezer’s content, for which no royalties will be paid.
“Music drowning in a sea of noise.”
The CEO of Deezer, Jeronimo Folgueira, referred to the move as “the most ambitious change to the economic model since the inception of music streaming” and one that will “support the creation of high-quality content over the coming years.”
He said they wanted “a high-quality experience for consumers” and “promote fairness in the industry and combat fraud”.
“In no other industry is all content valued equally, and it should be obvious that the sound of rain or a washing machine is not as valuable as a song from your favorite artist streamed in HiFi,” he explained.
“The purpose of the artist-centric model is to mitigate dynamics that risk drowning music in a sea of noise and to ensure that we support and reward artists at all stages of their careers, regardless of whether they have 1,000, 100,000, or 1,000,000 fans.”
Since 2019, the government has been investigating music streaming, and in 2021, an “imbalance” in royalties was identified. It has established a special working committee to examine how artists are compensated.
In May, the music business agreed to improve metadata for tracking recordings on streaming platforms after artist concerns.
Creators claimed they were not obtaining their fair share of royalties when their songs were played on streaming services, with payments varying depending on how the music was streamed or artists’ agreements with labels and distributors.
A former Spotify advisor proposed a fairer “alternative model” with “a user-centric payment system” that distributes artist membership fees.
