The world’s biggest music publisher “Universal” in partnership with the French music streaming app “Deezer” is in the final stages of launching an “artist-centric streaming ” approach aimed at generating bigger royalties for artists.
Through the model that France will launch before the end of this year “2023”, artists will be paid more if users actively choose to listen to their music.Songs which appear in algorithmic playlists will also generate less money than those selected by users.
Deezer said that it would attribute a double boost to professional musicians, defined as those who have at least 1,000 streams a month from at least 500 unique listeners.
The French app, which has more than five million subscribers, revealed that it would “demonetise” non-music audio streams by replacing them with its own content.
The Chief at Deezer Jeronimo Folgueira stated that the model is an ambitious change to the economic model since the creation of music streaming.
According to Universal’s Chief Digital Officer Micheal Nash , artists will highly benefit from the model once it's implemented.
“ The model is to mitigate dynamics that risk drowning music in a sea of noise and to ensure we are better supporting and rewarding artists at all stages of their careers whether they have 1,000 fans or 100,000 or 100 million,” Michael explained.
Meanwhile Streamers such as Spotify and Apple Music have helped boost music sales over the past decade, but publishers like Universal have long argued that artists were not getting their just rewards, with AI-generated tracks and streams of white noise grabbing attention and money.
