User-centric payouts has been bubbling on the fringes of the music industry for years as an issue. The first time I took it seriously was at an industry board meeting last year – no names! – where we got two presentations on the topic.
The big question everyone in the room wanted answered, including me, was: would we earn more money under the user-centric payment model?
One presentation used Spotify data, and showed that the overall streaming pie remained the same – obvious – and that the indies’ slice might be slightly less. Not surprisingly, the interest in the model was not great after this.
Then Deezer did a presentation, which also showed that the pie would be the same, and which suggested that we indies would earn about the same. But they made two other points that took a while to sink in.
