Deezer is working with Universal Music Group on its new ‘artist-centric’ payouts, but can the model also be applied to songwriters and publishers? Now it’s trying to find out.
This morning Deezer has announced a partnership with French collecting society Sacem to “explore the artist-centric monetisation model for publishing rights in music streaming”.
That means “new ways of rewarding the value songwriters and publishers create” that “aims to ensure fairer compensation for publishing rights owners”.
(You could argue this should be called ‘songwriter-centric monetisation, of course.)
There are no concrete changes in Deezer’s payouts for publishers and songwriters yet: instead, it will work with Sacem to “analyse streaming data and evaluate the viability of different economic models”.
On the labels side, Deezer’s new model involves giving ‘double boosts’ in its payouts formula to artists who get at least 1,000 monthly streams from at least 500 unique listeners, and for tracks that fans ‘actively engage with’.
It will also be demonetising ‘non-artist noise audio’; rolling out stricter fraud-detection systems; and capping the impact individual listeners have on its royalties pool “with a monetization cap of a 1000 streams per individual user per month”.
Deezer says that this will mean every listener’s contribution to its royalty pool is counted as 1,000 streams “no matter what the actual amount is”.
We’ll be keen to see how these (and possibly other, new) tweaks to Deezer’s payouts transfer over to the publishing side of the music industry.
“Songwriters, composers and publishers play a crucial role in the music industry as the creative driving force behind the songs we love, and it’s time to evolve how we reward these efforts,” said Deezer CEO Jeronimo Folgueira.
“By proposing an alternative remuneration model via ‘Artist Centric’, we welcome Deezer’s desire to put creators and publishers back at the heart of their concerns. This is why we felt it was essential to launch this in-depth study,” added Sacem CEO Cécile Rap-Veber.
