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Since last year, the French-born platform “Deezer” has started a pilot project that aims to promote a change in the model of distribution of royalties on streaming platforms that benefits emerging and independent artists.
Currently, the distribution of royalties generated by communication to the public of songs through streaming platforms is calculated according to the market share or relevance of the artist as follows: the platforms add up to the total number of reproductions of songs in a period of time, later it is calculated which are the most listened artists, and according to that, the market percentage of each artist is calculated.
Therefore, under this traditional scheme, if a user pays a monthly fee of US $ 10 and regularly listens to 4 artists, and 2 of them have a global market share of 20% and 10%, respectively, they will charge said percentage of the value of the subscription paid by the user, even though they are not the artists most listened to by the user.
The drawback with this system is that it financially benefits the most popular artists and harms those musicians and independent artists who are not known worldwide. Likewise, this system disadvantages those artists who are entering the music world for the first time and who want to boost their career through a streaming platform.
Consequently, Deezer wants to promote a more personalized and user-focused system (“User Centric Payment System” -UCPS-), which allows the money paid by users to be used to pay royalties for their favorite artists (and not depend on a market share calculated on a popularity scheme).
Initially, the system will be implemented in France and, based on the results achieved, Deezer would make the decision to extend its application worldwide. In addition, in its initial phase, it is expected to have only record labels as allies (it is not foreseen, at the moment, to link to collective management companies and/or publishers). So far, some labels such as Believe, Idol, Because Music and Wagram Music have joined the initiative and have expressed their support for the implementation of the pilot model.
For more information, it is possible to consult the following link: https://www.deezer.com/ucps/
