Amid all the hubbub around new music-streaming payout models – user-centric, artist-centric and more – there has always been a question about what the biggest streaming services would do.
Thus far, the experiments and proposals have tended to come from the mid-tier services like Deezer, SoundCloud and Tidal. However, today there are reports that Spotify is preparing to make some tweaks to its payouts in response to the industry debates.
Both Billboard and MBW reported on the plans, which offers a whiff of a coordinated leak – although whether that’s from Spotify or rightsholders we couldn’t say.
The gist: tracks will soon have to reach a minimum threshold of annual streams to qualify for royalty payouts – MBW said that this will only affect tracks that had previously accounted for 0.5% of Spotify’s royalties pool.
There will also be financial penalties for distributors and labels if fraudulent activity is detected around their tracks – something that will need to be handled very carefully to avoid any rival-nobbling dirty tricks – and a minimum play-time length for non-music noise tracks for those to qualify for royalties.
It’s not a million miles away from the ‘artist-centric’ payouts recently introduced by Deezer with the support of Universal Music Group.
Today, Deezer announced plans to explore how that model might also work for publishing royalties, through a study with French collecting society Sacem.
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