Deezer launched a new website that improves the current payment policy for the music streaming platform.
Deezer calls this new system ‘User-Centric Payment’. The user-centric payment system will start in a beta stage in France next year (2020). Depending on the results, it will be fully implemented or left behind. In this new model, the subscription money you pay will only go to your favorite artists. Currently, users pay the artist per listen.
Other music streaming platforms such as Spotify have the same policy. It is not fair that an artist receiving 100,000 plays from his fans does not receive the economic benefit from those direct plays. Instead, that money goes through linked artists and their plays. Finally, the system calculates parameters and aggregates and gives the artist the final economic amount. As this old payment system is complex, Deezer explains how it works in this graph.
Deezer’s ready to test this new payment system. More than 40 music labels have agreed to test this system, but the real challenge is to bring the Big Three major labels into the testing. This new payment system would improve indie artists revenues and slightly decrease the top streamed artists earnings.
In conclusion, artists should get paid for the listeners they do have, instead of counting on tiny percentages of a much larger pool. If you want to check follow the debate about payment in streaming platforms more closely, feel free to check #MakeStreamingFair on social media.
