Music streaming is beginning its artist-centric shift

This is an opportunity to take stock of the situation:

– The market-centric model calculates royalties proportionally to total streams: you can therefore listen only to obscure artists, but pay the majority of your subscription to industry giants, without even listening to them. This model, which is the default for all DSPs, is unfavorable to niche genres and less popular artists.

Historically, this revenue model originated in Spotify's early years, when the company skirted the edge of legality. The major record labels, burned by years of piracy, were able to dictate the rules to their advantage and are in no hurry to change the model.

The artist-centric (or user-centric) model, promoted by Deezer and Sacem, aims to compensate artists whose music is actually listened to by subscribers. This model is weighted by including a bonus for professional artists: songs by artists with at least 1,000 streams from 500 different subscribers each month are paid twice as much per stream compared to artists who don't reach this target. This model seeks a balance by weighting popularity and listener loyalty. It is also criticized by some in the industry, as it continues to largely benefit major artists.

Sacem has not provided specific figures on the royalty increases that songwriters can expect. Its CEO, Cécile Rap-Veber, cautioned in an interview with Musically: "I'm not talking about 10% or 20% growth, but it's significant enough, I think, to warrant adopting the system." As the world leader in the collective management of creators' and publishers' rights, Sacem has a clearly stated objective of creating a "spreading effect" with this partnership, compelling other DSPs to follow suit.