SoundCloud has unveiled ‘Fans’, a new product that helps artists message their most engaged fans, and understand who they are. The post SoundCloud’s new ‘Fans’ feature helps artists identify superfans appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

This is a guest column by David Martin, CEO of the Featured Artists Coalition – the UK trade body that represents the rights and interests of music artists. In this post, he addresses the recent major label drive to create “artist-centric” systems of payment from the perspective of an artist-focused organisation; and explores what an increasingly independent […]

Tidal launched its ‘Direct Artist Payouts’ [DAP] feature in November 2021, as its first step towards a more user-centric system. The post Tidal shuts ‘Direct Artist Payouts’ scheme after paying $500k appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Universal Music Group boss Sir Lucian Grainge thinks that “the economic model for streaming needs to evolve”. The post UMG just found a streaming service to work with on ‘artist-centric’ payouts appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

This month, UMG boss Sir Lucian Grainge went public with his belief that “the economic model for streaming needs to evolve”. The post What do we mean by ‘artist-centric’ music streaming models? appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Remuneration is THE hot topic in the music industry of 2023, in terms of the models used by streaming services for their payouts. The post Music streaming remuneration: ‘The value is fans, less so scale’ appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Warner Music Group has become the first major to sign up for SoundCloud’s user-centric ‘fan-powered royalties’ system. The post WMG signs up for SoundCloud’s ‘fan-powered royalties’ appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

SoundCloud revealed its ‘fan-powered royalties’ plans in March 2021, applying them to its community of independent artists. The post How do SoundCloud’s ‘fan-powered royalties’ work for artists? appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

SoundCloud has been reinventing itself over the last few years. You could say it’s going back to its roots. The post SoundCloud and music: ‘It’s about watching artists and fans connect’ appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Earlier this week we reported on a SoundCloud interview with Vice that suggested the company would be taking a 45% cut from its new ‘fan-powered royalties’ (user-centric) system. The company has since revealed that the interview misinterpreted its policies, and that its share is actually lower. A spokesperson told Music Ally that SoundCloud is not keeping 45%, […]

User-centric payouts has been bubbling on the fringes of the music industry for years as an issue. The first time I took it seriously was at an industry board meeting last year – no names! – where we got two presentations on the topic. The big question everyone in the room wanted answered, including me, was: would […]

Rumours that SoundCloud would become the first big music streaming service to adopt user-centric payouts were correct. The company has just announced plans for what it’s calling ‘fan-powered royalties’. The system won’t apply to the entire catalogue of music that is available on SoundCloud, but just to the tracks uploaded by independent artists directly to […]

Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music had their say at the UK’s streaming economics inquiry yesterday: if you missed it last night, here’s our report on their session. But yesterday the parliamentary committee holding the inquiry also published the latest written evidence from the three major labels, in response to some specific questions from the politicians […]

One of the things that’s been clear in the debate about user-centric models for paying out streaming royalties – primer here if you need it – is that we need more studies based on recent data from big streaming services. So, news this week of a new study commissioned by the National Music Centre (CNM) in France from […]

Just over a year ago, music streaming service Deezer announced its desire to launch a pilot of a ‘user-centric payment system’ (UCPS) by early 2020. You can read our primer on the user-centric model here, but in a nutshell, it ensures that the money from your streaming subscription only goes to the music you listen […]

The debate about streaming royalties and ‘user-centric’ payments – primer here if needed – has largely been confined to the music industry so far. Could politicians get involved? Jo Stevens of the UK’s Labour Party, who’s the shadow secretary of state for digital, culture, media and sport, got involved during a radio discussion last night. Asked by presenter […]

CISAC is the global body representing collecting societies. Its last president was Jean-Michel Jarre, and before him it was Robin Gibb from the Bee Gees. Big shoes to fill for its next president, right? Step forward… Björn Ulvaeus. The co-founder of ABBA will serve a three-year term as president of CISAC, having been elected by […]

This is an edited version of an article that appeared in Music Ally’s Q1 2020 report. In the light of the current #BrokenRecord campaign around music industry economics – see our piece last week for more on that – we wanted to also share it in front of our paywall. The topic of user-centric music […]

Earlier this week, we covered the IFPI’s latest figures for global recorded music revenues, which grew by 8.2% in 2019. Artist rights group the Future of Music Coalition made an important point when it shared our story on Twitter. It’s true. In 2019 the recorded music industry enjoyed its fifth consecutive year of growth, taking […]

Spotify’s former chief economist Will Page is now reportedly writing a book – but he’s certainly writing for The Bookseller, the publishing-industry trade mag. He’s just penned a column exploring whether the user-centric payouts debate that’s currently happening in the music industry might have relevance for authors and book publishing too. “Just as the music […]

Deezer is hoping to launch a pilot of a user-centric payment system (UCPS) by early 2020 in France, if it can persuade labels to back the idea. As part of its preparations, it has launched a website this morning explaining UCPS to music fans. As a quick reminder: user-centric payments divide the streaming royalties from […]

Here’s the thing about the ‘user-centric’ model of music-streaming payouts: it’s nowhere near as simple as a lot of people think it is, on several levels. The idea of each streaming subscriber’s monthly payment (well, the portion of it that is paid out in royalties) being divided only between the artists they have listened to […]

The latest industry figure to come out batting for the ‘user-centric’ model of streaming royalties is Emmanuel De Buretel, in an interview with French newspaper Les Échos, subsequently spotted by MBW. De Buretel warned that the current system of dividing up royalties risks “a drying up of income for many artists outside urban and electro music, and the […]

Apple has internally modelled how a user-centric system of music-royalty payouts would work, in an effort to understand its potential impact on artists and labels, according to Crispin Hunt, chair of songwriting body The Ivors Academy. “They said ‘Be careful: we’ve modelled how this comes out’,” said Hunt, in a panel session about user-centric payouts […]