How Do Music Streaming Services Pay Musicians? Pro Rata vs User-Centric Royalties 

Thanks!

Thank you so much for your comment :) I'm really glad you found it useful. I'm just getting started, so hopefully some day!

Thank you for the kind words, I’m glad you found the video helpful 🙂 I’m definitely still figuring this whole RU-vid thing out but knowing I am producing content that is helping people keeps me going!

I’m glad you enjoyed it!

Cheers!

Glad to hear it!

Glad it was helpful!

We definitely see a lot of big artists selling the rights to their catalogues - for some, a tidy lump sum could be the answer for sure! Read a recent op-Ed in Music Business Worldwide by Stef Van Vugt suggesting per second royalty payouts, especially for TikTok and such rather than a flat fee, which is an interesting idea and definitely in line with sync for films and television.

You are very welcome 🙂

Love this comment!

True story. It's only on their HiFi Plus tier if subscribers sign up directly through Tidal Music - if they register through a service provider then fan-centred royalties won't be paid out, for whatever reason. But, it is a start!

Unit sales would be counted per album sold. If you buy 5 copies, that’s 5 units sold.

As far as I know, there isn't a publicly available API that you can just plug into an app to allow users access to licensed music - as there is no one-stop location for licensing all music for use on social media sites, I would expect that there would be no one API that has access to all the libraries of all the distributors in the world. Don't quote me on this, as I am not an app developer. What I can tell you is that if you want to make popular music available through your app, you will need to license it from the various distributors out there, and will likely need to come with a serious proposal for how said you would compensate the use of the tracks on your platform. Given that Epidemic Sound is currently suing Meta over copyright infringement and Kobalt Music has pulled their music from Meta because they couldn't agree on a new licensing deal, I'm guessing you will need to have a fairly strong position to get to the negotiation table. Good luck!

At the time this video was made Soundcloud were the first to adopt user centric royalties. Tidal introduced it towards the end of 2021 and dropped it before the end of 2022, I suspect without ever having actually rolled it out. Here's a video about that: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-RFtX5Lth6Qw.html All the data I have suggests that Qobuz is paying using a market-based approach just like other DSPs - if you have some information I don't have I would love to see it!

😂 oh, the starving artist theory… I’m not sure it holds up to scrutiny though. I think it’s more likely that those that do end up financially well off can find themselves at odds with the meaning and content that made them famous… those that manage to reconcile that tend to have pretty solid careers.