Deezer’s new royalty system begins work with indies
Deezer’s new royalty system aims to pay artists more and they’ve just expanded it to more indie musicians.
In a bid to pay artists more, Deezer announced a transformation of their royalty payouts last year. They are working with two major labels Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group, as well as publishing rights business Sacem.
Deezer have now announced the renewal of their partnership with independent digital music licensing partner Merlin. Their collaboration brings Merlin under Deezer’s new artist centric royalty model, rewarding their members of independent record labels, distributors, and rightsholders.
Merlin CEO, Jeremy Sirota said: “I’m very happy to see that Merlin and its members are embracing Deezer’s artist centric model and joining us in redefining artist remuneration in the streaming era, to make sure artists are paid more fairly for their music. From the start, our ambition has been that the new model should serve all artists with a consistent fan base, including the indie acts represented by the membership of Merlin.”
Deezer’s royalty model is currently being rolled out in France and is not yet in place in other territories. It sees more money going to working artists by reducing royalties that go to fraudulent streams, non-musical noise audio, and rewarding artists with more engagement.
Deezer CEO, Jeronimo Folgueira said: “I’m very happy to see that Merlin and its members are embracing Deezer’s artist centric model and joining us in redefining artist remuneration in the streaming era, to make sure artists are paid more fairly for their music. From the start, our ambition has been that the new model should serve all artists with a consistent fan base, including the indie acts represented by the membership of Merlin.”
After a successful 2023 in which Deezer added 500,000 subscribers, Folguiera revealed that he would be stepping down at the end of March. Folguiera didn’t provide a reason but assured that he was “fully committed to supporting the company through the management transition”.
Like Deezer, Spotify have been readjusting how their royalties are paid out to take revenue away from fraud streams and elsewhere to pay performing artists more. The streaming industry seems to be looking hard at how they can pay artists and labels more. Price increases across the board last year have helped to boost service revenues, though it’s not certain that those price hikes will amount to better payments for artists.