SACEM JOINS DEEZER ARTIST-CENTRIC PLAN

French CMO SACEM has signed up to explore Deezer's artist-centric streaming model for publishing rights.

The partnership will test new ways to reward songwriters and publishers, and reimagine the way publishing rights are monetized in streaming to ensure fairer compensation for rights owners. Deezer and SACEM will do this by analyzing streaming data and evaluating the viability of different economic models.

The deal follows Deezer’s partnership with UMG to launch its artist-centric payment model for recorded music earlier this year.

“SACEM is a world leader in managing music authors rights, and we’re delighted to join forces to explore how we can develop the way publishing is monetized in the age of streaming,” Deezer CEO Jeronimo Folgueira.

Based on Deezer’s analysis, the following steps are being integrated into its artist-centric model:

• Professional artists—those who have a minimum of 1k streams per month by a minimum of 500 unique listeners—will enjoy a double boost.
• A double boost will also be given to songs that fans actively engage with, with the aim of reducing the economic influence of algorithmic programming.
• Deezer plans to replace non-artist noise content with its own content in the functional music space, which won’t be included in the royalty pool.
• It will continue to drive an “updated, and stricter, proprietary fraud detection system, removing incentives for bad actors, and protecting streaming royalties for artists.”
• The user-centric element has a monetization cap of 1k streams per individual user per month. This means that every single user’s contribution to the royalty pool is counted as a 1k streams, no matter what the actual amount is.
• As a result of Deezer’s catalog growing to over 200m pieces of content in the past two years, Deezer intends to apply a stricter provider policy to ensure quality and a better user experience, which includes steps to limit non-artist noise content.

“By proposing an alternative remuneration model via 'Artist Centric,’ we welcome Deezer's desire to put creators and publishers back at the heart of their concerns,” SACEM CEO Cécile Rap-Veber said. “This is why we felt it was essential to launch this in-depth study, which we hope will make it possible to increase the value of streaming for our members.”