Under the new model, Deezer promises to separate professional artists from the musical clutter of hobbyists, functional music and system gaming bots, and future-proof its platform.
“The new model is designed to effectively stop gaming behavior using white noise,” says Folgueira. “It will also provide us with a framework to continue developing tools to tackle future abuses, including for example fraud and copyright infringement using AI-generated content.”
This agreement should benefit professional artists. Deezer claims that payouts should increase by 10 percent. “I think ultimately this model will probably benefit most of the artists you know or care about,” says David Turner, founder of the music business newsletter Penny Fractions and strategy manager at SoundCloud. Ultimately, he says, hobbyists will miss out on payouts worth less than a cup of coffee, while an artist with a small but devoted following might now be able to pay the rent.
However, it is not without problems. First, the framing pits hobbyists against artists, Pelly argues, implying that hobbyists are the reason “real” artists don’t earn more.
“There are so many artists who cannot make a professional living from recorded music, partly due to the unfairness of the streaming system, or who consciously choose to make music in a deprofessionalized way for personal or artistic reasons,” she says. “These systems are also incredibly unfair to those types of artists.”
It’s also difficult to draw the line between bad actors, functional music with a purpose (like covering my tinnitus) and more avant-garde forms of ‘noise’. “Allowing major labels and streaming executives to start making calls about what counts as ‘non-artist noise content’ and what counts as ‘art’ is really a slippery slope,” Pelly says. “There is a lot of music that could fall into a gray area – ambient and noise musicians who work with field recordings, for example.” Folgueira responds that these types of artists will benefit from the professional artist boost, and that Deezer will, at least initially, just demonetize white noise.
Deezer is of course intended for music and podcasts. (My tinnitus mix comes from apps like Calm). But Deezer’s plan to upload its own functional music raises some questions, Pelly says. “It kind of opens the door to streaming services normalizing making and distributing their own recordings, which could have more implications for artists in the future.” Folgueira says Deezer “has no ambition to produce and distribute content that will compete with professional artists.”
Both Pelly and Turner agree that the main motivation for Universal is market share: Britain’s indie label scene, for example, has seen year-on-year growth, with one theory being that streaming algorithms direct users to niche artists. In that context, clearing the noise could be a way to reassure investors. “To me, when I see a story like this, I see Universal Music Group trying to expand its market share and ensure there is as much streaming activity around its catalog as possible,” Pelly says. “Major labels see ‘non-artist noise content’ as something that hinders their market share.”
Streaming has long been criticized for its pro-rata model, where all revenue goes into one pot and is distributed based on share of total streams. As a result, enthusiasts can listen to “insert-musical-obscurity-here” for the benefit of Bruno Mars. Deezer, a fraction of the size of the major streaming platforms, with 16 million monthly active users, has pushed for a user-centric model, splitting revenue based on what a user actually listens to. While this deal isn’t, Universal’s involvement is critical. As writer Cory Doctorow noted in his book: Chokepoint capitalism, it’s a misconception that streamers dictate the streaming model. In reality, the major record labels hold the power, as consumers don’t love Spotify, they love Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny. This means that any deal involving the record labels will be done on their terms.