Deezer and SACEM partner on artist-centric streaming model

SACEM represents a community of more than 200 000 creators and publishers, including about 25 000 members from 174 countries, 20% of which hail from Africa. The announcement follows Deezer’s launch of the world’s first artist-centric payment model for recorded music earlier this year. It also comes on the heels of a March agreement between Deezer and Universal Music Group to investigate potential new economic models for music creators in the music streaming space.

Deezer and SACEM will jointly explore new ways of rewarding the value songwriters and publishers create to ensure fairer compensation for publishing rights owners. Through this partnership, the two organisations will analyse streaming data and evaluate the viability of different economic models aimed at remunerating songwriters, composers and publishing rights owners more fairly.

“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 monetised in the age of streaming,” Deezer CEO Jeronimo Folgueira said. “Songwriters, composers and publishers play a crucial role in the music industry as the creative driving force behind the songs we love, and it’s time to evolve how we reward these efforts.”

SACEM CEO Cécile Rap-Veber added that her outfit “has always anticipated changes in the music market and been a pioneer in seizing every opportunity to better redistribute rights and maximise the value of its members’ works. 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. 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.”

In September, Deezer announced the launch of a new model for recorded music, designed to better reward artists, and the music that fans value the most. The model, which came into effect in October, focuses on rewarding professional artists and fan engagement as well as demonetising non-music content, cleaning up the catalogue and tackling fraud.

In addition, the model includes a user-centric approach, with a monetisation cap of 1 000 streams for each user, no matter how much they stream each month, ensuring a fairer revenue share between artists and decreasing the risk of streaming fraud.