Piloting User-Centric Licensing_Idea

Hi Deezer Community,



I am aware that Deezer was considering the idea of user-centric licensing - meaning that the portion of user's subscription fees that are being paid as royalties would be distributed amongst those rightholders which the actual user was listening to in a given month. Such model would have a lot of positive implications which I would not go into details here.



However I believe current licensing structure creates a challenge to go into such model fully. My idea would be to start by piloting - few artists/songs would be selected in such a pool and users too (not to go into with all users to be able to check by Deezer how the data could be managed properly and whether there is capacity to do on a broader scale).



The piloted songs/artists would have a checkmark - e.g. UCL or green tick or anything - so that the user knows when he/she is listening to the song it is under user centric licensing - the portion of his/her subscription fee will actually go to the rightholders.



From the users perspective it would be opt-in to go into the model. If someone does not care - that is fine - subscription fee goes to the broad country/global bucket (whatever). However who chooses to opt-in the subscription fee of this user would be split based on how much stream she/he would have in a given month for 'UCL' artists/songs and how much for the others.



I believe in terms managing the data at Deezer's end that would be just a shift of how the data is managed/split that is currently in use anyway to manage royalty payments.



So to conclude - I would first suggest to start only with a pilot to be able to define whether the data can be handled/managed. If works the above can be made wider and as you can see such a model gives the opportunity to opt-in by both artists/labels/anyone + users. And that is fair enough.



There are a lot of positive impacts of this model in the long run developing around the word: 'engagement'. I am happy to talk about these positive opportunities more if anyone may be interested.



I think the opt-in user-centric licensing model can be a game changer!

Thanks for your thoughts!