(New York) The American Music industry giant Universal Music Group (UMG) and the streaming platform Spotify announced on Sunday a multi-year agreement which will notably affect the rate of remuneration of rights holders.
Posted at 7:55 p.m.
The joint statement did not provide details on the value or duration of the deal, but said UMG and Spotify “will work closely to advance the next era of streaming innovation.”
“Artists, songwriters and consumers will benefit from new and evolving offers, new paid subscription tiers, a bundle of musical and non-musical content, and a catalog of audio and visual content more rich,” we can read in the press release.
The agreement “establishes in particular a direct license between Spotify and Universal Music Publishing Group for the entirety of Spotify’s current product portfolio in the United States and several other countries”, specify the two companies.
According to the specialist site Billboard, this is the first direct partnership concluded by Spotify with a publisher since the 2018 law on the modernization of music which aims in particular to improve the way in which songwriters are remunerated via streaming.
-This appears to indicate a sign of compromise when it comes to Spotify’s rollout of bundles which, according to Billboard, reduce the percentage of revenue donated because the total content is more extensive.
“Spotify maintains its bundling, but with this direct agreement (with UMG) it has evolved to take into account broader rights, including different economic treatment for music and non-music content,” a spokesperson said. from Spotify to the Music Business Worldwide website.
Last May, Spotify was taken to American federal justice by the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC), the organization responsible for collecting music rights from streaming platforms, which accuses it of having unilaterally reduced the royalties paid to artists .
UMG CEO Lucian Grainge said in a statement that the deal was an example of his company’s “vision” for “Streaming 2.0”, which aims to increase value through subscription tiers and product sales rather than focusing on the number of streams.
