First off, let me be the first to admit that just about anytime I see, hear or think of "Deezer" I have a little laugh. The French-based music streaming platform doesn't deserve my scoffing nor did it earn it any way. I just think the name is funny.

With that out of the way, I must admit that I'm rather impressed by their proposed User Centric Payment System (UCPS), a new way of paying artists based on the actual streams from specific listeners. This promo page and Engadget article break down the high-level specifics.

The gist is; right now subscription fees go into a pool for royalty payments, which get paid out to artists based on overall streaming percentage plays. So, if you listened to nothing but obscure noise music for a month, you're still paying Beyonce royalties because she gets a ton of plays (both music choices are perfectly acceptable btw). In the new UCPS setup, your subscription fee would get paid out to the artist that you actually listened to. Their infographics that break it down aren't exactly nuanced but they do tell the high level concepts. The best part about this "Revolutionary" idea is that it's really just a step backward to the digital download model. In that tiny window of time after digital music took off but streaming platforms didn't have a foothold yet, you would buy an album and that money would go to the artist. Again, there's more nuance there but at least there was a direct path between your money and the artist you want to support (see also: Bandcamp).

I'm sure there's plenty of conversation to have around the missing nuance of this proposal but, in general, I love the concept. I imagined that Spotify and their ilk didn't already do this because the dataset of plays was too massive to consistently crunch at scale but it seems that's not the case for ole Deezer. Going to keep an eye on the progression here.