Deezer and UMG stopped paying noise the same as songs
The companies' joint announcement redefines which streams count as royalty-worthy, and by how much.
- Historical event
- September 6, 2023
- First source published
- September 6, 2023
- Site publication
- September 18, 2026
What happened
On 6 September 2023, Universal Music Group and Deezer jointly announced what they called the first comprehensive artist-centric music streaming model, to launch in France in the fourth quarter of 2023 with other markets to follow. The Deezer announcement and the mirrored UMG release describe a change to how streams convert into royalty payments, developed from what the companies call their joint data analysis.
What the documents say
The announcement sets out four mechanics. Deezer will apply 'a double boost' to streams of what it defines as 'professional artists,' those with at least 1,000 streams a month from at least 500 unique listeners. It will apply a second double boost to 'songs that fans actively engage with,' explicitly to reduce 'the economic influence of algorithmic programming.' It will 'replace non-artist noise content with its own content in the functional music space,' excluding those streams 'from the royalty pool' entirely; the announcement states preliminary data put noise at 'approximately 2% of streams.' And it commits to a 'stricter, proprietary fraud detection system.' Deezer's chief executive is quoted comparing functional audio to 'the sound of rain or a washing machine,' arguing it should not be 'valued the same' as a recording by an artist.
Why it matters for makers
The mechanism is a reweighting of the royalty pool, not a change to the pool's total size: money moved away from 'noise' and low-engagement algorithmic plays is redistributed toward what the model classifies as professional, engaged listening, so one category's gain is mechanically another category's loss. A generated ambient or functional track that a listener does not actively seek out is exactly the category the model is designed to demonetise, independent of whether it was made by a human or a generator; the classification runs on listener behaviour and artist-profile thresholds, not on how the audio was produced.
What to check before you use it
This is an editorial reading of a single platform's model, not a statement about streaming generally. Check whether the platform a track is released to has adopted an artist-centric or engagement-weighted model, and what threshold of streams and unique listeners it uses to define a qualifying artist. Check whether a release's genre or use case, ambient, functional or background music, risks classification as 'noise' under that platform's specific criteria, since the announcement names functional music by name as a target category.
- Does this platform apply an artist-centric or engagement-based reweighting, and what are its specific thresholds?
- Could this release be classified as functional or non-artist content under that platform's criteria?
- Has the platform published updated criteria since this 2023 announcement that changes how the model actually runs today?
Redefining which streams count as royalty-worthy is a real and stated change to how money moves through one platform, not a universal law of streaming; the mechanics described here are Deezer and UMG's own, and another platform's model, or a later revision of this one, can differ.
Sources & reading trail
Deezer's own announcement of the model's mechanics: the professional-artist boost, engagement boost, and demonetised noise category.
Source published: 6 September 2023 · Retrieved: 16 September 2026
UMG's mirrored press release with executive quotes describing the same mechanics and the stated 2% noise-share baseline.
Source published: 6 September 2023 · Retrieved: 16 September 2026
Papers, terms and official documents establish the record; the maker reading and the checks are Signal to Song editorial analysis. This retrospective draft does not imply the site published on the event date.
Continue reading
- Spotify stopped paying royalties on tracks under 1,000 streams
- Spotify pulled Boomy tracks over suspected stream manipulation
- Deezer began tagging albums that are fully AI-generated
- Browse the complete the archive
Sources & reading trail
- Universal Music Group and Deezer to Launch the First Comprehensive Artist-Centric Music Streaming Model
Source published: September 6, 2023 · Retrieved: September 16, 2026 - Universal Music Group and Deezer to Launch the First Comprehensive Artist-Centric Music Streaming Model
Source published: September 6, 2023 · Retrieved: September 16, 2026
The documents above establish the record. The reading and the questions are this publication’s editorial analysis, written after the fact.
Published September 18, 2026, not on the date of the event described.