Fare Play: Could SoundCloud’s User-Centric Streaming Payouts Catch On?

When Spotify first negotiated its initial licensing deals with labels in the late 2000s, both sides focused more on how much money the service would take in than the best way to divide it. The idea they settled on, which divides artist payouts based on the overall popularity of recordings, regardless of how they map to individuals’ listening habits, was “the simplest system to put together at the time,” recalls Thomas Hesse, a former Sony Music executive who was involved in tho