Universal Music Group (UMG) and French music streaming platform Deezer on Wednesday announced a future "model" designed "to better remunerate artists".

This deal is slated to begin in France in the fourth quarter of 2023 ahead of other markets.

"The collaboration to launch an artist-centric model is motivated by the fact that both companies recognize that the current music streaming model needs to be re-imagined," the firm said in a joint statement.

“Today, a subscriber, who pays around 10 euros monthly on a music streaming platform and doesn't listen to musicians at the top of the charts, sees the bulk of this sum migrate to other much more "streamed" artists

This is the "market centric" (in pro rata of total listings). The deal between Universal and Deezer approaches a so-called "user centric" model, theorized by its advocates as one centered on individual subscriber listening.

Deezer presents this future compensation model with Universal under the name of "artist-centric". The French platform thus wants to focus on "professional artists (who have at least 1,000 streams per month with at least 500 unique listeners), in order to remunerate them more equitably". The statement said.

Michael Nash, chief digital officer of UMG said the goal is to support artists’ careers.

"The goal of the +artist-centric+ model is to ensure that we better support and reward artists at all stages of their career, whether they have 1,000, 100,000 or 100 million fans," said Michael Nash.

On his part, Jeronimo Folgueira, managing director of Deezer, added that the deal will ensure that artists get the same value on their platforms.

"There is no other sector where all content has the same value, and it should be as obvious to everyone as rain or washing machine noises (reference to des." playlists ambiance,  don't have the same value as a song from your favorite artist broadcast in high quality". Folgueira said.