Sir Lucian Grainge has confirmed that a big rejig of the way streaming monies are allocated to individual tracks by the digital platforms each month is a key priority for the biggest music rights company in the world. This confirmation came in a start-of-the-year memo to the major’s workforce and it's a reasonably seismic development in the twisty-turny saga of fairer payments to creators from streaming. The main challenges at the moment, Grainge reckons, are: the sheer quantity of music now available on the streaming platforms; the nature of some of the music that is being uploaded and the intent of some of the uploaders; how that music is presented and pushed to consumers by the streaming services; and how that all impacts on the way streaming money is shared out. “Today, some platforms are adding 100,000 tracks per day... And with such a vast and unnavigable number of tracks flooding the platforms, consumers are increasingly being guided by algorithms to lower-quality functional content that in some cases can barely pass for ‘music'.” That last comment is pretty judgemental. To his credit, Grainge then goes on to propose a fair, artist-centric model, that should not “pit artists of one genre against artists of another, or major label artists against indie or DIY artists... An innovative, ‘artist-centric’ model”, in fact, which “values all subscribers and rewards the music they love. A model that will be a win for artists, fans, and labels alike, and, at the same time, also enhances the value proposition of the platforms themselves, accelerating subscriber growth, and better monetising fandom”. That sounds great, but will he turned his overwhelmingly massive Universal Music machine in the right direction and actually take steps towards his proposed new future? Time will tell. Via CMU