In a non-public filing with the US Copyright Royalty Board, Apple proposes simplified flat rate of 9.1¢ per 100 streams in songwriting royalties
In the music industry's streaming battles, the fight extends to even the minutiae of copyright. — Apple, in a government filing on Friday …
Context & Ripple Effects
This filing lands mid-way through Apple's two-year campaign to bend streaming economics in its favor. It first tried the direct route — failing to persuade record labels to lower Beats' licensing costs — then settled for a 71.5% revenue share with rights owners and no royalties during trial periods, later paying just 0.2 cents per stream during the free trial.
With the label negotiation route exhausted, Apple is now taking the songwriting side of royalties to the US Copyright Royalty Board, proposing a flat 9.1¢ per 100 streams instead of the existing revenue-based formula. That per-stream framing is the same one Apple would later lean on publicly when it told artists it pays a penny per stream, roughly double Spotify.
First-order effects
- Songwriters and their publishers see the basis of their streaming income put up for renegotiation at the CRB: a flat per-stream rate replaces a cut of subscription revenue, decoupling their payouts from Apple Music's pricing and growth.
- The CRB proceeding gains a concrete, simplified proposal from the largest new entrant in streaming, forcing the rate-setting process to adjudicate between per-stream and revenue-share structures rather than tweak percentages.
Second-order effects
- Spotify and other streaming services have a direct stake in the outcome: a flat rate Apple can live with becomes a benchmark they can adopt or argue from, since publishing costs would no longer scale with each service's own revenue.
- Record labels watch the publishing lever being pulled after refusing Apple's demands on the recording side — if the CRB accepts a simplified rate, Apple has found a regulatory path around the negotiations it lost in 2015.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, streaming royalty economics migrate from private label-by-label deals toward government-set flat formulas, making the CRB docket — not the negotiating room — the venue where platform take rates are decided.
- A settled per-stream publishing rate sharpens the split between the recording and songwriting sides of every stream, turning the songwriter share into a separately contested, separately priced line item across the whole industry.
The trend: Music streaming royalties are shifting from privately negotiated revenue shares toward regulator-set flat per-stream rates, with Apple using the Copyright Royalty Board to standardize the cost base it could not negotiate down.