There was a study that looked at the economics of this [1]: user centric (UCPS) vs market centric (MCPS) payment system. In short: UCPS would transfer some revenue from the top artists to the middle rump of popular artists, but the small and obscure artists would not be affected much since they hardly make much in the first place.
My take on this: of course the top artists should not be taking a disproportionate cut at the expense of the less popular artists, a UCPS is not a panacea but it would be an improvement.
Thanks so much for linking this, I think it's a great study.
And I agree, I don't think it would be a panacea. But I think it would be a lot fairer, and would help a large selection of artists in that middle tier. For the most obscure artists, while the study says it has a "low impact" on them, they actually had the highest percentage increase, but since their royalties are already so low the euro amount increase was in the single digit euros. And again, that seems fair to me - if hardly anyone is listening to you, you're not going to be getting a big payout.
I think the real issue that needs to be solved for this is how you will convince big artists to sign while giving up some revenue to less popular artists ... because you absolutely need them.
My take on this: of course the top artists should not be taking a disproportionate cut at the expense of the less popular artists, a UCPS is not a panacea but it would be an improvement.
[1] https://legrandnetwork.blogspot.com/2021/02/user-centric-mod...