Amazon has asked the US Copyright Royalty Board to cut the headline mechanical royalty rate for on-demand streaming to 13.4% of service revenue for 2028 through 2032, according to Music Business Worldwide's October 14, 2026 read of the Phonorecords V filings. Spotify, Apple, Google, and Pandora want the 2027 rate of 15.35% frozen in place for those five years. Music publishers want a jump to as much as 20% of revenue.
The proposals were filed October 5, with public redacted versions following October 7. They set the next fight over what songwriters earn when a stream plays.
What are the services asking for?
Under the Phonorecords IV settlement, the headline all-in rate rises from 15.1% in 2023 to 15.35% in 2027 and stands at 15.3% in 2026, MBW reports. Spotify proposes keeping 15.35% with no other changes, arguing the 2022 settlement is “the best evidence of what willing buyers and willing sellers would agree to.” Apple and Google make the same freeze ask. Pandora also wants the freeze, plus four smaller changes around late fees, public-domain works, fraud accounts, and app-store commissions, Digital Music News notes.
Amazon is the outlier. Besides the 13.4% headline cut, it proposes lowering the Total Content Cost rate for non-bundle services from 26.2% to 22.8%, the per-subscriber figure for standalone portable subscriptions from $1.10 to 96 cents, and the 60-cent minimum to 52 cents, according to MBW. For bundled subscriptions, Amazon wants to scrap the percentage-of-revenue calculation and pay 21.3% of TCC with a 29-cent floor. Its economist, Duke University's Leslie Marx, adjusted Phonorecords IV rates for “intervening evidence of market power,” yielding figures about 13% below current levels, the filing states.
What do publishers want, and why is bundling the flashpoint?
The National Music Publishers' Association and the Nashville Songwriters Association International propose that services pay the greatest of four amounts: 20% of revenue, 40% of what they pay record labels, $2.40 per subscriber a month, or $0.004 per play, with inflation adjustments on the per-subscriber and per-play rates. That is the publisher ask we flagged when Phonorecords V opened; the October filings now put the DSP counter-offers on the table in detail.
Bundling is the sore spot. Spotify reclassified US Premium tiers as audiobook bundles in March 2024, cutting mechanical royalties, MBW reports. Amazon followed with a similar music-and-audiobook bundle in November 2024. Publishers say Spotify has already taken more than $500 million in mechanicals that should have been paid. Spotify's quarterly filing says that if the Mechanical Licensing Collective were “entirely successful,” its liability from March 2024 to June 2026 would be about 473 million euros, partly offset by direct deals. Since January 2025, Spotify has signed direct US publishing deals with Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell, Kobalt, Sony Music Publishing, and BMG.
What happens next?
Under the CRB's October 2 schedule, parties can file amended written direct statements until December 21, 2026 and must respond to each other's cases by February 1, 2027. A settlement window runs January 25 to February 15, 2027. Unless they settle, the hearing is set for March 22 to April 15, 2027, with the judges' initial decision due by December 17, 2027, MBW reports.
For songwriters, the spread is stark: Amazon's cut, a Spotify-led freeze, or a publisher floor that could land near 20% of revenue and 40% of label TCC. The slowing streaming growth story makes every tenth of a point harder to give away. The CRB will decide who blinks.