📊 Full opportunity report: Raw-feed licensing. The contract that doesn’t exist yet. on ThorstenMeyerAI.com — validation score, market gap, and execution plan.
TL;DR
There is currently no standardized contract for raw-feed licensing in AI, despite clear economic parallels with music streaming royalties. This gap affects industry stakeholders and could shape future licensing frameworks.
Industry experts confirm that a formal, industry-standard contract for raw-feed licensing—used for downstream AI rewriting—does not currently exist, despite the economic and legal similarities to music streaming royalties. This gap impacts AI labs, publishers, wire cooperatives, and search engines, and is a central issue in the evolving licensing landscape.
Confirmed facts indicate that licensing for training data and display rights are contractually established, with deals such as OpenAI’s archive license and News Corp’s display licensing at brand-tier rates. However, the third category—raw-feed licensing for downstream rewriting—lacks a standardized contract, creating a significant legal and economic void. The numbers involved are comparable to music streaming royalties, which are governed by well-established statutory frameworks since 1909. The absence of a formal contract means that parties are operating in a regulatory and legal gray area, often favoring arrangements that do not fully price the economic collision between AI inference costs and royalty rates. Industry insiders attribute this gap to structural disagreements among stakeholders, including AI labs, publishers, wire cooperatives, and search engines, each preferring to maintain the status quo that benefits their interests.FEED
POST-WIRE · 02
NEWS / LICENSING ECONOMICS
Essay · Contract-Forensic Analysis · 2026-05-17
Raw-Feed Licensing:
The Contract That
Doesn’t Exist Yet
Training-data licensing is contracted. Display licensing is contracted. The third category — the post-wire one — has no contract.
Spotify pays songwriters ~$0.004 per stream. Apple Music pays ~$0.008. The Copyright Royalty Board under Phonorecords IV sets the all-in mechanical streaming royalty at 15.1% (2023) → 15.35% (2027) of platform revenue. Per-rewrite LLM inference cost lands in the same band: $0.003–$0.02, local open-weight to higher-tier cloud. The numbers collide, and the contract category that should price them against each other — raw-feed licensing for downstream per-audience rewrite — has not been written. This piece walks through what the contract should specify, why it isn’t there, and who structurally doesn’t want it written.
$0.004
Avg Spotify per-stream
royalty (2025)
royalty (2025)
$0.003
Per-rewrite inference cost
local Mac fleet, open-weight
local Mac fleet, open-weight
15.35%
Phonorecords IV mechanical
streaming rate by 2027
streaming rate by 2027
$3B+
MLC payouts since 2021
(scaffolding scale)
(scaffolding scale)
SPOTIFY $0.004/STREAM·
APPLE MUSIC $0.008/STREAM·
TIDAL $0.01284/STREAM·
YOUTUBE MUSIC ~$0.005-0.007·
PHONORECORDS IV 15.1%→15.35%·
MECHANICAL RATE 12.7¢ (2025)·
1909 COPYRIGHT ACT·
1976 REVISION·
DPRA 1995·
MMA 2018·
MLC $3B PAYOUTS·
TOLLBIT 7000 SITES·
TOLLBIT $24M SERIES A·
730% BOT-PAYWALL GROWTH·
ARC XP 2000+ PROPERTIES·
CHATGPT 87.8% AI-BOT TRAFFIC·
RAW-FEED CONTRACT MISSING·
SPOTIFY $0.004/STREAM·
APPLE MUSIC $0.008/STREAM·
TIDAL $0.01284/STREAM·
YOUTUBE MUSIC ~$0.005-0.007·
PHONORECORDS IV 15.1%→15.35%·
MECHANICAL RATE 12.7¢ (2025)·
1909 COPYRIGHT ACT·
1976 REVISION·
DPRA 1995·
MMA 2018·
MLC $3B PAYOUTS·
TOLLBIT 7000 SITES·
TOLLBIT $24M SERIES A·
730% BOT-PAYWALL GROWTH·
ARC XP 2000+ PROPERTIES·
CHATGPT 87.8% AI-BOT TRAFFIC·
RAW-FEED CONTRACT MISSING·
FIG. 01 — THE THREE LICENSE CATEGORIES
Two contracts written, one missing
The AI-publisher licensing market sorts into three structural categories — and only two are contracted today
CATEGORY A
Training-data
Archive-shaped · One-shot · Fixed term
AP–OpenAI 2023 (archive 1985→)
Reddit–OpenAI 2024
Stack Overflow–OpenAI 2024
Shutterstock multi-deal
Reddit–OpenAI 2024
Stack Overflow–OpenAI 2024
Shutterstock multi-deal
CATEGORY B
Display
Chat-shaped · Attribution-bound · Brand-tier priced
News Corp–OpenAI $250M/5yr
News Corp–Meta $150M/3yr
Axel Springer ~$13M/yr
FT $5–10M/yr · AP–Google
News Corp–Meta $150M/3yr
Axel Springer ~$13M/yr
FT $5–10M/yr · AP–Google
CATEGORY C
Raw-feed-rewrite
Post-wire-shaped · Per-audience derivative-work production
Mistral–AFP (2,300/day, structurally close but priced as display+RAG)
No standard contract.
No standard contract.
No Standard
Contract
Contract
Training-data and display licensing assume the AI is a destination. Raw-feed-for-rewrite assumes the AI is an intermediate layer producing N derivative works for N downstream publication endpoints. That use case has no industry-standard pricing unit, no industry-standard attribution requirement, no industry-standard audit infrastructure. It just happens, unlicensed, in the gap.
FIG. 02 — THE COST COLLISION
Per-stream music royalty vs. per-rewrite inference cost
Both are units of derivative-work production at scale — and they sit in the same numerical neighbourhood
A · Music streaming royalty per stream · 2025
Spotify (avg)
$0.004
Apple Music (avg)
$0.008
Amazon Music
$0.006
YouTube Music Premium
$0.006
Tidal (highest)
$0.01284
Band: $0.003 — $0.013 per unit
B · Per-rewrite LLM inference · 600-word source
Local open-weight (Mac fleet)
$0.003
Cloud commodity (Haiku/4o-mini)
$0.007
Cloud mid-tier
$0.012
Cloud higher-tier
$0.020
50-site fan-out total
< $1
Band: $0.003 — $0.020 per unit
The collision is structural, not coincidental. Both rates are derivative-work production units operating at the same scale-economics — variable cost per piece of content, distributed across a pooled audience. If raw-feed licensing settled at a per-rewrite royalty in the same band ($0.005–$0.02), the wire cooperatives would have a defensible economic floor and the AI side would have a defensible variable-cost line item. Neither party has proposed this publicly.
FIG. 03 — THE 1909 PRECEDENT
The legal scaffolding music has and news doesn’t
117 years of statutory rate-setting, compulsory licensing, and collective collection infrastructure
1908
White-Smith Music Publishing v. Apollo — Supreme Court rules piano rolls aren’t “copies” of sheet music because humans can’t read them. Songwriters lose; mechanical reproduction unregulated.
1909
Copyright Act of 1909 — Congress overrides the Court; creates first compulsory mechanical license at 2¢ per unit. The original statutory rate-setting precedent.
1976
Copyright Act revision — Rate raised from 2¢ to 2.75¢ after 67 years frozen. Section 115 framework retained. Compulsory licensing extended to new media.
1995
Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act — Extends mechanical licensing to digital downloads. Acknowledges new technology forms.
2018
Music Modernization Act — Establishes the Mechanical Licensing Collective. Blanket licensing for digital streaming services. Centralised collection infrastructure.
2023–27
Phonorecords IV (CRB) — Sets all-in mechanical streaming royalty rate at 15.1%→15.35% of platform revenue. Current statutory mechanical rate 12.7¢ per track.
2026
News raw-feed licensing — No statutory rate. No compulsory licensing regime. No central collective. No CRB-equivalent. The contract category exists structurally but has no scaffolding underneath it.
The pattern across 117 years: technology outruns licensing, lawsuit fails to protect rights-holders, Congress intervenes statutorily, rate-setting body resolves per-unit pricing, collective handles administration. News raw-feed licensing is currently at the “technology outruns licensing” step. The intervening steps will, on historical pattern, eventually follow — but they take decades. The Bartz $1.5B settlement and the NYT v. Perplexity complaint are the early lawsuit-failure-to-protect signals.
FIG. 04 — THE TOLLBIT GAP
The closest existing infrastructure stops short of raw-feed
TollBit operates ~7,000 publisher sites with two license types — neither addresses the post-wire category
LICENSE TYPE
USE CASE COVERED
STATUS
Summarization
AI cites or grounds an answer once with a single use of the page. Pricing per 1,000 pages accessed. RPM benchmark.
Contracted
via TollBit
via TollBit
Full Display
AI displays the complete text of an article once within its product. Per-1,000-pages pricing benchmarked against syndication rates.
Contracted
via TollBit
via TollBit
Model Training
Use of the content to train or fine-tune an AI model. TollBit explicitly does not permit either license type to extend to training.
Excluded
by both licenses
by both licenses
Raw-feed-rewrite
AI ingests the source feed and produces N differentiated rewrites for N downstream publication endpoints. The post-wire use case.
Not offered
as a license type
as a license type
TollBit (founded 2023, ~7,000 publisher sites including TIME, Fast Company, Washington Post Arc XP, $24M Lightspeed Series A on top of seed) is the most-built piece of the raw-feed licensing infrastructure: detection, metering, rate-setting per 1,000 pages, payment routing, MCP-server integration. What the platform doesn’t have yet is the license category. Bot-paywall adoption grew 730% Q4 2024 → Q1 2025; ~20% of publishers earn revenue, in the hundreds-to-tens-of-thousands per month range. Necessary infrastructure, insufficient contract category.
FIG. 05 — FIVE CONTRACT SHAPES
What the missing contract could look like
Five plausible structures, scored on near-term feasibility · none currently leading
SH.
CONTRACT SHAPE
PRICING UNIT
NEAR-TERM
A
Per-rewrite royaltyMusic-streaming-mapped, pro-rata pool possible
$0.005–0.02 / rewrite
Medium
B
Per-source-story flat feeModified wire-subscription, simpler administration
Tiered $/story
High
C
Per-endpoint subscriptionExtension of existing AP/Reuters subscription model
$/endpoint/yr
Medium
D
Revenue-share on AI trafficAligns dollars with realised value · audit-heavy
% of attributed rev
Low
E
Statutory compulsory licenseCRB-equivalent for news · 1909-act-shaped
Statutory rate
Low (slow)
Near-term feasibility is not the same as long-term likelihood. The historical pattern (mechanical, broadcast, cable) suggests Shape E — statutory compulsory licensing — is where these gaps eventually settle, but on a 5–15 year timeline. The near-term outcomes (Shape A or B) will set the precedent the statutory regime eventually formalises. Whoever drafts the first major Shape A or B contract has disproportionate influence on what Shape E ends up codifying a decade later.
Per-stream music royalty and per-rewrite inference cost are in the same numerical neighbourhood because both are units of derivative-work production at scale. The contract that should price them against each other does not exist yet.Thorsten Meyer · Raw-Feed Licensing · Post-Wire 02
Implications of the Missing Raw-Feed Contract
The lack of a standardized raw-feed licensing contract creates economic and legal uncertainty, potentially leading to disputes, underpayment, or regulatory intervention. It hampers the development of a fair and transparent licensing ecosystem for AI-generated content, risking future industry fragmentation and legal challenges.Amazon
AI training data licensing contracts
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Historical and Industry Context of Licensing Gaps
Historically, music streaming royalties established a legal framework through the 1909 Copyright Act and subsequent legislation, setting a precedent for derivative work licensing. Today, the AI industry faces a similar structural gap: while training-data and display licensing are contractually settled, raw-feed licensing for downstream rewriting remains undefined. Stakeholders have negotiated deals in other categories, but the missing contract for raw-feed use reflects a broader unresolved tension over fair compensation, attribution, and derivative rights. This situation echoes the early 20th-century legal battles in music, where legislative and regulatory responses eventually shaped the industry’s licensing norms.“The missing contract category for raw-feed licensing is the structural moment the industry is facing, akin to the early days of music streaming regulation.”
— Thorsten Meyer
Amazon
raw-feed licensing software tools
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Unresolved Legal and Economic Challenges
It is not yet clear how the missing contract will be structured, who will lead its creation, or whether industry-wide consensus can be reached. The specific terms—such as pricing units, attribution standards, scope of derivative works, and audit rights—remain under debate, with stakeholders divided on the best approach.
Platform Engineering for Artificial Intelligence: Designing scalable infrastructure, data pipelines, and model lifecycle management for generative AI and agentic protocols (English Edition)
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Next Steps Toward Contract Standardization
Industry stakeholders, regulators, and legal experts are expected to engage in negotiations and possibly legislative actions to define the missing contract. The development of a standardized framework could take months or years, influenced by ongoing legal, economic, and technological developments. Watch for proposals from industry groups and potential regulatory interventions that could formalize raw-feed licensing terms.
Amazon
AI licensing legal templates
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Key Questions
Why does the raw-feed licensing contract matter now?
Because the economic collision between AI inference costs and royalty rates is becoming more pronounced, and without a standard contract, stakeholders face legal uncertainty and potential disputes.
Who are the main parties involved in this licensing gap?
AI labs, publishers, wire cooperatives, and search engines are the primary stakeholders, each with different interests and incentives regarding raw-feed licensing.
What are the risks of not having a standard contract?
Risks include legal disputes, underpayment or overpayment, regulatory intervention, and a fragmented licensing ecosystem that could hinder AI development and fair compensation.
Could existing music royalty laws be adapted for AI raw-feed licensing?
While the numerical parallels exist, adapting music royalty laws would require significant legal reform and consensus among stakeholders, which is currently lacking.
Source: ThorstenMeyerAI.com
