📊 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
A critical licensing category for raw-feed content used in AI rewriting remains undefined, with no industry-standard contract. This gap echoes historic legal moments and impacts AI content economics.
Industry experts confirm that a standardized contract for raw-feed licensing, essential for downstream AI rewriting, has not yet been established, despite the sector’s rapid growth and economic significance.
Currently, licensing for training data and display rights is well-defined and contracted within the industry. However, the third category—raw-feed licensing for downstream per-audience rewrite—lacks a formal, industry-standard contract. This absence creates a legal and economic gap, as the unit economics of AI rewriting (costs around $0.003 to $0.02 per rewrite) collide with established music-streaming royalty frameworks, which have been in place since the early 20th century. Experts attribute this gap to structural reluctance from parties such as AI labs, publishers, wire cooperatives, and search engines, who prefer to maintain an equilibrium that favors their interests. The missing contract category is critical because it would define pricing, attribution, derivative scope, and other key terms necessary for fair and sustainable licensing in the post-wire era.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 absence of a standardized raw-feed licensing contract hampers the development of fair revenue models for news publishers and AI companies. It risks perpetuating a legal grey area, potentially leading to disputes, under-compensation, and stalled innovation. This gap echoes historic moments in copyright law, such as the 1909 Act, and could influence future regulation and industry standards, shaping how AI-generated content is licensed and monetized.Amazon
AI raw feed licensing contracts
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Historical and Industry Context of Licensing Gaps
While licensing for training data and display rights is well-established—exemplified by deals like OpenAI’s archive licenses and News Corp’s display agreements—the third category, raw-feed licensing for downstream rewriting, remains unregulated. This gap mirrors early 20th-century legal struggles in music copyright, where the industry lacked a clear framework for derivative works. The current situation arises from structural reluctance among key industry players to formalize this category, preferring informal arrangements that favor their strategic interests. The legal and economic collision between AI inference costs and traditional royalty frameworks underscores the need for a new contractual approach, similar to historic copyright reforms.“The missing contract for raw-feed licensing is the structural hinge that will define the future economics of AI-generated content.”
— Thorsten Meyer
Commercial Contracts : A Practical Guide to Deals, Contracts, Agreements and Promises
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Unresolved Legal and Industry Stances
It is not yet clear which party or combination of parties will drive the creation of a standardized raw-feed licensing contract. While statutory and regulatory pressures are mounting, the specific terms, pricing models, and scope of such a contract remain under debate. The reluctance of AI labs, publishers, and search engines to formalize this category suggests ongoing resistance, but the eventual shape of the contractual framework is still uncertain.
Amazon
raw feed licensing software tools
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As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.
Next Steps Toward Contractual Clarity
Regulatory bodies and industry coalitions are expected to begin formal discussions or hearings aimed at establishing a standard for raw-feed licensing. Legal scholars and industry stakeholders anticipate that statutory pressure, combined with economic necessity, will eventually lead to the drafting of a formal contract. Key milestones include potential legislative proposals, industry consensus-building, and pilot agreements that could set precedents for broader adoption.
The Business of Media Distribution: Monetizing Film and TV Content in the AI Era (American Film Market Presents)
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Key Questions
Why does the lack of a raw-feed licensing contract matter?
The absence of a standardized contract creates legal ambiguity, hampers fair compensation, and could slow innovation in AI-generated content, affecting publishers, AI companies, and consumers.
What are the main obstacles to creating this contract?
Parties involved prefer informal arrangements that favor their strategic interests, and there is resistance to formalizing terms that could reduce their bargaining power or profit margins.
How does this gap compare to historical copyright issues?
This situation mirrors early 20th-century copyright struggles, such as the White-Smith case, where legal frameworks lagged behind technological advances, leading to uncertainty and disputes.
When might a standardized raw-feed license be established?
Industry analysts expect that regulatory pressure and economic imperatives will accelerate formalization within the next 1-3 years, but no definitive timeline is set.
Source: ThorstenMeyerAI.com
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