Raw-feed licensing. The contract that doesn’t exist yet.
Up next
Author

📊 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

While training-data and display licensing are established, raw-feed licensing for downstream AI rewriting has no standard contract. This gap affects industry economics and is comparable to music streaming royalties. The issue is currently unresolved due to industry resistance.

Industry experts confirm that a formal, standardized contract for raw-feed licensing used in downstream AI rewriting has yet to be established, despite the existence of licensing frameworks for training data and display rights. This gap has significant implications for the economics of AI-generated content and the legal landscape.

Currently, licensing of training data and display rights is well-established, with contracts in place between AI labs and publishers. However, the third category—raw-feed licensing for downstream rewriting—lacks an industry-standard contract. This absence creates a structural mismatch: the per-rewrite inference costs for language models are comparable to music streaming royalties, yet no legal framework exists to regulate or price this use. Experts note that the missing contract would need to specify key elements such as pricing units, attribution, derivative-work scope, and audit rights. Industry stakeholders, including AI labs, publishers, wire cooperatives, and search engines, have not yet reached consensus, with some resisting formalization due to strategic interests. The situation echoes the early 20th-century legal gaps in music copyright, prior to regulatory intervention.

Raw-Feed Licensing: The Contract That Doesn’t Exist Yet — Thorsten Meyer AI
FEED
● DISPATCH / MAY 2026
THORSTEN MEYER AI · POST-WIRE · § 02
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.
Thorsten Meyer ThorstenMeyerAI.com Munich · Iffeldorf Essay · 3,200 words Post-Wire · 02
$0.004
Avg Spotify per-stream
royalty (2025)
$0.003
Per-rewrite inference cost
local Mac fleet, open-weight
15.35%
Phonorecords IV mechanical
streaming rate by 2027
$3B+
MLC payouts since 2021
(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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Source dossier
  • Piece 1 of this track — The Death of the Identical Paragraph — structural-economics account of the wire’s collapse and the three-category framework this piece extends · thorstenmeyerai.com
  • Spotify royalty calculator — $0.003–0.005/stream avg · Apple Music $0.006–0.01 · YouTube ~$0.001 · unchainedmusic.io
  • Mechanical royalties & Phonorecords IV — Royalty Exchange · 15.1%→15.35% all-in streaming rate · MLC $3B+ payouts since 2021 · 12.7¢ mechanical 2025 · royaltyexchange.com
  • 17 U.S. Code § 115 — Cornell LII · the statutory text raw-feed licensing currently lacks an equivalent of · law.cornell.edu
  • Mechanical license history — Wikipedia · 1909 → 1976 → MMA 2018; 2¢ → 2.75¢ → 9.1¢ → 12.7¢ · en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_license
  • TollBit Publisher Marketplace docs — Summarization + Full Display, per-1,000-pages, publisher keeps 100%, transaction fee on top · docs.tollbit.com
  • TollBit adoption data — Windows Club / Media Copilot · ~7,000 sites · 20% earning · $24M Lightspeed Series A · 730% Q4’24→Q1’25 bot-paywall growth · reviews.thewindowsclub.com
  • AP Member Choice pricing structure — Journalism.co.uk archive · AP Breaking News + AP Complete tiers, circulation-indexed since 1984 · journalism.co.uk
  • Thomson Reuters pricing analysis 2026 — Vendr · opaque negotiated contracts, named-user, add-ons 20–50% over base · vendr.com
  • Publisher AI licensing tracker — PR News · ~$2B cumulative publisher-side deal volume · everything-pr.com
  • Digiday 2025 AI-deals timeline · chronology of OpenAI/Google/Meta/Mistral deals · digiday.com
Colophon

Set in Source Serif 4 (display, italic accent), EB Garamond (body), IBM Plex Sans (UI labels), IBM Plex Mono (mastheads, ticker, stamps). Paper-cool gray-cream #e6e7e4.

Chromatic register: empirical-clay dominant (forensic on contract economics), structural-slate supporting (institutional / wire-agency framing), transition-bronze for the historical-precedent and forward-shape work, labor-rose for the gap and the cooperative-displacement implications, alternative-sage for the forward-feasibility scoring.

Key frame:

RAW-FEED CONTRACT GAP DISPLAY LICENSING TRAINING-DATA 1909 PRECEDENT PHONORECORDS IV PER-REWRITE ROYALTY COMPULSORY LICENSE COOPERATIVE FUNDING COST COLLISION

Why the Missing Contract Matters for AI Industry Economics

The absence of a standardized raw-feed licensing contract hampers the development of fair and predictable revenue models for downstream AI rewriting. Without clear legal and pricing frameworks, stakeholders risk mispricing, legal disputes, and market inefficiencies. This gap could slow innovation, affect content creators’ compensation, and influence regulatory responses. The situation also underscores a broader challenge: aligning legal structures with the rapid evolution of AI content generation, similar to historic moments in copyright law, like the early 1900s music cases. Resolving this issue is critical for establishing sustainable, transparent licensing practices in the AI ecosystem.
Japanese Law Form Template 120/A collection of civil trust contract example formats made by lawyers strong in trust

Japanese Law Form Template 120/A collection of civil trust contract example formats made by lawyers strong in trust

Introduce an example contract with five effects

AmazonView Latest Price

As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.

As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.

Historical and Industry Context of Licensing Gaps

Training-data licensing and display licensing are well-established, with numerous contracts in place, such as OpenAI’s archive deals and news publisher agreements. Conversely, raw-feed licensing for downstream rewriting remains unregulated, despite the similarity in economic scale to music streaming royalties, which are governed by a comprehensive legal framework since the early 20th century. The missing contract category is a structural gap that has persisted as stakeholders prefer to maintain the status quo, avoiding formal agreements that could alter power balances. Industry resistance and strategic interests have prevented the development of a standardized contract, echoing historical precedents where legal gaps eventually prompted regulatory action.

“The missing contract category is the structural moment where legal frameworks lag behind technological capabilities, risking market instability.”

— Thorsten Meyer

Amazon

raw feed licensing software

AmazonView Latest Price

As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.

As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.

Unresolved Stakeholder Positions and Future Regulations

It remains unclear when or how a standardized raw-feed licensing contract will be developed and adopted. Stakeholders, including AI labs, publishers, and search engines, continue to resist formal agreements that could alter existing power dynamics. Regulatory intervention appears likely but has not yet materialized, and the precise legal and economic frameworks that will eventually emerge are still uncertain.

Amazon

AI content licensing management tools

AmazonView Latest Price

As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.

As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.

Next Steps Toward Establishing Raw-Feed Licensing Standards

Industry stakeholders are expected to engage in negotiations or face potential regulatory pressures to formalize a licensing framework. Legal and economic analyses are ongoing to define key contract elements such as pricing units, attribution, and derivative scope. Watch for any emerging industry standards, regulatory proposals, or major contractual deals that could set precedents for this missing category. The resolution of this gap will shape the future of AI content economics and legal compliance.

Intellectual Property Protect: Business-Aligned IP Strategy

Intellectual Property Protect: Business-Aligned IP Strategy

AmazonView Latest Price

As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.

As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.

Key Questions

Why does raw-feed licensing lack a standard contract?

Stakeholders prefer to maintain strategic advantages and avoid formal agreements that could introduce regulatory or economic risks, leading to a reluctance to establish a standard contract.

How does the missing contract affect AI content economics?

It creates uncertainty around fair pricing, attribution, and legal rights, potentially leading to mispricing, disputes, and an uneven playing field among industry players.

Could regulation force the creation of a standard contract?

Yes, regulatory pressure could incentivize or compel stakeholders to develop formal licensing frameworks, similar to how music copyright law evolved in the early 20th century.

What are the risks if the gap remains unaddressed?

Persistent legal gray areas, potential lawsuits, market inefficiencies, and delayed innovation in AI-generated content are key risks of not resolving the licensing gap.

When might we see a resolution or standardization?

It is uncertain; progress depends on industry negotiations, regulatory developments, and economic pressures that could accelerate formalization in the coming months or years.

Source: ThorstenMeyerAI.com

Nothing in this article is financial or investment advice. Cryptocurrency and precious-metal investments carry significant risk — do your own research and consider a licensed advisor.
You May Also Like
jupiter dex buybacks strategy

Solana’s Jupiter DEX: Buybacks and Moonshot Acquisition

From strategic buybacks to a pivotal acquisition, Jupiter DEX is reshaping the DeFi landscape—what could this mean for investors?
xfinity customer excitement grows

Xfinity Updates: Why Customers Are Buzzing

Facing rising prices and privacy concerns, Xfinity customers are left wondering: what’s next for their cable service? The answers may surprise you.
Cybersecurity operations signal monitor: A backdoor in a LinkedIn job offer

Cybersecurity operations signal monitor: A backdoor in a LinkedIn job offer

Security researchers detect a backdoor in a LinkedIn job offer, raising concerns about targeted cyber threats and corporate security vulnerabilities.
The Trojan Horse in Your Living Room: How Smart TVs Became the World’s Most Sophisticated Ad Surveillance Network

The Trojan Horse in Your Living Room: How Smart TVs Became the World’s Most Sophisticated Ad Surveillance Network

Smart TVs collect detailed screen and audio data via Automatic Content Recognition, selling insights to advertisers. Regulatory actions are ongoing in 2026.