When Spotify and the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) announced an “opt-in” audiovisual licensing portal this month, the headlines made it sound like a breakthrough for independent songwriters. In reality, what we have is a bare-bones description of a direct-license program whose key financial and legal terms remain hidden from view.

Here’s what we do know. The portal (likely an HFA extravaganza) opened on November 11, 2025 and will accept opt-ins through December 19. Participation is limited to NMPA member publishers, and the license covers U.S. audiovisual uses—that is, music videos and other visual elements Spotify is beginning to integrate into its platform. It smacks of the side deal on pending and unmatched tied to frozen mechanicals that the CRB rejected in Phonorecords IV.

Indeed, one explanation for the gun decked opt-in period is in The Desk:

Spotify is preparing to launch music videos in the United States, expanding a feature that has been in beta in nearly 100 international markets since January, the company quietly confirmed this week.

The new feature, rolling out to Spotify subscribers in the next few weeks, will allow streaming audio fans to watch official music videos directly within the Spotify app, setting the streaming platform in more direct competition with YouTube.

The company calls it a way for indies to share in “higher royalties,” but no rates, formulas, or minimum guarantees have been disclosed so it’s hard to know “higher” compared to what? Yes, it’s true that if you evan made another 1¢ that would be “higher”—and in streaming-speak, 1¢ is big progress, but remember that it’s still a positive number to the right of the decimal place preceded by a zero.

The deal sits alongside Spotify’s major-publisher audiovisual agreements, which are widely believed to include large advances and broader protections—none of which apply here. There’s also an open question of whether the majors granted public performance rights as an end run around PROs, which I fully expect. There’s no MFN clause, no public schedule, and no audit details. I would be surprised if Spotify agreed to be audited by an independent publisher and even more surprised if the announced publishers with direct deals did not have an audit right. So there’s one way we can be pretty confident this is not anything like MFN terms aside from the scrupulous avoidance of mentioning the dirty word: MONEY.

But it would be a good guess that Spotify is interested in this arrangement because it fills out some of the most likely plaintiffs to protect them when they launch their product with unlicensed songs or user generated videos and no Content ID clone (which is kind of Schrödinger’s UGC—not expressly included in the deal but not expressly excluded either, and would be competitive with TikTok or Spotify nemesis YouTube).

But here’s what else we don’t know: how much these rights are worth, how royalties will be calculated, whether they include public performances to block PRO licensing of Spotify A/V (and which could trigger MFN problems with YouTube or other UGC services) and whether the December 19 date marks the end of onboarding—or the eve of a US product launch. And perhaps most importantly, how is it that NMPA is involved, the NMPA which has trashed Spotify far and wide over finally taking advantage of the bundling rates negotiated in the CRB (indeed in some version since 2009). Shocked, shocked that there’s bundling going on.

It’s one thing to talk about audiovisual covering “official” music videos and expressly stating that the same license will not be used to cover UGC no way, no how. Given Spotify’s repeated hints that full-length music videos are coming to the U.S. and the test marketing reported by The Desk and disclosed by Spotify itself, the absolute silence of the public statements about royalty rates and UGC, as well as the rush to get publishers to opt in before year-end all suggest that rollout is imminent. Until Spotify and the NMPA release the actual deal terms, though, we’re all flying blind—sheep being herded toward an agreement cliff we can’t fully see.

[A version of this post first appeared on MusicTechPolicy]