---
id: "question-intra-category-distribution"
type: "open-question"
source_timestamps: ["§ The Music Industry Precedent"]
tags: ["implementation-details", "royalty-distribution"]
related: ["concept-collective-management-organizations", "framework-cmo-compensation", "action-establish-ai-cmos"]
resolutionPath: "Requires the development of specific royalty distribution formulas by the proposed AI CMOs, likely mirroring the complex (and often contested) play-count formulas used by ASCAP and BMI."
sources: ["tail1"]
sourceVaultSlug: "hbr-seg-tail1"
originDay: 1
articleStem: "hbr-tail-109-ai-pay-fair-rates-content"
sourceUrl: "https://hbr.org/2026/06/how-ai-companies-can-pay-fair-rates-for-the-content-they-need"
sourceTitle: "How AI Companies Can Pay Fair Rates for the Content They Need"
---
# How will CMOs distribute funds within broad data categories?

## Open question

[[concept-data-mixture-weights]] can divide the total pool among **broad categories** (e.g., 20% of funds to "quality journalism"), but the authors do not detail how a [[concept-collective-management-organizations|CMO]] would distribute that 20% among **individual publishers or journalists**. By token count? Domain authority? Another metric?

## Possible resolution

Requires developing specific royalty-distribution formulas for AI CMOs, likely mirroring the complex (and often contested) play-count formulas used by [[entity-ascap|ASCAP]] and [[entity-bmi|BMI]]. This is the unresolved tail of [[action-establish-ai-cmos]].