Spotify has agreed to do a better job at allowing music publishers and songwriters to claim and receive royalties from the streaming service. However there's a caveat: to strike the settlement deal with Spotify, copyright holders cannot make an infringement claim against the company.

In recent months, Spotify has faced a number of lawsuits from musicians who have challenged the Sweden-based firm's alleged failure to licence artists' works before making them available for streaming.

On Thursday, US trade body the National Music Publishers' Association said that the settlement deal it had struck with Spotify represented a "landmark industry agreement."

The NMPA said that Spotify had agreed to establish a "large bonus compensation fund" for unmatched royalties—where artists behind some of the music streamed on the service have not been identified prior to their work being made available on Spotify. The group added:

Not only does today’s groundbreaking agreement distribute royalties to writers, it also improves processes for identifying and compensating writers for their work and establishes a better database for future payments. The deal will allow copyright owners to identify their works and receive the money Spotify has set aside for the past usage of unmatched works. It will allow the entire industry to benefit by filling in the gaps in ownership information, which help to ensure that royalties are promptly paid to their rightful owners in the future. Any royalties associated with works that remain unmatched after each claiming period will be distributed to publishers and songwriters who participate in the settlement, but the agreement will not affect the royalties owed to any publisher or writer who does not choose to participate.

"We have always been committed to paying songwriters and publishers every penny," said Spotify's public policy boss, Jonathan Price. "We look forward to further collaboration with them as we build a comprehensive publishing administration system.”

The NMPA's chief, David Israelite, added that the US lobby group would "continue to push digital services to properly pay for the musical works that fuel their businesses and after much work together." In other words, there's more work to do to satisfy copyright holders.

Indeed, Israelite told The Wall Street Journal that the settlement deal was "only a temporary solution."

Late last year, Spotify said it would overhaul its publishing administration system to try to tackle complex royalty payments, particularly in the US.