Ladies and gentlemen, hello and welcome to the Deezer 2022 Full Year Results. Please note that this call is being recorded and for the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask question at the end of the call. This can be done by pressing Star one on your telephone keypad to register your question. If you require assistance at any point, please press Star zero and you will be connected to an operator. I will now hand of your over to your host, Mr. Jerónimo Folgueira, CEO, and Mr. Stéphane Rougeot, Deputy CEO and CFO, to begin today's conference. Thank you.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining Deezer's Full Year 2022 Results Conference Call. I am Jerónimo, CEO of Deezer, and I'm joined today by Stéphane, Deputy CEO and CFO. I will start with some key highlights of last year, then Stéphane will go into more details about our 2022 Financial Performance. After that, we will discuss the 2023 priorities and outlook and conclude with a Q&A session. Let me start with last year key highlights on slide three. 2022 was a great year for Deezer. Since our listing, we have been fully focused on executing our strategy, and we were able to deliver very positive results. Our B2C business is now in a solid place with LTV/SAC up 23% year-on-year.
We continue the profitable expansion of our B2B business as reflected by improvement of adjusted gross margin up 0.9 points year-over-year to 20.6%. ARPU is growing double digits on both segments, driven by the successful rollout of price increases and focus on attractive markets. This led to a very strong 13% growth in our revenues year-over-year with all segments and geographies growing double digits. We're also committed to improving the company's profitability, which resulted in an EUR 18 million reduction in adjusted EBITDA loss before additional investments of EUR 9 million in New Verticals on Driift. The company now also benefits from a strong balance sheet with a cash position of EUR 114 million at the end of 2022, allowing the group to execute its business plan until break-even. Moving on to slide four.
Deezer is now in a great place to deliver further profitable growth. We have built a unique product vision that will drive more differentiation and monetization opportunities in the future. With several new product features already launched in 2022. B2B expansion will continue across new geographies and new segments as strengthened by new deals signed in the US and Italy. After a year of development and investment into New Verticals, we were able to soft launch our first new product in December, Zen, a comprehensive wellbeing app with a full commercial launch plan for Q2 of this year and a clear goal to become profitable during the second half of 2023. Finally, we continue to dedicate to building a sustainable and inclusive business with the help of a renewed board, now counting five different nationalities and four gender equities. Moving on to slide five.
I am very pleased with the evolution of our B2C business in 2022. Price increases were implemented along the year and close to 95% of our subscriber base are now on new prices. This is a great achievement for the company, showing the resilience of our subscribers, especially knowing that price increases had no impact on churn. We have also significantly reduced unprofitable spend in non-core markets. France, Brazil, and Germany represent 84% of our B2C marketing spend in 2022, up from 66% in 2021. Marketing was also much more efficient and effective in 2022, helped by the efforts we made in refreshing our brand positioning with LTV/SAC up 23%. Moving on to slide six. As the home of music, Deezer drives differentiation through creation and curation of music experiences.
We launched a new series of Deezer Sessions filmed in the state-of-the-art studio of our Paris headquarters. One of the recent sessions featuring pop superstar Aya Nakamura, reached over 250,000 views on YouTube after just one day. We were also able to launch innovative formats such as Match, featuring Angèle and Rosalía, as well as other exclusive music productions. We have also held numerous live performances with artists such as SCH, Gazo, or Dadju, creating incredible and privileged fan experiences in and outside of the app. In line with our strong track record in discovering upcoming superstars, we continue to endorse new artists as part of our Deezer Next and Deezer Focus programs. Moving on to B2B on slide seven. In 2022, we made great progress expanding our B2B business in large and attractive markets in line with our new strategic focus.
We've strengthened our positioning in our home market through new partnerships with Cdiscount and with telecom, two leaders in their respective segments. Deezer also powered the launch of RTL+ Musik in Germany, integrating the music catalog and key product features into the app. Our teams and RTL have worked closely together to ensure a seamless integration to give RTL subscriber access to co-branded music products. In 2022, also marks our first step into the Italian market through a partnership with DAZN, bringing together the passion for music and sports and creating a strong growth opportunities for the company in a whole new market. B2B expansion is also supported by the company's tailored value proposition in music, streaming and beyond. For instance, our teams developed very efficient toolkits, allowing partners to integrate the Deezer product into their own platform in a matter of weeks.
Partners will also be able to benefit from the product evolution towards music experiences, the launch of New Verticals and other opportunities to come. Continued active discussions during the year across other attractive markets are also beginning to bear fruit, as demonstrated by the signing of a groundbreaking partnership with Sonos in the U.S. in early 2023. Moving on to slide eight. We're thrilled to enter a long-term partnership with Sonos to power content for Sonos Radio worldwide, a deal we announced just a few days ago. Sonos is the world's leading sound experience company with a highly recognized brand and a daily presence in 40 million households worldwide.
This is our first major commercial partnership with a U.S. company. It will provide us the opportunity to grow Deezer business and presence in the United States as a flagship market, but also in the U.K., Canada, Germany, France and many other countries. Starting from April 20th, Deezer will power Sonos music services, including Sonos Radio and Sonos Radio HD in 16 countries around the world. More importantly, in the next five years, we will work with Sonos to develop and expand the Sonos music experience. I am very excited about this deal that perfectly reflects our B2B strategy and want to thank all the teams that made it happen. Moving on to slide nine. We are proud to say that Deezer strategy is already paying off.
B2C revenues grew by more than 12% year-over-year in 2022, reflecting a strong increase in ARPU and continued growth of subscribers based in France. After two years of decline, the B2B segment also returned to growth and reached double digits at +10% year-on-year, driven by strong ARPU increases and the start of new deals. On top of strong growth, we were also able to improve the profitability of both segments. The group saw a strong increase in adjusted gross profit after marketing of EUR 31 million. Gross margin after marketing improved by seven points. We're very happy with the progress we have made in 2022 and believe the company is in great position to continue to deliver profitable growth in 2023 and beyond. Moving on to slide 10.
Ever since our launch, we have built a state-of-the-art platform focusing on three pillars: listen, collect, and discover. We were the first platform to integrate synchronized lyrics back in 2014, took this to a whole new level in 2022 as the only platform to offer in-app lyrics translations. This feature boosted the use of lyrics by 25%, enhancing the listening experience and growing engagement. We also took our unique in-app song identifier, SongCatcher, to new heights by adding the ability to hum songs. Music collection is key for engagement, humming increased the penetration rate of SongCatcher among our users by 12%, which we are very pleased about. Allowing users to discover new musical horizons through our tailored recommendation has always been a key strength of Deezer.
In 2022, we enriched music discovery with track mixes, which is already used by 2.5 million users per week, proposing refined mixes of track inspired by song we know our users love. Now, the second part of 2022 has marked an evolution towards our new product vision with new in-app experiences. 170,000 unique viewers could stream Jul's historic concert at the Velodrome Stadium in Marseille, about three times the sold-out physical attendance. We also launched Music Quiz, enabling our users to play with music and share experiences. More than 10 million games have been played since launch. This is just the start. The future Deezer will bring whole new experiences for users and artists, driving new sources of monetization.
It will enable our users to live music experiences together and will enable artists to monetize their content and connect directly with their fan base. Moving on to slide 11. We're also very happy to announce the launch of Deezer Tech Services, a suite of standard and customizable tools developed internally and now accessible through APIs to external clients. Leveraging more than 10 years of leading research and development capabilities, Deezer is now unlocking a new monetization source with audio tech capabilities across three areas. AI for audio with a splitter to separate audio sources and unsync, to synchronize text and audio. Augmented cataloging with a radar technology to automatically identify any song and augmented metadata to enrich audio with advanced information on files. Finally, recommendations through identification of specific user journeys and clusters, our signature Flow wheel as well as automated playlists. Moving on to slide 12.
2022 also marked the launch of a brand new product as part of a new vertical strategy, the Zen by Deezer app. Zen is the first comprehensive mind and body experience featuring exclusive content on sleep, relaxation, personal development, yoga, nutrition and fitness. In less than a year, our team built the largest catalog of proprietary wellbeing audio and video content in France with the help of more than 50 well-known and recognized experts. Allowing a soft launch of the product in December, Zen will have a full commercial launch in Q2 2023. Zen is our first step into new vertical strategy, accelerating Deezer's path to profitability through attractive economics and high margins. After incurring one-off content production cost in 2022. These are now fully owned the content and will be able to sell the product with limited marketing investment, thanks to cross-sell and B2B distribution.
We expect to start generating small profits from Zen in the second half of 2023. We're very confident in our ability to scale Zen in a very large and attractive market that is expected to reach over $20 billion by 2029. Finally, moving on to slide 13. We wanting to reiterate that Deezer is committed to building a sustainable and inclusive business with the help of a very strong board. Deezer has the privilege to have highly skilled and diverse members in its board, with complementary expertise across multiple sectors such as music, media, and finance. In January 2023, Iris Knobloch became Chairwoman of the board, replacing Guillaume d'Hauteville, who was appointed Vice Chairman. We have recently also welcomed three new directors to strengthen our governance, Ingrid Bojner, Mark Simonian, and Stu Bergen.
I am personally very proud to have a woman leading the company and 50% female representation across the board. The company also relies on four strong ESG pillars, leveraging the positive impact of music on communities, promoting well-being, diversity, and inclusion as a French tech employer while building an environmentally friendly business. We want to make Deezer the most passionate and inclusive tech French employer, where every day is an opportunity to grow and make an impact. Now I will pass it on to Stéphane for the financial section.
Yes, thank you, Jeronimo, and hi, everyone. Now moving to slide 15. As you can see here, we posted double-digit revenue growth in 2022 at +12.8% compared to 2021. We are very happy that this performance was driven by all segments and all geographies. As you can see on the left, our B2C revenues grew by more than 12% year-on-year. This is largely due to a significant increase in B2C ARPU, which grew 13.7% compared to 2021. That reflects, of course, the impact of the price increases, but also the group new focus on key markets with a higher ARPU.
We also benefited from the continued growth of our B2C subscriber base in France, which largely upset the decline recorded in the rest of the world, which is in line with our new strategy. After two years of decline, the B2B segment returned to growth at +10.4% year-on-year, and that was mainly due to the good performance of recent B2B deals in France and in Brazil, and also the first contribution from our RTL partnership that was launched in Q3 2022. We also recorded a sharp increase of our B2B ARPU, which grew almost 12% year-on-year, driven by improved overall mix with our partners as well as price increases. Looking at it by geography on the right-hand side, as I mentioned, our performance in France was particularly strong with a growth of 12.6%.
This reflected the increase in our B2C subscriber base, which grew 8.1% to reach 3.5 million subscribers at the end of December 2022, and we added around 100,000 subscribers in both Q3 and Q4. We also benefited in France from a higher B2C ARPU on the back of the price increases implemented since the beginning of 2022. In the rest of the world, revenues grew 13.1% year-on-year, benefiting from the good performance of recently launched B2B partnerships in Brazil and in Europe. In B2C, the strong improvement in ARPU more than offset the decline in our subscriber base due to our new strategy to focus our business on key selected markets, as well as the impact of the exit from Russia in Q1.
Taking a quick look at Q4, we reported a small sequential growth in our B2C subscriber base compared to the end of Q3 at +0.4%. That reflects the continued B2C subscriber growth in France, which more than offset a small decrease in the rest of the world. In B2B, our subscriber base in Q4 was slightly lower compared to the end of Q3, and that led to an overall small decline in our overall subscriber base. Finally, on the ARPU side, we further improved the ARPU in Q4 compared to Q3, with increases both in B2C and in B2B. Moving now to slide 16 and looking at the adjusted gross profit, it amounted to EUR 98 million in full year 2022, and this is an increase of 16.5% compared to 2021.
In B2C, our adjusted gross profit was up 8.5% year-on-year as the strong revenue growth was partly offset by the increase in publishing rates. This led to a slightly lower B2C adjusted gross margin at 24.1% in 2022, which compares to 24.9% in 2021. In B2B, the adjusted gross profit increased by 15.5% year-on-year as a result of the good revenue growth and also a more favorable customer mix. The adjusted gross margin for the B2B segment increased by 90 basis points from 19.7% in 2021 to 20.6% in 2022.
Lastly, as you can see on the bottom of the chart, the other segment recorded an improved adjusted gross profit, benefiting from the free offer shutdown in long-tail countries and also some one-off revenues from a hardware company partnership. That was partially offset by the investment that we've made into new activities that had some impact on our cost. Finally, and as importantly, we saw a sequential improvement of our adjusted gross profit in H2 compared to H1, with an increase of 200 basis points. We are quite happy to see a sequential increase in our gross profit across all our segments. We improved the gross profit in B2C by 0.4 points in H2 compared to H1. In B2B, it increased by 0.1 point. It was an even larger increase in other.
Moving to slide 17 and taking a look at the adjusted gross profit after marketing expenses. We are very happy to see the very strong increase that we had in adjusted gross profit after marketing cost. It was almost multiplied by four at EUR 41 million in 2022 compared to slightly over EUR 10 million in 2021. This sharp improvement came from both the increase in gross profit that was also combined with our B2C marketing efficiencies. The group, in line with the strategy, decided to refocus its B2C marketing spend on its core markets, and that led to a significant reduction of our marketing spend in non-core market. Our marketing expenses were down by approximately EUR 17 million compared to 2022.
Accordingly, the adjusted gross margin after marketing cost improved from 2.7% in 2021 to 9.2% in 2022. Moving on to slide 18. Our fixed cost base was impacted by several one-off as well as some additional expenses related to New Verticals and the consolidation of Driift. The base of comparison in 2021 was particularly low as we had lower than usual travel and headquarter costs in the COVID context, and we estimate that amount was around EUR 3.2 million. In 2022, our staff and G&A expenses were negatively impacted by additional expenses for New Verticals and the consolidation of Driift for an amount of EUR 7.6 million, as well as some one-off expenses for approximately EUR 5 million, which are not expected to happen again in 2023.
When you look at it on a like-for-like basis, our staff and G&A expenses increased by EUR 6.3 million in 2022, which is an 8% decrease, a slower pace compared to our revenue growth. Moving now to slide 19 and looking at our adjusted EBITDA. It amounted to -EUR 55.7 million in 2022, and that means an improvement of EUR 8.9 million compared to 2021, before the additional expenses for New Verticals and Driift, which impacted our P&L for a negative amount of EUR 9.4 million. As you can see on the bridge, the year-on-year change in adjusted EBITDA reflected first the positive impact of our strong top-line growth, combined with the improvement in our adjusted gross margin. Overall, that generated an increase of close to EUR 16 million.
This was combined with the decrease of our marketing expenses by EUR 17 million, which is a result of our strategy to focus on key selected markets. We also had some higher staff and G&A costs as per the previous page, including some one-off items for an amount estimated at EUR 5 million. Finally, as mentioned earlier, we incurred additional costs for an amount of EUR 9.4 million related to the development of New Verticals and the consolidation of Driift, which we did not have, of course, in 2021. When you exclude the additional expenses related to New Verticals and Driift, the adjusted EBITDA improved by approximately EUR 18 million compared to 2021. Finally, moving to slide 20.
Our cash position amounted to EUR 114 million at the end of December 2022, up from EUR 35 million at the end of 2021. This was primarily driven by the fund that we raised as part of our combination with I2PO in July. In 2022, as you can see here, we improved our free cash flow with a cash consumption of EUR 43.6 million during the year, which compares to minus EUR 47.5 million in 2021. This was largely driven by the improvement in our profitability. I will now turn the call over to Jerónimo to discuss 2023 priorities and outlook.
As a conclusion on slide 22, we're very happy with the performance we achieved in 2022. With a highly competitive product and a clear strategic focus, we have made great progress and delivered strong growth and significant improvements on profitability. We will continue to execute our profitable growth strategy in 2023 based on the following pillars. One, new feature development in the product to fuel differentiation and further monetization. Two, the acceleration of profitable B2B expansion on the back of recently announced partnerships such as Sonos in the US, RTL in Germany, and Dassault in Italy. Three, ramp up of New Verticals to reach breakeven as of H2 and drive profitability improvements. Four, ensure strict management of cost base to keep staff and G&A expenses flat year-on-year.
We expect double-digit revenue growth in excess of 10% in 2023 compared to 2022. Well, we expect a slower growth in Q1 and Q2 as the benefit from price increases made a year ago start phasing out. We expect growth to accelerate again as of Q3, supported by the ramp up of the new B2B deals we have recently announced, as well as when we start generating revenues from SEND. We also expect a further significant reduction in adjusted EBITDA loss in 2022 compared to 2023. Moving on to slide 23. We're also pleased to confirm our long-term outlook. Deezer is on a path to generate positive free cash flow in 2024 and achieve a positive adjusted EBITDA in 2025, while delivering double-digit annual revenue growth over that period.
This concludes today's presentation and Stéphane and I will be pleased now to respond to your questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press Star one on your telephone keypad. To redraw your question, please press Star two. The first question comes from the line of Christophe Cherblanc calling from Société Générale. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I had several. I would start with 2. First one is on working capital. You had an inflow again in 2022. I do understand that there was a catch up in delayed supplier payments in H2. Can you confirm that was the case? More important, in the long run, you have a very favorable working capital position vis-a-vis the suppliers. Do you expect that to be sustainable? If you benchmark the level of working capital versus Spotify, for instance, there is a big gap. I was a bit curious as to what you were including in your long term assumption. The second point was on adjusted gross profit.
The gap between adjusted gross profit and gross profit is seems to be related to unused minimum guarantee or unmet minimum guarantee commitment. How should we think about this in 2023, 2024, 2025? Is the gap going to narrow because the revenues are going to increase? In the medium term, when you renew the contract, would you expect the minimum guarantee to stay flat, or would you expect them to go up again in the next negotiation cycle? Thank you.
Yes, Christophe. On your question on working capital, indeed, we had a positive inflows in 2022, which is really our retailer model, where we get paid very quickly by the users. Then of course, the payment to the right owner takes a bit more time. This is really a structural criteria in our model. You're right between H1 and H2, there is a difference because as we have mentioned in H1, we delayed some of the payments to the major in the context of the transaction until the transaction was completed. Of course, we had to pay those amounts and there was a catch up effect, which we did at the beginning of H2 in July. From that standpoint, there is a shift between H1 and H2.
Overall, what we see is pretty much the same level of working capital that we have seen in the previous periods. To your question, whether we believe we can continue to enjoy that very favorable working cap structure, and is it sustainable? The answer is yes. This is really structural to our business. We may have some differences with Spotify, but fundamentally, we are a retailer who gets paid very quickly by the users and pay takes a bit more time to pay and to get all the payments to the right owners, whether it's on the recording side or on the publishing side. I think we have indicated already that in general, the percentage is around 30%.
When we grow by EUR 100, we generate a positive working cap variation of around EUR 30. That's the average. It can be a little bit from one period to the other, but we've seen that for many, many years, and we don't expect that to change in a material way. It could change a little bit, but nothing material. To your question on adjusted gross profit. You're right. There is a gap between gross profit and adjusted gross profit. By the way, it's not just the unused minimum guarantee. The biggest part of that gap is what we call content for equity.
As part of the deals that we have done, three years ago with the labels, there was an equity part of it, and we have to record that equity part also in our PNL, although it's non-cash. That's what we put in adjusted. Now, those contracts are in place until the very beginning of 2024. Let's say for another year. As part of the discussion that we will have with the majors in 2023, our intention is to avoid moving forward minimum guarantees and to move away from that model, and to go into other type of contractual terms, and more classical contractual terms.
We should expect as of 2024 that the gap between adjusted and not adjusted when it relates to royalties become very limited if not zero.
Okay. Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Silvia Cuneo calling from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Apologies if maybe the questions have been asked already, but I just wanted to ask two things. First, on the B2B business, you continue to announce several partnerships more recently with Sonos in the U.S. and DAZN in Italy. Can you please share some thoughts about what is factored in your 2023 guidance in terms of B2B subscribers growth? Secondly, regarding ARPU growth in 2022 has been pretty impressive thanks to the price increases. Can you please tell us about your view on the potential to further raise prices and what drop through to gross margin this could have? You were partly answering the previous question about potential changes in revenue models. Just following up to that. Thank you.
Let me take the first question on B2B and recently announced partnerships. Partnerships, when we sign them, they always take a little bit of time to start generating revenues, and it really depends on the model. If you take Sonos as an example, we expect to start to operate the service, Sonos Radio, as of the months of April. In the course of Q2, we'll start generating top line, and then the full impact will be in Q3, and then we expect to be able to grow and expand it. This is a five-year agreement, so of course, the full impact will progressively ramp up in 2024 and 2025. We'll start getting some revenues as of the Q2.
For DAZN in Italy, it of course it's a, it's a, it's the beginning of what we are doing with DAZN, so it takes a bit of time to ramp up the subscriber base. To your question, all these partnerships always take a little bit of time, and there is a lag between the moment where we announce and sign, the moment where we launch, and the moment where we start to see a material impact, whether on the sub base or on the revenues. That, that lag can be a few months, or anything between three to six months. That's why when you look at 2023, we expect that the acceleration of growth, which will be largely driven by B2B, will really come into the numbers more in Q3 and even more in Q4. That's how we view it.
Of course, we have other discussion going on. As we strike and announce other deals, that will contribute to the further acceleration of revenues from B2B. By the way, your point was also on subscriber, and it's the same on subscriber. We'll start to see also increasing subscribers in B2B as we get those deals in place and ramping up.
Picking up on your question around ARPU. The ARPU growth that we had in 22 was driven primarily by the price increase. When the ARPU increase is driven by pricing, the way the contract works right now is that it's the same revenue share applies with the majors. Effectively, the ARPU growth does not necessarily change anything on the growth margin %. Growth margin, it stays the same. Obviously, that's very different when it comes to Zen. Whenever we start generating revenues from Zen, which currently are 0, the moment we generate revenues from Zen, the growth margin of Zen is extremely high. Then that will have a substantial positive impact on our growth margin.
Part of our strategy for 2023 and 2024 is to start generating revenues from our B2C base outside of just pure access to the catalog. We want to deliver ARPU increase, but not necessarily only through pricing, but also through addition of additional services and things we sell. The growth margin of those additional products will depend really a lot on what those products are. You don't have the same growth margin for ticketing, then for merch, then for NFTs or any other services or experiences we offer. The mix of products that we will offer will obviously have different growth margin, and that's something we're currently working on 'cause as of today, we only sell access to the catalog, but that's something that will change.
Very clear. Thank you very much.
We currently have no question coming through. As a final reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press Star one now. Next question comes from the line of Eric Ravary, calling from CIC. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning. Two questions. The first one is on the Zen service. What level of revenues could we expect for this one? Even a rough idea would be useful. For Sonos partnership, could you explain the business model there? Is it a paying option by your Sonos clients and with you share, or is it different? Thank you.
Maybe let me start with Sonos. On the Sonos partnerships, what we will do is, as of the month of April, power, meaning operate the existing service that is proposed by Sonos to its customers and those who buy a Sonos hardware, which is called Sonos Radio. They have two services. They have Sonos Radio, which is ad-supported, and they have Sonos Radio HD, which is subscription supported. People pay EUR 7.99 for a subscription service to music, but not a full MOD and not with all the features as other streaming services like ours. These are the type of revenues that we will start getting immediately when we initiate and operate the service.
Progressively, we will innovate and develop the streaming service and features together with Sonos in order to make the experience even better for their user. The business model is quite usual. People when they will subscribe to that service, call it Sonos Radio HD or whichever evolution of Sonos Radio HD. As we will operate the service, we will get the bulk of the revenues. Of course, we are paying the label and the rights. We will register and report the subscribers. Of course, we will get like for other B2B partners, the vast majority of the revenues, leaving, of course, revenue share to Sonos. That's what we will see in our PNL, both in terms of subscriber, in terms of top line and then in terms of profitability.
When it comes to Zen, we're not expecting revenues in the first half of 2023. We expect the revenues to ramp up in the second half. But even in the second half, we're expecting a low single digits EUR million revenues. It's not going to be a material impact on the growth that we're expecting for 2023.
Next question, and the last question is from Christophe Cherblanc calling from Société Générale. Please go ahead.
Yes, me again. Two questions. First one was on cost. The release mentioned you're expecting flat staff, flat account and flat GNA. The question is how long do you expect that to continue? What is the level of growth you can accommodate and deliver with flat cost? Within that, you mentioned a EUR 9 million investment in New Verticals and Driift. What will be the equivalent number in 2023? The second question, I guess, is for Jerónimo. It's about the ecosystem. We've heard the CEO of Universal Music claiming there is a need to better pay for higher quality music. What's your assessment of what he wants to implement? Because it's not too clear in my mind.
As a platform, are you agnostic on the issue? If there was a change, i.e., a need to differentiate between higher quality and lower quality music, would it mean a more complex reporting system, additional cost? Do you think that would be borne by the music majors or the platform? Thank you.
Yes, Christophe, let me take the first one on cost. We are already operating at scale as a global platform. In terms of our technology, in terms of course of the type of costs that we incur, we had to increase our costs as we develop new services outside of our music streaming service, such as Zen, and a little bit also on Driift because we consolidate. Now moving forward, we know that we can scale and grow our top line without having to grow in any material way our cost base. The reason, as I mentioned, is that we are already operating at scale.
The second reason is that a large part of our growth is coming from B2B, and we don't need to have any material additional expense in order to negotiate and to implement those B2B deals. The third reason is that, and that's for staff and GNA, and when you look at marketing, actually, as we are focusing on the few selected markets where we have proper brand awareness, we have right-sized the marketing, and we don't need to substantially increase our marketing when it comes to B2C. From that standpoint, we are comfortable that the level of cost that we have, especially the level of cost in terms of staff and GNA, is at the right level, and we can scale by several hundreds of millions of EUR the top line without having to increase meaningfully the cost base.
Specifically on the impact of New Verticals and Driift. Yes, in 2022, we had to incur substantial cost, especially for production of content and also for the development of the service itself. Now those costs are essentially behind us, which means that in 2023, we expect those costs to go down. As you saw on page 18 in terms of the fixed cost base, it was EUR 7.6 million. That amount will go down in 2023. As mentioned by Jerónimo, as we will generate top line on Zen, which will flow to a large extent to the bottom line, that will lead to profitable growth driven by Zen.
The cost base on those New Verticals will go down in 2023, then we will figure out if we decide and want to launch some other apps and services. That's a topic for later and after we get Zen right.
On the question on the ecosystem, we fully share the view of Universal that there has to be a change in the model, the way the artists get paid. The current model worked basically 15 years ago, and it helped the music industry monetize music and generate revenues after piracy. There are some flaws in the way the model works, and there's ways to make it better, and we should make it better. Deezer has been fighting for user-centric payment system now for almost five years. We always supported improving the way that artists get paid.
There's several initiatives that we're working on, and actually we are working closely with Universal, but also with other labels as well, to come up with a new with a new model that would actually be more fair and more transparent and drive the ecosystem forward. Having said that, from a financial impact on our side, the first thing is that this is about how do you distribute the royalties that are already paid. From a Deezer point of view, it doesn't change our PNL in any way. We would basically pay the same royalties. It might change a little bit who do we pay it to, but ultimately we do not expect any meaningful change in growth margin as a result of changing the model.
It's mostly about how that money ultimately flows to the artists. The second one is in terms of reporting and cost. Our systems are quite complex, and we have the capacity to do all the reporting to move to a user-centric payment system or to an artist-centric payment system with the tools that we have. There will be no additional cost on our side from changing the model. That's why we think that it could be really interesting to work with the labels on this on this front to make the whole music industry fairer. Obviously there is a question mark about the future. There, I think Universal is making a good point.
There's a lot of content now getting uploaded to our platform every week, and that number keeps growing and growing and growing. There's a lot of duplicated content. There's a lot of content that is not even music. People are uploading just noises. At some point, you get way too much content that is useless for the users. It starts creating a bad user experience, also creates, puts a lot of content in our servers that then we have to pay for. There is a cost for us having a never-ending growing catalog. We need to have a catalog that actually is valuable and actually makes sense.
In that sense, I am quite supportive of being stricter in terms of what we allow to get uploaded into the platforms and the quality of the catalog, especially with the things that are coming up in the future when especially machine-generated music and things like that really take off. I think that's something we need to handle and we need to address, and we're currently doing that with the labels. That's, I think in that sense, we're fully aligned with their vision.
Jerónimo, would you expect that to be implemented in 2023 or do you think that's going to take a bit longer?
That's hard to tell. I'm still optimistic that we can actually implement such a change in 2023. We would love to do those changes in 2023. Obviously, you have to work with multiple labels and get everyone to agree, and ultimately also depends on how they pay their own artists. It's not really only on us. Getting all these players aligned is not an easy task. I still hope that we will be able to do some changes in 2023, but we will see.
Thank you.
There are no further questions. I will hand back to your host to conclude today's conference. Thank you.
Well, thank you everyone for attending this call. Of course, if you have any additional question, don't hesitate to reach out to Laurène or to myself. Thanks. Bye-bye.
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