Understanding Your Music Rights

(This article was originally published in April 2006 on MIO).

If you compose a piece of music you immediately own the rights associated with that composition. The composition is intellectual property and as soon as you as a composer conceive it, it belongs to you. When the composition begins to be performed and recorded onto physical mediums, it is necessary to register the work with the correct music rights organisations so that they can help you protect and administer those rights and collect royalty money associated with your compositions.

Performance Rights have to do with a musical composition being performed publicly and/or played on the air. This would encompass the music being performed live by a band in any public space as well as pre-recorded music being played in public spaces such as restaurants, bars and night-clubs. Performance rights also encompass music being aired by television and radio broadcasters. So individuals and companies must get the permission of the composer of a piece of music to play that music in public or on the air and the composer should earn royalties for each time their composition is performed or broadcast.
 
Mechanical Rights have to do with a musical composition being recorded onto a physical medium such as DVD, CD, tape or vinyl. If someone wants to record a piece of music onto one of these physical formats they would have to obtain permission from the person or organisation that owns or controls the mechanical rights of that piece of music. Composers should earn royalties from their work being copied onto DVDs, CDs and cassette tapes to be distributed and sold by music retailers. They should also importantly earn royalties from their music being copied onto physical mediums, such as beta-cam tapes and hard drives, to be broadcast on TV.

SAMRO is the collection agency in South Africa that is there to protect and administer performing rights for composers and musicians and most importantly collect royalties on behalf of its members. If you’ve composed a piece of music, and you’ve registered that piece of music with SAMRO, it is their job to track how many times that piece of music has being performed in public and how many times it has been broadcast on television and radio. It is their job to then collect money from the relevant ‘public spaces’, so to speak, such as restaurants, bars, nightclubs and the broadcasters such as the SABC. This money they’ve collected is then distributed to the relevant composers according to how many times their compositions have being played and/or performed and is referred to as the public performance royalties. The public performance spaces have to pay a license to SAMRO monthly or annually (depending on their agreement) if they want to play music in that space, while the big broadcasters pay a yearly blanket license; a large sum of money that gets distributed as royalties accordingly. When you as a composer register your music with SAMRO, you assign your performance rights over to them. SAMRO then deducts its administrative costs off the top off all income from the royalties they collect. SAMRO is a member of the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC); an international organisation that overseas the activities of all its members, which would be other performing rights organisations such as the Performing Rights Society in the UK.Incidentally CISAC considers SAMRO as one of their high performing societies given the size of the domestic market. SAMRO is ranked 25th in the world in terms of collections.

SARRAL and NORM are the two organisations in South Africa that are there to protect, collect and administer mechanical rights on behalf of their members who may be composers or publishers. Although both organisations essentially provide the same service, NORM has blanket licence agreements with MNET and ETV, while SARRAL do not. Another important difference between SARRAL and NORM is that SARRAL represents commissioned composers who are not covered by the agreement that NORM has with the broadcasters. Both SARRAL and NORM deal with the SABC. If you’ve composed a piece of music, and registered it with either of these organisations, they are supposed to track how many times your music has being copied onto a physical medium.

So if, for example, you’re a member of NORM, you’ve had your music printed onto CDs and they’re being sold at retail outlets, NORM could be authorised to collect royalties from the record label you’ve signed with for each and every CD that has had your music copied onto it. You could also do this yourself or get a publisher to do it for you. Its more complicated than this obviously and MIO will be looking into it in a little more detail when we write a story on publishers and why they’re so important (watch this space).

SAMRO previously administered only performance royalties. They have now signed reciprocal agreements with the majorotity of international MECHANICAL collection societies. SAMRO has also signed agreements with many of its top members who have confirmed that SAMRO will in future be collecting their mechanical royalties in addition to their performance royalties.

Whenever a piece of music is aired on television as a part of a TV show or series it has to be recorded either onto beta-cam tapes or onto a hard-drive. The broadcasters pay the music rights organisations a blanket license and those organisations are supposed to distribute royalties to their members according to however many times that piece of music has been copied onto tape or hard-drive. If it gets copied onto a hard-drive the music could be played a number of times without being recopied. The composer would then only be paid for the first time it gets copied. But if the music is copied onto a new beta-cam tape everyday, for example, because a new show needs to be aired everyday with the same music, then the composer should be paid a mechanical royalty for every time the music gets copied onto tape.

Let’s take a simple (imaginary) example of how you could earn money from these music rights organisations.

Jo Schmo writes a song, “The Schmo Song” so that his band, “The Joe Band” can perform and record the song. Immediately once Joe has conceived of the song, he owns the musical rights associated with the song. The original idea and creative process of creating the music is his ‘intellectual property’ and without having to register the music, Joe owns “The Schmo Song” entirely.

Joe then registers his music with SAMRO and eventually becomes a SAMRO member. He and his band go out and perform “The Schmo Song” at various live music venues. He takes note of how many times he has played the song live, and submits this information to SAMRO via a Live Performance Return. SAMRO in turn note how many times “The Schmo Song” has being performed by “The Joe Band” or any other band for that matter.

“The Joe Band” then record and produce “The Schmo Song” at Joe’s home studio. The recording gets played on 5FM several times and SAMRO take note of how many times the recording gets played. “The Schmo Song” is also picked up by a TV production company and used for the opening credits for a weekly TV series. SAMRO then track how many times “The Schmo Song” is played in conjunction with the TV show.

At the end of a one-year period, SAMRO takes account of every time “The Schmo Song” has being ‘performed’, which is to say how many times it has being played live by a band and played on TV and radio, and pays royalties to Joe Schmo accordingly.

Joe then registers his music with SARRAL or NORM. Every time “The Schmo Song” is recorded in conjunction with the weekly TV series on the SABC, it must be recorded onto a beta-cam tape to be broadcast. SARRAL or NORM take note of how many times the song is recorded for the TV series and, similar to SAMRO, pay royalties to Joe Schmo every half-year accordingly.

So, in this way, Joe earns a substantial amount of money from the music rights organisations just by coming up with the intellectual property that is “The Schmo Song”.

Hopefully this illustrates how important music rights organisations are, because without them it would be very difficult for composers to collect the royalties due to them for allowing their musical rights to be exploited. Lastly just to note that performance and mechanical rights are not the only rights associated with a composition. There are also synchronization rights with have to do with your music being synched to visuals for broadcast. These do not have to do with music rights organizations and need to be negotiated with the broadcaster and/or production company that want to synche the music.

(Special thanks to David Alexander, MD of Sheer Publishing, for providing MIO with invaluable information regarding the music rights organisations).