Collecting Societies Around the World: How Royalties Travel
When your song plays on radio in another country, who collects the money — and how does it reach you? The answer is a global network of collecting societies linked by reciprocal agreements. Here is how royalties travel around the world.
What collecting societies do
Collecting societies, also called performing rights organisations (PROs) or collective management organisations (CMOs), collect royalties for songwriters and publishers when their works are publicly performed — on radio and television, in bars and restaurants, at retail stores, and at concert venues. They issue licences to music users, collect fees, and distribute them to members based on performances.
The major societies
In the United States, the main PROs are ASCAP and BMI, both non-profit societies, and SESAC, which is privately owned and for-profit and is by far the smallest of the three. In the UK, PRS for Music covers performance rights. France has SACEM, Germany has GEMA, and India has IPRS for performance rights and PPL for sound recordings. In the US, the MLC collects digital mechanical royalties and SoundExchange collects digital performance royalties for recordings on non-interactive services.
How royalties cross borders
The system works through reciprocal representation agreements. Under these agreements, one society represents another society's repertoire in its home territory. For example, if a Spanish society and an Australian society have signed such an agreement, the Spanish society can represent the Australian society's repertoire in Spain and vice versa. A radio broadcaster can then get a single licence from its local society covering the worldwide repertoire — and creators receive royalties for uses of their works all over the world.
CISAC: the global umbrella
CISAC, the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers, is the world's largest network of its kind, joining 225 societies across 116 countries, according to its members' reporting. It sets professional rules and standards, manages information systems for exchanging data about works and rights holders, and advocates for authors' rights with organisations like WIPO and UNESCO.
What artists must do
One stream can generate several separate royalty payments — performance, mechanical, and master revenue — collected by different bodies. If you only register with a distributor, you collect only one of them. Register your songs with your local society, keep your catalogue metadata accurate, and make sure your works are registered in every territory where they are used. Royalties cannot travel if the paperwork does not.
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