By Heili Potgieter, Candidate Attorney, and Herman Blignaut, Partner, at Spoor & Fisher

As a general rule, you need the permission of the owner of a copyrighted work to use that work. Relating this rule to music, use would include, for example, playing songs in public through a public address system or on the radio, performing them to an audience and using them in advertisements or movies.

If your local grocery store owner didn’t personally ask Ed Sheeran for permission to play “Perfect” to a shop full of customers looking for the two-for-one washing powder specials, this then begs the question – how does music licensing work?

Enter the stage: Music Collecting Societies

In practice, it is not feasible for every store owner and high school sports-day organiser to liaise with artists, recording studios, lyricists and composers every time they want to play music. This brings about a lose-lose situation: the general public can’t legally perform or play copyrighted music, and copyright proprietors won’t be compensated for the use of the music they create.

Music collecting societies make the commercialisation of copyright more effective and accessible for all parties involved by acting as a middleman between those parties interested in playing and performing music in public spaces, and the proprietors of the copyright in the music.

In South Africa, various organisations function as music collecting societies, administering copyright and collecting royalties for various music rights. The main ones are SAMRO (South African Music Rights Organisation), SAMPRA (South African Music Performance Rights Association), CAPASSO (Composers Authors and Publishers Association), and IMPRA (Independent Music Performance Rights Association).

Music collecting societies may take assignment of the copyright in works owned by their members, or act as the agents or licensees of their members, in order to commercialise their members’ copyright on their behalf. The societies then give users (the store owner, for example) access to their entire music repertoire in exchange for payment of an agreed-upon royalty. The royalties collected are distributed amongst the society’s members, according to the frequency of use of each copyrighted work.

Why So Many Collecting Societies?

Our copyright legislation defines a variety of copyright works and a single song can be made up of a number of these copyright works. For example, the song lyrics will be a “literary work”, the musical score will be a “musical work” and the particular recording made by the record company will be a “sound recording”. The copyright in these different works could belong to different people with different (and sometimes conflicting) interests. For this reason, there are a number of different music collecting societies which represent the interests of each of these copyright owners. The downside of this is that, a single user may (and probably will) need a licence from more than one collecting society. Similarly, a single creator could be a member of and benefit from more than one collecting society, depending on their role(s) in the creative process.

Playback Time is Payback Time

South African music collecting societies include those described below:

SAMRO (South African Music Rights Organisation):

SAMRO’s members consist of the lyricists, composers and publishers of songs. SAMRO issues blanket licences which allows establishments and individuals to use SAMRO members’ songs for commercial purposes. The licensed activities would include performing the songs in public, broadcasting them on public mediums such as on TV or radio, and even on a telephone message service or in an elevator. (“performance rights”). Every time a SAMRO member’s song is played or performed, that member receives royalties.

CAPASSO (Composers Authors and Publishers Association):

In 2014, SAMRO transferred its “mechanical rights” licensing operation to CAPASSO. While CAPASSO’s members are similar to those of SAMRO, SAMRO licences cover performance rights (i.e. right to perform and play the song in public), while the mechanical rights managed by CAPASSO are related to the distribution of music – in the olden days, this meant the distribution of vinyl, cassette tapes and CDs but nowadays CAPASSO’s licensees include, for example, online music streaming services (like Apple Music and Spotify), advertising agencies and filmmakers.

SAMPRA:

SAMPRA represents recording artists (artists who made an audible contribution to a sound recording of a song, including singers, musicians, backing vocalists and producers) as well as

record companies. SAMPRA collects royalties from the commercialisation of their “needletime rights” and “neighbouring rights”. These rights entitle recording artists and record companies to receive a royalty every time their song is broadcast or played in public.

To ensure that both the rights of record companies and the rights of recording artists are equally and fairly protected, each of these groups are represented, respectively, by the Record Labels’ Chambers and the Performers’ Chambers, of SAMPRA.

Conclusion

By acting as an intermediary between copyright holders and the general public, music collecting societies play an important role in ensuring broad, easy and legal access to music, while making sure that copyright holders are fairly compensated for the use of their works.