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Business News Deals Digital
SACEM announces new deal with Spotify
By Chris Cooke | Published on Wednesday 19 May 2021
French collecting society SACEM has announced it has signed a new deal with Spotify which, it says, has been agreed as the rights organisation “addresses challenges related to the platform’s launch of new offerings and expansion into new territories”.
“Since 2008, when Spotify launched its streaming service and signed its first agreement with the SACEM, it has continued to grow and evolve, turning music streaming into a vital, mainstream mode of consumption”, the society added in a statement.
“Bolstered by its expertise in the management of authors’ rights in the digital sphere, SACEM has consolidated its position as a leader in collective management by regularly renegotiating its agreement with Spotify over the years in order to guarantee its members the fairest possible remuneration for the use of their works”.
One challenge with digital licensing on the songs side is that streaming services usually have global ambitions, but music publishing traditionally operated on a territorial basis, especially when collective licensing is involved.
However, if the old fashioned territorial system is employed with streaming, it introduces inefficiencies into the system, with local collecting societies in each country initially collecting a songwriter’s royalties, resulting in extra delays and deductions as the money passes along the royalty chain to the writer. It can also mean less able and efficient societies having a key role in administrating the music rights industry’s fastest growing revenue stream in some markets.
To that end many publishers and societies have sought to circumvent the old systems when it comes to digital licensing, directly dealing with streaming services in as many countries as possible without relying on local intermediaries. Although full-on global licensing is yet to be properly achieved.
Nevertheless, societies like SACEM – which has been very proactive in this domain – increasingly license directly their own repertoires on a multi-territory basis. And, in SACEM’s case, it negotiates and manages such multi-territory deals on behalf of other societies and music publishers too.
Earlier this year Spotify launched in a plethora of new markets, that being the “expansion into new territories” referenced by SACEM in its statement. The new deal, the society added, “covers all of the European Union countries, as well as Switzerland, Israel, South Africa, the Middle East, India, Russia and 80 other territories around the world”.
Concluding, the French society said yesterday: “Streaming has opened up new opportunities for both creators and end users. SACEM is proud to have worked with Spotify for more than ten years. Together, SACEM and Spotify will continue to explore this ever-changing and strategic market for the entire music ecosystem”.
